An independent progressive movement?

[Jackpine Radical]

Offered as food for thought and discussion.

Salon / By Bill Curry comments_image 82 COMMENTS
The Democratic Party Keeps Screwing Up: Why Progressives Need to Be Independent of the Party
Progressives have no power in a corporate, focus-grouped, Wall Street-leaning party.


December 26, 2014 |


Democrats are in denial regarding the magnitude and meaning of their defeat. It is a rejection not just of current leaders but of the very business model of the modern Democratic Party: how it uses polls and focus groups to slice and dice us; how it peddles its sly, hollow message and, worst, how it sells its soul to pay for it all. Party elites hope party activists will seek to lift their moods via the cheap adrenaline high of another campaign. For once, activists may resist the urge.

The vital task for progressives isn’t reelecting Democrats but rebuilding a strong, independent progressive movement. Our history makes clear that without one, social progress in America is next to impossible. For 100 years progressive social change movements transformed relations between labor and capital, buyers and sellers, blacks and whites, men and women, our species and our planet. But in the 1970s progressives began to be coopted and progress ceased. Their virtual disappearance into the Democratic Party led to political stultification and a rollback of many of their greatest achievements.

Much is written of the rise of the right, but very little of the fall of the left. We’re apt to see the left’s decline, if we do see it, as a consequence of the right’s superior funding, organizing and messaging, of the corporate dominance of all politics, and of white backlash against government, liberalism or modernity itself.

It’s a bad analysis. The left’s fall is as much a cause as an effect of what ails us. Middle-class anger isn’t about race, taxes, social services or social change. It’s mainly about middle-class decline and public corruption. Democrats talk a lot about both problems — but if they were really trying to solve either one, we’d all know it.

The prevailing analysis fosters passivity. Whenever people speak of forces rather than choices it’s a sure sign they aren’t about to do anything. Progressives who blame their losses on globalization, white backlash or money in politics are less apt to focus on the one thing they alone control: their own choices.

[Demeter]

1. I can see it now...NSA, FBI, militarized police at the door night and day...

why don't we just paint targets on both back and front and stand at the foot of an open grave?

Seriously, though...We have to do what the Tea Party did: start filling up elected offices from dog catcher on up, then the state legislature, then go to DC and clean House and Senate!

It would take maybe a dozen years if the pioneers do their job well and keep doing it. It will take forever if they sell out, or never get started.

But it will be as radical as Cuba, or China, or any other revolution. TPTB will fight tooth and nail. People will die, intentionally murdered, which will be no different than today...but we will make change.

I'd like to believe this will work without torches and pitchforks. It has the novelty of not having been tried before...except by the Tea Party, which seems to be making far too much headway for the safety of the nation. Give the Teahadists something that works to their advantage, and we could merge into a People's Party...

[Jackpine Radical]

2. You're absolutely right.

I do think we can find issue-specific common ground with at least portions of the Tea Party and at least some right-libertarians. This only works if people in both camps can focus on those specific issues rather than on the whole baggage of prejudice, distrust and outright animus between the two groups.

[Demeter]

3. Why thank you!

Such validation from someone whose work I admire makes up for a lot of the trolling I've experienced on this website....

Sadly, I don't think DU will lead the way. I used to think it could be the start of something big, but now I'm convinced otherwise. Letting the trolls wander freely about is one major reason why.

[RiverLover]

4. Excuse my bluntness, but *oh hell NO* to the Teabaggers

It's Time to Shut Down the EPA
petition
57,655 Letters and Emails Sent So Far




^^^they are psychotic

http://act.theteaparty.net/12358/its-time-to-shut-down-epa/

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

5. My alternative suggestion. Defund Homeland Security.

Republicans only want to fund it through February? Fine. Get rid of the TSA, defund all of the spying on Americans and covert ops that target non-violent protesters. If they can't find the money to pay for the President's immigration ideas, then start laying off border patrol agents and sell off the border fences as scrap metal.

I bet Republicans could start finding the money then.

[RiverLover]

6. Love it!! Yep, they'd find the money. Great post. nt

[sabrina 1]

7. And do something about all the think tanks who seem to have more power to influence our government

than elected officials.

And get rid of the CIA.

But first we have to get some real Representatives of the people elected, hundreds of them in Congress, and thousands all over the country.

Probably will have to start locally, which appears to have already begun.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Thanks for the kind words,

and keep up the good fight.

One potential side benefit to your idea is that it would lead to more contact between us & them, which always makes it harder to demonize the people in the out-group. If we can start by agreeing on a few common goals and associate with each other in a positive context, that might make it harder for the likes of Beck & Limbaugh to demonize us to their listeners.

And just writing this was an interesting exercise for me; I was somewhat appalled at the ease with which derogatory language kept emerging as I wrote about the other side.

I envision the Progressives and the Tea Party as Venn diagrams--two circles that have a small intersection (overlap). If we want to accomplish something useful with them, we need to stay within the boundaries of that overlap in our association with them. It is both incredibly tempting and thoroughly destructive to focus on all the areas in which we differ with them. Both sides have to "agree to disagree" about most things in order to move forward in the areas where the goals overlap.

Groups have negative and stereotyped views of each other in direct relation to the isolation between those two groups. Or, to coin a phrase, "Familiarity breeds."

I think it was Jay Gould who commented that he could always hire half the working class to kill the other half. I think the worst nightmare of the .00001% is that the virulent divisions of race, ideology, religion, etc. that they have so carefully nurtured among the common people might start fading. They can exist only by means of keeping the 99+% divided against each other. If we all ever put it together to understand the true source of our troubles, we will have it in our power to remake the world.

[TheKentuckian]

12. I think there is some refusal to accept that the Tea Party is just a Republican commissioned,

organized, and funded branding and political framing campaign.

There will be no 100,000 watt blowtorch radio stations pushing a similar effort on the left, there will be no party dominated and trusted news network pimping it, there will be no billionaire funders, no bus tours, no fake quivering from the opposition party, and perhaps most critically there will not be party professional organizers up to and including a former Speaker of the House helping to make it happen.

There is no way to replicate the dynamic here. The insurrection aspect is phenomenally overstated, the party woodshed to be more regressive and reactionary or at least a significant share of their "elites" did and do.
The thing may have gotten a little wild and occasionally out of control but overall it can't be called anything but successful, probably beyond the wildest dreams of the plotters considering the depths right wingery had fallen intro with Bush junior.

[Scuba]

8. We need to stop chasing money and start promoting policy. It does no good to win if ...

... winning just means more conservative policy-makers in charge.

Policy can lead to winning. Half the potential voters don't bother. It's time to offer them something to get them to the polls. Three biggies stand out ...

Medicare for All

Strengthen and expand Social Security

Raise the minimum wage


Nationally, we need to run on those three and other progressive policies. Republican-lite assures failure even if we win!

[Wellstone ruled]

10. This model was tried very sucessfully in the late 30's thru the 50's

in Wisconsin,but we had a spokes person with oratory skills and plain bad ass get in your face attitude. La Foliate worked with labor and Main Street folks to better our State. Then,along came Tail Gunner Joe and the Birchers,with their Newspaper buddies they pretty much wiped out the Progressive Movement by name calling and fear mongering. We have to get back to the basics,and,that means kicking ass and taking names at the Prescient level. Got to get the people engaged again. Most people want to be get along go along and not make waves. Well,it doesn't always work that way. The Rethugs really figured this out in the 70's by developing data bases and voter lists and the rest is history. They now know how to win elections,but they still screw over the minions who drink their Kool Aid,were in we have to some how get the facts out and counter their bullshit. Our so called strategist's are mostly Ivy League folks who do not connect with the numbers of voters that are necessary to win elections. Great example is Al From,what a loser this guy is,and sorry to say Mr. Obama is influenced by this turkey.

[sabrina 1]

11. The name calling and fear mongering is getting old now. We have way more info on where

it comes from than they did back then.

Old tactics like that can be defeated by exposing how they do it.

You are so right about the 'elitist strategists'. Who ARE these people who appear to be so disconnected from real people?

That, btw, was a rhetorical question. I think we have learned where they come from and who they are and who they are working for.

Does the name 'Ezra Klein' ring any bells?

[Cosmic Kitten]

13. Who ARE these people... so disconnected from real people?

What do you call someone who knowingly lies and
misleads others for their own enjoyment or enrichment?

[hedda_foil]

14. They're the people who believe they know best-- aka The powers that be.

Their knowledge of ordinary commoners is paltry. Their respect for us is even less. They see us as chunks of focus grouped and polled segments of an electorate that can be manipulated, encouraged, discouraged, lied to, and played with. Their objective is to convince enough people to vote for their flunkies, who will pass legislation that favors their interests.