"Theres Not Very Much Time": Robert Reichs Plan to Fix the Democratic Party [View all]

[portlander23]

“There’s Not Very Much Time”: Robert Reich’s Plan to Fix the Democratic Party
JOEL BLEIFUSS
In These Times

What are the most important lessons from the 2016 Democratic presidential primary?

The question is whether the Democratic Party is ready to reinvent itself entirely.

The primary showed that the real enthusiasm and energy in the Democratic Party is in what might be called democratic—small “D”—populism: a determination to make the economy and our democracy work for a vast majority instead of a privileged few. The torch of democratic populism was carried by Bernie Sanders. This is a first cousin to the authoritarian populism that dominates the Republican Party and is exemplified by Donald Trump. Democratic populism is the logical alternative to Trump’s xenophobia and hatefulness. If the Democratic Party has any sense at all, that’s what it will aim toward in the future.

The party is not currently a force for fundamental progressive change. It should be confronting Donald Trump and his hatefulness directly. It should be taking advantage of the enormous energy that was revealed in the Sanders campaign and is now even more broadly based because so many people are determined not to allow Trump to erode what has been accomplished over the past 50 years. But that can’t happen with politics as usual. That means an entirely different kind of organization. It should be an activist organization, a grassroots system for mobilizing and energizing voters between elections.

There’s not very much time. If progressives are going to have the kind of candidates we need going into the primaries for the midterms of 2018, we’ve got to get started.