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I first suggested the possibility of creating a new party before the November election last year. It was argued at the time that we needed to elect Obama because as flawed as he was (and is) he was still better than the walking disaster known as John McCain. Well, Obama was elected. He was elected on a platform of change, a slogan he has betrayed at every turn. With global warming, a collapsed economy, a tattered image around the world, and ongoing unConstitutional excesses, our country is facing existential challenges on a number of fronts.
These challenges will not be overcome with pleasant speeches followed by more of the same, business as usual legislation from Obama and the Democrats. All through the Bush years, the worst Presidency in our history, Democrats told us over and over they could do nothing. This was never true. They could have fought. Yes, they would have mostly lost, but at least they would have stood for something, and with those who voted for them. Instead they made endless excuses. They needed to keep their powder dry. They needed to choose their fights. If they were in the minority, they needed to be in the majority. If they were in the majority, they needed the Presidency. If they got all that, then they needed a bigger majority. And on and on.
But what have the Democrats actually done? In the Bush years, they enabled the Bush agenda. Now even under a Democratic President and Congress, they have, instead of repudiating it, continued and strengthened that agenda. On Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, indefinite detention, military tribunals, Iran, domestic spying, state secrets, global warming, education, EFCA, healthcare, bailouts for banks, no help for homeowners, and attacking Medicare and Social Security, we are seeing, across the board, change we cannot believe in.Is this what we wanted? Is this what we worked and voted for?
I say no.
We are in a situation where Republicans have gone off the deep end and Democrats have become the new Republicans. More than values or ideology, this is about what works at a critical time in our history. Obama and the Democrats have embraced the failed policies of the Republicans and made them their own. The truth is our country doesn’t have the resources to stand the costs of those failures. We need change. Real change. We need a new party, one based on progressive ideals and dedicated to solutions that work. Our ideals are about good and stable jobs, good healthcare and education for all, caring for our elderly, a clean and liveable environment, sustainable growth, fairness for all, and respect for law. It says so much that these ideas which most Americans would agree our country should be about are treated by our media and elites as marginal and radical.
Creating a new party will be hard. The history of third parties is not a happy or successful one. But I am not advocating a third party. Democrats and Republicans are the real third parties, representing narrow and narrower selfish interests. I propose a party where the wants and needs, dreams and aspirations, of ordinary Americans come first. I advocate a first party. Such a party would need the support of both the grassroots and the netroots. We would need to find and recruit candidates at the local level and we would need to support them. We would have to turn the very crony networks and corporate financing of our opponents against them, turning their advantages into disadvantages. We should expect that they will go neither quietly nor nicely. It will be nasty, and we should expect that. But we should keep our eyes on the prize, a better life not just for some but for all.
As it now stands, less than 10% of the House is made up of progressives and half of those are undependable. In the Senate, aside from Bernie Sanders, an independent, there are no consistently progressive members. As for the Administration, progressives are few and far between, and even then at the margins. But this is the time to start organizing and there are many and better organizers than me out there. The Republican party has imploded and has become a shrill and marginal remnant. Obama’s high approval ratings are already beginning to slip and will not survive his failure to fix the economy and his governing from the right. Americans have rejected the Republicans. They are preparing to do the same to the Democrats.
The time to begin is now. If the economy worsens further in 2010, we could even score some victories in those elections on a progressive populist platform. But we should be looking at 2012 and beyond. Democrats and Republicans are bankrupt, and they are trying to take us down with them. We can accept this or we can fight. We may fail, but isn’t it better to have tried?
10 Comments
Paragraphs please :-)
Agree.
First thing, I believe, is to draft a one-page statement of core principles for the new “Progressive People’s Party” (or whatever).
I’ve always hoped for some solutions-based political party. A group that looks at a problem with defined requirements, such as the consensus recognized problems (skyrocketing costs, etc.), and then proceeds to pursue policy prerogatives that will solve those problems; regardless of the politics.
Our system is entirely too hamstrung by the idea that you can always compromise your way to a solution. It just isn’t true. You can compromise your way to some kind of action, but there’s nothing that necessitates that action actually being a solution.
I’d once fancied the term “Solutionist Party,” but figured that it was too close to “Socialist Party” to gain any traction.
Superb assessment! The way the political system is designed from state to state, given the infrastructure in place, it is well nigh impossible to introduce a new party or displace one of the major parties. As you point out, the two major parties albeit representing political minorities will still be around till one of them happens to be displaced.
In American political discourse, compromise always means “change nothing, even if it’s broken or doesn’t work as intended.”
Excellent idea.
Howard Dean for President.
Hugh! Tell it like it is, paragraphically, parenthetically, or otherwise! I’ve had more than enough of this bullshit. If nothing else, we’ve learned the going price for a Senator…
Are you trying to be a comedy routine? If so…bang up job!
There are a lot of teabaggers who say the same things, and there is a lot of common ground….hmmmmm…..
So where do we sign up? Wolverines!
Are you prepared to work with the GOP in liberal districts? I don’t know if it will work, but those are the kinds of tactics it’s going to take to get on the ballot and to get some leverage.
We have no cash source. We can’t even get Marcy $150,000/year. Jane’s having to beg to get $30,000 to finance a key fight on health care, which has legs, like no other issue. I suspect we’ll be competing against Democrats who get matching funding from the taxpayers. Good messaging is extremely expensive. Crafting a RETAIL message that can’t easily be co-otped by the Dems or GOP is very, very tough.
Until you can peel off parts of the tri-caucus and the unions, you have zero gotv.
selise had a good idea awhile ago, which looks even better today. If you want to prototype this, start in the most liberal districts. If we can mount serious primary challenges from with the Democratic party, that’s a proving grounds.
I always go back to Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms and your post touched on this. They advanced the goals of white supremacy much more effectively from within the Democratic party than George Wallace did from outside it.
Getting any candidate on a ballot is expensive. Qualified candidates in any district won’t be enthralled with pissing off the Democratic establishment.
It’s humbling, but imho, the single best amplifier for scarce liberal/progressive cash is in blogs such as FDL. Campaigns eat up enormous amounts of cash, especially at the beginning. And if you lose, by one frigging vote, it’s all wasted.
I think you approach the problem bass ackwards. You need to get people on your side and then, should you wish, declare them a third or first party. If you get enough people and get them active you may not need a political party. I suggested putting town check books on line. This creates local web sites with a subject that may attract localites. If someone has a different idea, I’d like to hear it.
This kind of network doesn’t come cheap and as you say, money is a problem especially when the people who have it are not well known as progressives. Still it may be doable. As for starting out as some kind of third party, even if you were sufficiently diplomatic to combine Libertarians, Greens, Nadarites and any others, it would not be enough. We have to organize the grass or net roots better. Blogs don’t do it.
BooRadley, we aren’t winning. It isn’t about the difference of one vote. We are getting hammered at every turn. Aside from stem cell research which in a lot of ways isn’t even a liberal-conservative issue, I can’t think of anything that Obama has followed through on that progressives support.
ekunin, how will you get people to know what your side is or that you want their vote, or have someone that they can vote for, outside of a political party? And again, I am not talking about a third party. As soon as we talk in those terms, we buy into the meme that only the two parties we have are legit and any other party is a hopeless transient effort by a few disgruntled voters that will fail. I am saying we need to attack the myth of the two parties being legitimate and representative. They clearly aren’t. They are the real third parties. I am suggesting the revolutionary concept of a party that does not treat citizens like rubes.
To you both, I never said it would be easy. The two parties we have now have entrenched themselves into the institutional structure of the country. Money rules our politics. The media are its sycophantic servants and will try to discredit and marginalize any new political movement. We need to use people power against money power. We need to use the net and grassroots organizing to counter the current two party stranglehold on power. “They’re bought. We’re not” can be a powerful message.
The reason I wrote this post now is because if we ever are going to build a new party, a new political awareness, a new political movement, the time to do so is now. The Republican party is discredited. The Democratic party in its pursuit of failed policies, especially economic ones, is on its way to being discredited. So now is precisely the time to lay the groundwork for a new party and movement.
Working within the Democratic party has gotten us exactly nowhere. Think back to the big push in 2006 to get Democrats elected so that we could put an end to the Iraq war. The Democrats took the help and promptly caved. Here we are in 2009, we are still in Iraq, even with the Democrats in control, and the long promised withdrawal still hasn’t begun. Accepting the two parties we have is to accept defeat in advance.