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I’m on the mailing list of Tea Party Nation, and got an email from them, today. Tea Party Nation has published ugly, disgraceful claptrap on it’s website; the one that I clearly remember involved calling the Occupy Wall Street encampments “rape camps”. Cenk Uyghur got Breitbart on video, wherein he basically admitted that this was payback for smearing the Tea Partiers as racists. Apparently, the Tea Party smear merchants flunked 1st grade Sunday School….
In spite of their character defects, the Tea Parties nevertheless show more political intelligence and backbone than progressives. Furthermore, there are signs that they’re getting smarter, politically. Which is more than I can say about progressives.
No matter what happens on election day, it sure seems to me that the Tea Party will grow more influential in the weeks and years, following. At least, they have such a notion, in their heads. I suppose that the Tea Parties are roughly analogous to the PDA. However, I don’t see that the PDA rises to this level of purposefulness in growing their organization right along with 2012 electioneering.
Here is their latest email, where I have added bolding:
Monday is Labor Day, the official start of the “campaign season”, and I need your help.
We need to raise $23,562 by Monday to pay for our recruitment efforts, to help build tea party organizations across America and to make sure every single American understands what the Obama agenda of higher taxes and reckless government spending has done to our great country.
Victory over the big government liberals starts today.
Please make a generous contribution of $25, $35, $50, $100, $250 or more to Tea Party Patriots right away.
The sad truth is that we can’t really depend on the politicians – even the Republicans – to always do the right thing and fight for our conservative values.
The Tea Party movement was started because ordinary Americans like you and me concluded that we needed to take matters into our own hands. We needed to take to the streets and rally. We needed write letters to the editor and phone our congressmen.
We needed to take a stand.
So, we stood. We fought. And we won a great many battles.
We’ve helped rejuvenate the Republican Party and are slowly dragging it back to its limited government roots.
However, we still have so far to go.
Please make the most generous contribution you can to Tea Party Patriots right away. This fall we need to fight harder than ever to defeat Obama’s big government agenda. And to make sure the Republicans do the same.
America’s fate is in our hands.
It is so important to for us to get organized now. We need to build new Tea Party organization where there are none.
And we need to help established Tea Party groups grow bigger and stronger.
That’s why we’ve set this goal of raising $23,562 by Labor Day.
This fundraising drive will help pay for the largest national organizing and voter education blitz in Tea Party history.
Please donate what you can.
Remember, Tea Party Patriots is not a big bureaucratic political party committee or a special interest PAC funded by one or two super-wealthy donors.
We are a true grassroots bottom-up organization comprised of local Tea Party groups in every state in the union.
And we can make a HUGE impact this fall. If we have your help.
Please make the very most generous contribution you possibly can. Our goal is to raise $23,562 by the beginning of the campaign season on Monday!
Thank you in advance for your help.
For Liberty,
Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founder and National Coordinator
And the National Coordinator TeamPS: A great way to help assure the long-term health of our movement is to join Tea Party Patriots’ First Brigade program. Just click here to learn how you can make small automatic donations to help us keep fighting!
45 Comments
– Foghorn Legghorn
ROTFLM(dusty)AO!!!
The so called Tea Party is about White supremacy. Nothing more and nothing less.
The PDA’s politics are now about as far-Right as the Tea Party, and about as Racist:
Many PDA alumni walked out of the Congressional hearing of our neo-Fascist corrupt arms-supplying Attorney General. They walked out, calling the investigation of Holder a “witch hunt.”
Let me revise my first statement: The PDA is to the Right of the Tea Party, supporting the Racist Jim Crowbama work against Marijuana.
Quite honestly, I consider this an idiotic comment, quite on par with calling OWS encampments “rape camps”. It’s not that there weren’t a some rapes at OWS locations – there were. Extrapolating from a dysfunctional minority to the group as a whole, while very tribally gratifying, is not a victory for rational thought.
However, let’s assume that you’re correct, and the Tea Party (really Tea PartieS, but let’s pretend) is “about White supremacy. Nothing more and nothing less”.
How is it that these white supremacists have managed to acquire political power in these last 3 years, while progressives have not (so far as I can tell.)? Should this not be a constant topic of investigation in the progressive blogosphere, all the more so given the (one would hope) perceived need to counter-act these white supremacists?
I say it should be of great interest to progressives, if they actually want to acquire political power, themselves. What do you say?
An even stronger argument that progressives aren’t on a trajectory to acquire political power is the lack of interest in the stunning electoral successes of Latin America, by leftists. Quite a few countries of Latin America have overcome “economic hitmen”, School of Americas trained death squads, CIA meddling, etc. The president of Paraguay, in South of the Border, said, “I believe that there is a new actor here, and that is the social movements”.
And yet, even Oliver Stone didn’t perceive a need to inquire as to details of these social movements and their history, much less explore what aspects of them could be imported into US activists’ efforts!*
With such a lack of curiosity, American lefties should not expect political power to come their way.
* OK, South of the Border is dated 2010. Maybe he did ask the right questions, and is saving the footage for a sequel. I doubt it, but it’s possible.
Hmmm. Maybe you and cmaukonen should form a club, no?
Are you a lefty? If so, are you interested in learning from successful leftist political/social movements of Latin America? If not, why not?
ETA: Sorry, I didn’t read your comment, carefully. I didn’t know that about some of them walking out of the Holder investigation. Well, shame on them, but it still doesn’t make them “about as far right as the Tea Party”.
IMO, most of the so-called progressives, elected in progressive districts, should be “fired”. Jane Hamsher’s diary Bernie Sanders to Primary Obama? Don’t Make Me Laugh implies that this would be safe; and, I assume, relatively easy to do.
I appreciate and recommend your article. I am interested in learning about those movements. I am a Lefty. I am just turned off by the “Progressive” Democrats of Anemia.
I see the Tea Party playing on people’s ignorance. There’s a weekly Tea Party protest in very Left-leaning Northampton, Mass., near me. I talk to them sometimes. They really don’t know very much.
Thanks for mentioning us Jill Stein/Cheri Honkala supporters in your heading, metamars. We don’t mind being called disorganized, because our candidates are not – and we be organized when it counts at the ballot box, you may be sure! That’s the least we can do for said candidates and those who were out getting signatures for them all over the country – last I heard we are on 40 state ballots.
Um, what else was it you were saying?
I need to shorthand this for now, but while you understand that populist movements were responsible for stopping the march of neoliberlism in many southern nations, here, and in many of your posts, seem to be putting the cart before the horse.
I’d probably quibble over your use of ‘progressive’ where you may equate it with Leftist, but that aside… You seem to think that ‘progressive third-parties’ will take organization.
But the true horse that will drive populist electoral politics will only come when, as they say, working people realize that ‘there’s nothing left to lose’, as did the movements in the south. Power comes from refusing to obey fascists, and grows.
As Benjamen Dangl wrote of the burgeoning people’s democracy movements
“In this dance, the urgency of survival trumps the law, people acting based on the rights they were born with makes the state irrelevant, and anything is possible when the community moves.”
Thus, all my hope is in OWS and Stopping the Machine, in a spiritual social revolution. Which is precisely I so often post about all the developing alternatives in this country, and highlight Indigenous global actions: these folks have known the enemy for years, decades…up close and personal, and have been organizing for a long time.
Very excellent viewpoint, metamars, and let me add some more gasoline onto the upcoming (yet again!) white progressive electoral flameout:
racism is also the fundamental flaw in white, middle-class progressivism of the Green Party, or “third party” if you will, since this non-movement is all about symbolic default rhetorical positioning for future blog posts rather than practical (or even ideal) politics. Further, the assumptions used to gain this nihilist pose are steeped in as many false premises as any in the tea part platform.
When I read diary after diary by people like Barefoot Accountant begging for someone, anyone to take the lead for her, its like, ok, you’ve already been led down the drain by giving up your own right of self-assertion, a right the tea parties, for whatever their myriad faults, have demonstrated vociferously since Obama’s election. They have asserted themselves first in the streets, gaining power, self promotion and self identification and then crucially organising at precinct level to gain significance within the GOP.
And WMC progressives are talking about about obamabots being trapped in veal pens?
Look first at the log in thine own eye, loosers.
The WMCP disconnect is ironic to say the least.
How are White Middle Class Progressives racist? Because you’ve disassociated yourselves from the black and hispanic underclasses (the white underclass has long since disassociated itself from you) exactly on those issues over which the two parties (yes, Virginia, there are two parties, “uniparty” = empty rhetorical fallacy) are battling:
immigration
education funding/student loans
tax increases on the rich
medicaid
For instance, one would never know from reading WMCP rants against Obamacare that the Dems passed a HUGE increase in Medicaid expansion, and while SCOTUS weakened that part of the law, which I’m guessing most WMCP wanted tossed in total too, a handful of states have already implemented it for which 500,000+ poor people (remember them?) have already benefitted.
Shame on white middle class regressive progressives for turning their backs on the very poor in our society in exchange for nothing but empty, broken rhetorical idealism.
Just so you can maintain your blogging poses post-election.
SHAME!
Another rhetorical fallacy: the Green party/third party is leftist.
The Green Party is middle class consumerist environmentalist. Where electorally empowered anywhere (Germany and Britain), the Greens practical policy (because of the need to lead and compromise) turns out to be the practical equivalence of the Democrats! RIOTOUSS!
Let me be blunt with what I see as the main issue with the progressive movement in its wide diversity. It is more interested in morality or in ideology than in actual politics. Knowing the potential for co-option and for abuses of power, it shuns seeking power in a practical way. As a result, it cannot affect policy. And because it is so interested in the logical underpinnings of politics (and also because of differing personal ambitions) it fragments into as many jealously guarded factions and parties as exist in evangelical and pentecostal American Christianity. (The Tea Parties also have this problem but to a lesser degree and more motivated by the entrepreneurialism of the “founder”.)
As a result there is no systematic effort at building the progressive base outside of a limited number of significantly progressive enclaves and little involvement of white workingclass men in the progressive movement (unlike the situation of a hundred years ago).
The one hopeful sign in progressive politics is Occupy Wall Street, which still is doing politics in local communities all over the country. And providing a framework in which there can be unified action as a coalition in spite of different ideological commitments and tactical judgements.
But the progressive third parties that sprout like flowers in the spring of presidential election years and disappear with the snows of December–they are not helping the progressive movement build its reach any more than the Democratic Party progressives are.
ICYMI, Vermin Supreme, candidate of the New Pony Party has endorsed Revolutionaries for Romney, whose slogan is “It has to get worse before it gets better.” and whose strategy sees the election of Mitt Romney as the quickest route to the revolution.
Please reread the Tea Party Nation email that I’ve posted, paying close attention to the parts that I bolded. Then, take a look at my criticisms of Jill Stein’s website, that I recently posted, here. (comment 132)
It’s the organization and strategizing for long term growth (wherein electoral losses are taken in stride, as just steps along the way to electoral wins) that I’m looking for. Tea Party Nation shows strong signs of such a mindset. Jill Stein’s web site, OTOH, does not rise to this level.
Are you knowledgeable about the democratic and social ecosystem, and history of the rise, through to electoral success, of leftists in either Venezuela, Paraguay, Brazil, or Argentina. (Argentina is perhaps the least interesting, because their country came apart at the seams. I’d like to see deep political reforms in the US, without going through a hellish, Argentina-like disaster.)
Indigenous movements may have played a big role, but that isn’t the whole story. Or is it? Seems very doubtful to me. Can indigenous movements control voting behavior in major cities?
I honestly don’t know the details of “how they did it”. But, surely, there are stories to be told, and retold. And lessons to be learned; or at least democratic experiments to try.
Oliver Stone was in a good position to report on these details, but failed to do so, in “South of the Border”. Have you detailed what Oliver Stone failed to do?
Goodness, no. I am at the beginning of a quest, not an historian. Yes, the stories need to be told, and may be in many other books besides Dangl’s, I dunno, but all would come at it from differing perspectives, surely (like: Horror v. Glory).
But the searching that’s going on now is thrilling me, and we’re in a time of movements and new politics whose futures haven’t been written.
What happens next in the nations in the South will be fascinating.
The Tea Party is a repacakaging of the Repubican Party, it is heavily financed by rich rightwing facist maniacs and it draws heavily upon the already military like organizational structure of the righwing. That is one big reason why the rightwing loves the christian rightso much, and it funds everything from colleges, church programs for youths and young adults, think tanks, etc etc. All seperate entities on paper, but held together through ‘conservative’ principles and ‘traditional’ values, and money….lots of money. The conservative movement is actually a business unto itself.
I think it is helpful to compare the conservative/right wing movement in the U.S. to lefties/progressives.
But let’s keep it real. A substantial amount of the regular folks wrapped up in the ‘conservative movement’ either get paid from it; are in it for religious reasons, and or have illogical motivations such as racism and xenephobia etc, so to expect the left to be able to match that juggernaut of illogical enthusiasm and pay to play is unrealistic.
And I think that, while there is a slight difference between Tea Partiers and Republicans, it must be noted that they draw their ranks from the same group of folks.
There’s different flavors of Tea Party orgs and, of course, individuals.
If you read the Tea Party Nation newsletter, you wouldn’t say that “there is a slight difference between Tea Partiers and Republicans”. In their minds, there’s quite a difference.
If, in their own minds, they thought there was “little difference”, then why would they go to any bother to replace “RINO’s”? Do you think the Tea Party foot soldiers who participated in getting rid of 35-year Senator Dick Lugar, think that Lugar was only “slightly” different, from themselves?
If I accepted your premise, about a “slight” difference between TP and RP, then I would naturally view the TP’s electoral successes as of little to no consequence. However, I reject your premise, for reasons as stated.
That said, there are many left based groups/parties that have some organizational structure, and they send out solicitations for money just like the Tea Party does in the post above, hold demonstrations,petitions, call and letter drives.
And I agree with the author that the left/progressives should prioritize organization.
IMO, the Democratic party has become the big tent graveyard, where progressive/leftie hopes and dreams go to get crushed and to die. It has gone a long way to suck the enthusiasm and the spirit out of a lot of lefties and progressives.
And most folks, for whatever reasons are just too afraid to go third party. I am not, a lot of folks on FDL are not afraid to vote third party, but I believe we are definitely in the minority.
And apathy is always working against us in any case.
We shouldn’t be discouraged or give up, but we should definitely be realistic about what we’re up against.
The Green Party has the practical advantage of ballot access. It is a place to put a vote on the left. Maybe if we build it they will come. Now I mainly need a place to cast a vote against the direction we are taking to a bipartisan bargain to end the New Deal. Now back to my scavenger hunt to find a Democrat willing to utter “labor” on Labor Day.
There IS very little difference between Tea Partiers and Republicans.
The repackaging of Repubs to Tea Partiers was done to reengergize the base. I say again, to reenergize the base. That is important, because the base is the same.
The fact that the Tea Partiers are more extreme only reinforces this to me. The GOP base has always been more extreme in recent times, than their politicians. Now we are seeing candidates that are just as extreme and sometimes just as insane as the base.
And where is this vast difference between them? Traditional Repubs like giving money to rich folks at the expense of social programs; SO does the Tea Party. Traditional Repubs deny the existence of discrimination against minorities and legislate accordingly, so does the Tea Party. Traditional Repubs abhor financial regulation……..so does the Tea Party….in fact, that’s when they showed up, after the financial nonsense in ’08, after a speech by Rick Santeli on CNBC. Repubs are pro religious right and intolerant of other religious beliefs, so are the Tea Partiers.
I’m having a hard time seeing the difference.
The other thing to consider is this, the Tea Party was invented to give life support to the dying Republican Party, it’s financed by the same people for crying out loud. There was no decisive defeat of establisment GOP figures…..there was acceptance, sometimes reluctant, by the powers in the GOP party to pander to the Tea Party, because if they didn’t….they would die.
No such situation exists on the left that I am aware of yet. A lot of disaffected and dissapointed lefties and self described progressives are going to vote for Obama, and the scariest part is that there are many who will vote for Obama not reluctantly, but happily.
The whole conservative movement is the KKK. They just use money instead of bed sheets. KKK use bed sheets, because they are poor racists. They do not have the protection of money.
The tea patry is the republican party. Financed by the same people, voted into office by the same people.
The tea party was created to give life support to the dying GOP. What you see as decisive victories by insurgent conservative Tea Partiers is the result of acceptance, sometimes reluctant, by the powers that be in the GOP….to survive. The tea party was created to energize the base…………the same base that has always been more extreme than their politicians….and the establishment Had to let them in, or die and become irrelevant. As it stands, they are probably going to become irrelevant anyway, but they’ve bought themselves some time.
No such situation exists with lefties and self described progressives in the Democratic party. At least not that I can see. Many folks will reluctantly vote for Obama and other Dems……..and many folks will happily vote for Obama and other Dems.
That is not a problem so much in organization, but in the make up of the electorate.
Right now, enough people are either quite happy with the backstabbing corporatist Dems, or are too afraid of the Republicans to even think outside of that paradigm.
to metmars at #17
The tea patry is the republican party. Financed by the same people, voted into office by the same people.
The tea party was created to give life support to the dying GOP. What you see as decisive victories by insurgent conservative Tea Partiers is the result of acceptance, sometimes reluctant, by the powers that be in the GOP….to survive. The tea party was created to energize the base…………the same base that has always been more extreme than their politicians….and the establishment Had to let them in, or die and become irrelevant. As it stands, they are probably going to become irrelevant anyway, but they’ve bought themselves some time.
No such situation exists with lefties and self described progressives in the Democratic party. At least not that I can see. Many folks will reluctantly vote for Obama and other Dems……..and many folks will happily vote for Obama and other Dems.
That is not a problem so much in organization, but in the make up of the electorate.
Right now, enough people are either quite happy with the backstabbing corporatist Dems, or are too afraid of the Republicans to even think outside of that paradigm.
The left in America has been demoralized and left in a state of learned helplessness. It is a psychological condition most common in abused women, but it is a condition that can exist in any social or political group. It understandable why there were few black in OWS, with 20% of their males incarcerated. They have been dealing with learned helplessness for a lot longer than white liberals, but we white liberals are learning our lessons, with 40 years of conservative control. We feel helpless. With more time, helplessness can be a perminent condition.
Obama is a great deal maker, but he does not understand the power he would gain by actual fighting for us. I would rather see a fight lost, than a deal that gives away the store. With social learning, seeing someone fight the oppression helps cure the insidious mental condition that aflicts the rest of us.
Thank You
Donkeytale’s correct and has yet again displayed why he’s the #1 blogger at FDL.
There’s a lot of internet convolution which cancels out whatever significance we may be otherwise attaining.
See Habermas’ theory of internet as potential, powerful steering device and C. Wright Mills’ theories on institutional conspiracy with circumscribing for further enlightenment.
Several Tea Party organizations existed outside and the Republican orbit until 2009 when several Republican operatives (most notably, Dick Armey) took notice and began to network them, train them, and financially support some of them. The ones who weren’t supported are the ones you hear grousing about the Republican party co-opting the real Tea Party.
This was the position that many progressive had the illusion that the Democratic party was in in 2006-2010. The treatment of progressives in 2009-2010 by the Democratic Party should have shattered that illusion.
The problem is never the electorate. Politicians must work with the electorate they have, not the one they want to have. So do revolutionaries, by the way.
The problem really isn’t organization as that is generally thought of — delegation of roles, planning, marketing, budgeting.
The problem is that progressives don’t engage that electorate politically instead of copycatting the corporatists by marketing to that electorate.
So what does engaging the electorate politically look like?
I know what it looked like when Eugene Debs was doing it effectively, so effectively that Wilson locked him up.
But he didn’t have to deal with distractions and had the advantage of talking to the folks he worked with and the folks they worked with, and so on.
But progressives are afraid to talk to their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers, and even members of their family because of the fear of conflict and because the most common first experience is of being barraged with marketing talking points mindlessly repeated from whatever the last TV or radio talker or email they last absorbed.
And the easiest way to break through that mental wall is to let those folks know that their assumptions about what you believe, what you understand about the world, or who you might consider voting for (and why) are incorrect. But that takes patience and not getting sucked into the filibustering sucker punch.
It is all to easy to write off people who are really acting out what they think will gain them social approval or protective coloration. For in some parts of the country (maybe all), your political beliefs can lose you your job, your friends will shun you, you will get churched, or your kids will get harassed at school. Because the second word in “culture war” is “war”, not “politics”. But war is politics by other means (Clausewitz). And wars always end with political acts. “Victory” is just a drug for the rubes.
By politics at this moment in history, I mean the rhetoric, dialogue and dialectic that shatters the marketed illusions and reconnects to discovering what is really going on.
That is a two-way conversation, not an evangelistic conversion.
Just as a reality-check, Jill Stein (Green Party) is on the ballot in these states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawai’i, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Idaho, Minnesota, and Montana.
And is still seeking access in these states: Alabama, Connecticut, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming. Regardless of who you intend to vote for, if you are in these states help the Greens get ballot access as a means of preventing the disenfranchisement of Green voters.
State Green Parties are organizing write-in campaigns in these states: Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri.
They are apparently shut completely out of Oklahoma. Does anyone know what the situation there is?
Michigan Greens have a slate of Congressional and state office candidates
And the Georgia Greens are running Cynthia McKinney for Congress (GA-04):
That’s all the state and local candidates that I could quickly find on the Green Party web site.
Down here in Texas, I have been telling everybody that I am a Communist. They just look at me like I am weird. If I told them I was a Democrat, I would have to deal with some kind of violent response.
FDL is the only place I can freely express my political views.
“But progressives are afraid to talk to their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers, and even members of their family because of the fear of conflict and because the most common first experience is of being barraged with marketing talking points mindlessly repeated from whatever the last TV or radio talker or email they last absorbed.”
Huh?
I really don’t understand this thread – probably because I’m not an organizer but just a member of the ordinary voting public. Seems to me that issues are not marketing points, and we the public are very tired of being marketed to. Practically speaking, if a candidate we have investigated is on the ballot after having had to overcome hurdles to get there, that’s a plus. If they are talking about issues that are important to us, that’s a plus. And I don’t know about the rest of the American voting public, but I sure talk to my friends and family about this – constantly!
I view negativity with extreme scepticism, even as I know the hill we Greens are climbing is a steep one. First and foremost, it seems to me, the platform is enunciated, the candidates are vetted, and then we try for the first rung of the ladder. And this I know, enthusiasm is a plus!
Oh sure, voting for president isn’t everything. Huh? Who sez? Poor Obama, the cards were stacked against him – not! The presidency is very powerful and he’s been getting exactly what he wants to get. But let’s test it out – let’s put Jill in and see if you are right and I am wrong – what’s not to like? It can’t be any worse than it is now – oh but forget voting, that’s not going to do anything – organize! Well, those folks in the Green camp ARE organized – they had to find 20,000 signatures and verify them just in Pennsylvania while the D’s and R’s only had to find 2,000 each – and they did it, not only there but in 40 other states!
I am getting so sick of being here and just hearing echoes – maybe I will take a sabbatical until after the election. Sound good? Good!
Oklahoma does not permit write-ins. Sadly, the Supreme Court upheld Hawaii’s ban on write-ins in Burdick v. Takushi (1992).
You are more exceptional than you might think, but that is changing. There are a lot of progressives who avoid dealing with certain family members, have lost old and otherwise good friends, and are isolated from their neighbors because of the conservative culture war. Folks without Rush listeners or FoxNews watchers in their personal networks cannot understand the powerful temptation to disengage from these people.
This year the Greens seem more organized to operate as a party than in previous elections. My problem with the Greens is that they have inadequately filled down-ticket slots, which makes it somewhat harder locally to get folks to turn out for the entire party slate. And unless they change their pattern, after the election is over they will pack up and wait until January of 2016 to begin again. There needs to be some of that enthusiasm ramped up over the entire election cycle. Now is the time to start vetting local and state candidates for any 2013 races and Congressional, state, and local candidates for 2014.
Parties gain by their persistence and growth in the base (those who can be counted on election after election). That’s the way it works.
My sense is that more progressives need to do what you personally are doing, politics not marketing. That is why I think using the word “organized” is a bit of a trap for progressives. The bottom line is that enough voters have to show up in enough precincts and pull the lever for progressive candidates to register as a political force. My sense is that will require a progressive candidate taking a state or two in the Presidential election, a region or two in state elections and 30% or better of the vote in local elections.
What Occupy Wall Street is up to is not “organizing” as much as changing the conversation by being able to communicate directly to the public through social media that gets propagated by those who share it. And by establishing a horizontal democracy forum within which to hash out the ideological, moral, strategic, and tactical issues between parts of a broad coalition that runs from Paulites to anarchist communists. And exists outside of the frame of the duopoly parties.
We need to take to the streets and demonstrate, rally, and protest. We need to assemble and organize. We need to unite in one clear voice saying, “we are angry, and we are not going to take this anymore.” We need to demand change now. Another four years will be much too late.
Recommended. Thank you.
Jill Stein’s organization does not open its doors to involvement. Rocky Anderson’s organization does. Rocky is accessible to all. Not Jill Stein.
I wouldn’t call the differences between the Tea Party, and the Republican Party as a whole, “vast”, either.
You should read what they’ve written about Speaker of the House Boehner needing to be replaced, or about Lindsay Graham. They also are, at times, better than Congressional Republicans on certain issues, like extra judicial killing of Americans..
Can you imagine the PDA going after Nancy Pelosi? I can’t. They actually made noises about going after Senator Baucus, but that page on their website has been scrubbed. I think somebody from Democratic Party Central gave them a little talking-to.
As for their financing, over all, it’s not Koch brothers’ financed gravy train you imagine it to be. I’ve chatted with Bill Thompson, who used to have the Tea Party program on Progressive Radio Network, and he told me most Tea Party groups have a lot of trouble getting support. Now, if there’s a Koch-sponsored subset of the thousands of Tea Party groups for which money is no problem, well, that’s interesting, but again, what gives anybody the right to project the situation of a minority onto a majority?
My key point is that the Tea Parties are on a trajectory to increase their relative influence within the Republican Party compared to how it’s actually been run. They have electoral successes that shows they’ve manifested their political muscle, and the email I quote in this diary shows me that they are on a trajectory to grow their influence, further.
You point about the Tea Party being representative of the Republican base has some merit. In Feb. 2010, favorability of the Tea Party amongst Republicans, overall, was 51%. By August, 2011, that had risen to 64%. (Unfavorability also rose, from 10% to 21%).
I don’t know what the current figures are, but even if they’re 64%, that still doesn’t detract from the Tea Parties’ political accomplishments, at the expense of the Republican Party power brokers. Since when do the major political parties, either D or R, exist primarily for their bases? Both D and R parties are corporatist, and regularly vote, in Congress, against the desires of their bases.
Remember how something like 90%+ of the public was against the TARP bailout? That was doubtless opposed by people who would later join the Tea Parties. But how did the Republicans, who actually held office and wielded political power, dispense with that issue?
Progressive Democrats should be so lucky as to get the Democratic Party to respect their desires, more faithfully. And if they did manage to get the Dems in Congress to support some desire of theirs – say, e.g., single payer healthcare – would it be fair to dismiss their accomplishments because, after all, it’s what the Democratic Party base wanted, anyway?
Good thread support Tarheel.
Its a sad state of affairs that everything that progressives wish for already exists. Its found within the MIC.
True, the life blood of the soldier is imperiled. But a meritocracy that provides good pay, education and health care bennys, and dignified retirements are found therein.
Add in all of the non-uniformed in the support, intel networks, armament industry and all the bureaucracies that keep it afloat, with almost unlimited governmental debt support to sustain it. Millions of folks.
Add the McDs, Starbucks, real estate values, local taxes collected, etc. All of this capture mechanism of the MIC drives the rest of our economy. Many more millions of us indirectly benefit. We are Sparta reincarnate.
How do you vote to put yourself out of work? Thats the capture mechanism.
The size, scope, reach of this monster we rail against is the majority. They hardly notice their entrapment. Hell they wonder what’s everyone bitchen about.
IMO, if progressives in the US were both organized and smart, strategically, they would recognize that in certain uber-red areas of the country, running progressive candidates is likely to have zero political effect, for the forseeable future. Whether they run as Greens, Democrats, or what have you.
What to do, in such places? ‘Crying into yer beer’ is always an option, just not a helpful one. What they could do – but most assuredly won’t – is run as ‘thorn in the side’ Republicans. See my diary Wanted: Republicans who plan to sell off CA and NY, to pay the national debt
Progressives and the left tend to suffer politically because they are not driven exclusively by hatred of most of their countrymen, as those on the right have always been.
Jill Stein uses the permanent GPUS website in Wisconsin. Experts at good websites have not taken over that part of the campaign. The voter interest is far beyond the Party’s capacity to manage it in any way.
I recognize lots of shortcomings in organizing things and public-connectibility. I think there’s a serious lack of personnel that may not be addressable at this point in the campaign.
I’ve been working for her Presidential campaign since a year before she announced she was running. But I have to do it independently. There (apparently) is/are not enough money/personnel to do what would be optimal. So the GrassRoots tries.
Look, I agree with many of your points, but I still do not think that more than a loose comparison can be drawn between conservatives in any of their manifestations and progressives/lefties.
The motivations are completely divergent, particularly blind religous zealotry and intolerance as well as a substantial amount of racism and bigotry are not the go to energizers for progressives that they are for conservatives.
As to financing, I never mentioned or even thought of the Koch brothers. I was more refering to monies available throughout the entire conservative structure, which is very much like a military organization. It is both a universe and a business unto itself. Just one example is ALEC. I believe many Tea Party candidates are chums with ALEC, there is good money in buddying up with them, and regular Repubs serve them as well as Tea Party Repubs.
The Tea Party has had success, which I noted above. However, I think you underestimate the fact that the powerbrokers of the GOP have accepted and pandered to these demands out of fear of losing relevancy, and nothing more, they have intentionally doubled down on the most fanatical and extreme positions….simply out of survival. I think this is most clearly the case when you considernthe long term damage they are willing to endure simply to remain relevant right now.
Tea Partiers may not have wanted TARP…but they certainly did not and do not want any financial regulation or regulation of any kind that would have gone towards preventing the massive securities frauds and preposteroulsy dangerous leveraging and reckless behavior of the financial sector that caused the mess in the first place. They want to ‘cut the deficit’ but do not want cuts to SSC, Medicare and Medicaid…..they want to cut Welfare and other social safety net programs…just not the ones they use, because they deserve it.
IOW, these people are irrational, easily manipulated, loud, and motivated by the most basest of emotions and ‘beliefs’. And you would be surprised how much having a black man in the Whitehouse motivated these folks to get out into the street. Add a little bit of astroturf money and you have what I believe the Tea Party to be, Republicans on steroids.
You will not find that level of motivation in the ranks of the lefties/progressives because of the makeup of the folks who embody it.
Also as I said before, I do not see the Dems in any where near this situation where they are in fear for their very survival.
And until that situation arises, there is litte chance for progressives or lefties to be in a position to make similar demands of the Democratic Party, because most of these folks are still supporting and voting for the Democratic Party. And since the Democratic party’s behavior as a whole has been to move further right (DLC) and to marginalize more progressive candidates, I don’t think interparty challenges of a progressive nature will have the same effect.
Just my two cents.
Paging TwoWolf! Paging DarkBlack!
Uh, the president of Paraguay was recently overthrown in a US backed right-wing coup.
Well, OK, consider me embarrassed and educated. However, the question of how the leftists assumed power in Paraguay, to begin with, remains. We still have a democracy here, though seriously dysfunctional, so the question is highly relevant – and basically ignored in the corners of the progressive blogosphere that I’m familiar with.
Bravo sir..Bravo ! I wish you would make this into a diary unto itself. This needs to be said over and over and you are much better at it than I.
Done.
The silence in response to my comments in this thread is deafening and extremely cheering.
I have noted both you and Tarheel recently picking up on and expanding upon previous comments and diaries of mine very intelligently and more diplomatically, where I’m confrontationally gonzo and impolite. I appreciate both of you very much for doing so.
I’m writing not for those in this 10-15 strong FDL third party
circle jerkbut for those whose minds are still open to uhmm, consider variable ideas.BTW, I disavow the comment upthread by Socrates. He’s a friend from another blog, a highly intelligent but lazy social theorist but he’s coming off here like an empty headed sock puppet. Socrates, Dude, explain wtf you mean about Mills or at least link to him, so others can learn. Stop being a half-assed elitist. As if anyone cares how learned you are about social theory.
Show it.