Democrats: Look What Two Parties By And For The Rich Got Us.
Hey DNC and State Party Chairs: Look at our reality. We’ve got the Presidency for two more years; the Repugnant party has both houses and the Supreme Court. What’s more, they’ve got 68 out of 98 partisan state legislatures and 31 governorships. We, the party “of the people” came up just a bit short but your reaction seems just a bit muted given these dire circumstances.
And this is not a short term hiccup. Look at the gerrymandering they’ve already accomplished at the state and federal office levels. And their think tanks, cranking out really people-destructive policies for the care and feeding of Repugnant legislators. And their well oiled money machines, fueled by Citizens United and the Supremes. Theirs is a highly strategic plan to put all the power in the hands of the super wealthy, including corporate America.
Yea, I’m sounding a bit pessimistic but where is the call for dramatic change with how we run this party and setting a whole new course for a Democratic Party future? There is but a whimper from our Dem leadership and apparently total boredom at the grassroots. They seem to be talking about tweaks and minor adjustments, not radical reform and change. Is this what you call irrelevance? Sure looks like we are to the body politic.
Bipartisanship is merely a defensive tactic to forestall total annihilation, grab some crumbs and grovel for mercy. What we need to be is an opposition party with big ideas and a big message machine. Loud and proud.
The one vehicle the Repugnant party uses very effectively and we have yet to embrace and master is marketing. No, marketing is not advertising. Marketing is management of the exchange process. The currency we have to exchange with the body politic, or at least the roughly half who are wired liberal are big, bold ideas to benefit us all and the mechanism to sell those ideas….to get them exchanged to the populace. The ideas can be very specific and detailed, lists of components if you will. But framed in a way that hits emotional hot buttons and triggers the exchange.
What we need is a staff and consultant house cleaning to shake up the foundation. And a new DNC membership which sees change and big ideas as their mission and sees themselves as the Party sales force. Right now the DNC is comprised of those seeking and granted awards for being loyal troopers. The DNC should be comprised of firebrand doers and organizers. Aggressive, loud and yes, sometimes intemperate. The leadership should be of that mold as well. Screw calm. We’re already too calm.
Candidates and office holders, such as we’ve got them now, of the same mold I’ve described. Doers, not patronage seekers. This party has run on patronage. Yes, it must be representative of the base, but its got way to many leaders, even at the grassroots, who are furniture because they look good. Looking good and looking representative isn’t enough. It’s going to take activists and doers in every representative category. Scrap the furniture and replace it with functioning change agents who are in the main out there in movement politics, not party politics. A party that can and will lead a populist uprising.
We do not need two parties serving the interests of the rich. One, the Repugnants, are doing quite well at that thank you. We need a party that understands the systemic problems denying the American Dream. An economy not built to reward hard work and innovation, a taxation system which spreads the wealth while not harming the successful, a political system owned by a participating, grassroots electorate, not private interest lobbies and a reinvigorated sense of community that makes helping those needing help an imperative and duty.
The ideas to accomplish this already exist. They don’t need invention. They need mining, embracing and selling to the desperate people who have been deluded by the Repugnants into believing they serve those desperate people. One place I’d look for those ideas is California. Look at the turnaround out there. Look at a Democratic Party there that helped get it done and leadership it cultivated to implement the turnaround.
We need a populist uprising. No, not one that bashes corporations. One that recognizes that properly regulated, they can and will do good stuff. But one that demands that they, the people run political system, not the commercial sector.
Democratic Party, rise up.
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Nothing is going to change, its like “choosing” between Comcast and Verizon or Time Warner and nothing. If you sit out they tell you how its your fault for not voting and/or just go vote for this guy/gal, the other side is worse.
End of the day they sill win. They get the money they exploit regular monthly and annual donations while keeping larger investors close and move forward. Why would they care about voters or governing? There is no point. Elected officials are rewarded by corporate actors and their party overlords who are even more in bed with them.
And for the few party faithful that remain, well the other side is obstructing yet again so don’t blame us for lack of progress!!
I share that pessimism. Big money is now an integral party of Democratic Party politics. The party can no more rise up against big money, than a I could “rise up” against breathing.
Until recently I thought hat the Democratic Party was the only institution in the country that had the history and the infrastructure to fight and hopefully correct some of the excesses of corporatism. That is hooey.
The progressive history is too ancient to be of help, and the infrastructure has long since been placed into the service of the corporatist.
So, jason, a serious question: given that I agree with what you just said, and that I proved to even my stubborn satisfaction that there isn’t any way to do anything via a third part mechanism, and that as a historian I’m convinced the two parties won’t go back to having two effective (liberal and conservative) wings each …
WTF next for people–progressives or otherwise–who want to fight back against corporate oligarchies?
There’s an old SF story by Jack Williamson called “With Folded Hands,” about what you do when there’s nothing left to do but give up …
Creative market anarchists and occupiers would tell us that now’s the time for direct action, but the events of the past 3-4 years make it clear that direct action will be seen as a homeland security threat …
So what to do? Sit back and watch it all turn to shit?
Or at the very least start a major opt-out movement to deny them all legitimacy, like having a 40% voter turnout drop to 10%? “Citizenship requires you not to vote in rigged elections?” I seriously don’t know where anybody goes from here.
There are several options. One that will never work (for the same reason that third parties dont work) is to just not vote. You’d need everyone to do it. Just back out, and say we aren’t playing the game. Let entire congressional districts go with zero votes, overwhelm the courts. It will never happen but one can dream….
Two options:
Realistically the only “hope” is for folks to run for office, no matter how low, and change it from within. This is incredibly difficult, obviously and would require piles of dumb luck both before and after people a re elected but it is a path.
Second, you can take back party leadership from the state parties, give it to real people. If folks put the amount of effort they put into causes into changing the party itself, it would do a world of damage. Imagine the time and effort that goes into an issue group, like passing gun reform in WA state this past election or the dozens of states that have voted to decrease the strictness of drug laws, pass marriage equality and increase the minimum wage on state ballots. This could be done to take over state and local parties but would require an inordinate amount of dedication and resources (not just money). It would require a long term plan. However, even well funded efforts have been thwarted in recent years in a number of large states.
The best possible option (perhaps) is for more Bloomberg style candidates who are too rich to give a @)Q%* running for office. They aren’t tied to corporate donors or party powers. Of course folks like this have even greater corporate ties than politicians…they are the “corporations” we hate.
Mike
Option 1 takes time that I don’t really believe the country has.
Option 2 is what both Ron Paul on the right and Howard Dean on the left more or less tried to do. That’s why they’re both in charge of their parties and we’re looking at a Rand Paul-Elizabeth Warren context in 2016 (which I don’t believe for a minute we’re going to see).
Option 3? You’re kidding, right?
I don’t know Steve. Losing faith in my beloved Democratic Party is sincerely tough for me. Right now I can’t think clearly about what’s next. My home has been bombed flat by friendly fire. I’m a political refugee. I’m not trying to belittle the experience of people who’s have been bomb out of their homes, but that is where my head is.
Steve,
Option 1: Agreed, its super long game, and will take far too long.
Option 2: Dean never achieved any of this though and Rand Paul has done more for what we currently see than his father. He has been making metric-focused, smart decisions at every political/campaign level for several years now. Ted Cruz, Rubio, Paul were all running tests (much like Omalley on our side) in key precincts both leading up to Eday 2014 and at a number of special elections earlier in the year and in late 2013. Pauls are done correctly, using those pesky things like math and science and he has smart operatives running his campaign. This is not what we have seen before.
Dean started DFA but it has been and any remnants always will be too grassroots. The results have been what you would expect when there is little to no strategic thought or top down presence and the bulk of your membership are unfocused liberals.
Option 3. Not saying its what I want, just that its a potential solution.
Here’s one large state where the party “takover” or reform approach actually started working. In 2001 I was the co-creator of a party caucus (free formed, not sanctioned by but recognized by the Texas Dem. party) called the Progressive Populist Caucus. We grew fast, forming local chapters (no dues) in 6 major urban areas and with a centralized state board and elected officers. As its Chair for the first five years, we started with a voted on strategic plan….whose only objective was party reform. The reforms were very specific in the plan.
By year two we had achieved a majority of the voting State Dem. Exec. Committee. Some were “primaried” in, some converted. We deposed a state chair and became confidants to her replacement. We had a seat at the table. We made some gains with Dems. in the state leg. and many electeds came to our meetings…some wary as we were very strident but came along with our agenda.
Hardest part….for my 5 year tenure…..keeping people focused on the hard work…some of it boring…rules meetings, confronting friends and those who had not come along yet…the latter making it very hard. But we stayed with it.
Other hard part, getting dreamy liberals to understand how you make deals and trade to negotiate to win……some just never got it.
Final death knell…..I turned over the reins after utter exhaustion to a new great team….except, they were of the more typical progressive/Austin liberal bent most interested in “national issues”………and pretty quickly became bored with or exhausted by the continual jousting with party estab. types….and drifted the organization off into la la land of national issues, mostly social issues, less emphasis on our populist economic themes. Conclusion, it died after a couple of years in their hands. Huge lesson there for me, I picked the wrong successors. Good people, but not willing/able to stick with the agenda. Focus, focus and more focus is what is needed. The TDP leadership is still very liberal; if you visit the platform, it reflects that new reality down there. But the populist fire is pretty well gone. I could write a book…might well do that. But I have a pretty good handle on how it can work successfully.
If I wasn’t a passivist, I would advocate violence
The conservative movement historically pushed Republicans to the right by finding and supporting primary candidates at the local level, down to the school boards. Democrats could do the same for moving the party left. But it wasn’t so long ago that the suggestion of primarying incumbent Democrats was met with hurled pies and scornful accusations of “purist” right here in these pages. Apparently we fear primaries because Democratic majorities are fragile and we are all too afraid of losing what we have.
It seems there should be a tipping point at which the poeple who vote for corporate despots figure out its working against them but with so many hate driven people, we may never recover