It is time for Progressives and Liberals to stop pretending that the Democrats represent them

Filed in National by on November 3, 2014

I summarized Bill Curry’s piece in Salon in the headline above. But go ahead and read the whole thing. Or don’t. See if I care. Send the DNC or Chris Coons more money because THE GOP IS OUT OF TOUCH! or STAKES HAVE NEVER BEEN HIGHER!, or some other hysterical bullshit.


Democrats are going to lose the Senate. If progressives get a wake-up call, it’ll be the best thing for the party

….On Tuesday I’ll stand at the polls as I do every year and say that if Democrats win, people’s lives will be better.

Each year it’s a harder case to make, even to other Democrats. Each year the middle class grows smaller, the democracy grows more corrupt and the chance of stopping global warming in time to save ourselves or our planet grows dimmer. You can’t run forever on the slogan “Die Slower! Vote Democratic!” Time’s running out on the democracy and the middle class, just as it is on global warming.

This election has been an insult to democracy. The $4 billion spent on it has tightened the grip of the powerful without moving the needle on a single issue. Its ceaseless squalor has startled a public that thought politics hit rock bottom in the last election. The explosion of Super PAC and 527 “dark money” is one cause of it, but it only strengthened what is by now a 40-year trend.

Rail all you like against the Supreme Court or the Republicans. It isn’t just them. If you ever gave money to a Democrat you get the emails that read like pleas from phishing “friends” robbed in Majorca who need only your bank routing number to get home: “Bill, it’s seconds till our filing deadline. Our extreme Tea Party opponent has Congressman Bob locked in a basement. They’ve shot Fido. So much is at stake. Please send…”

Democrats call the election historic but can’t say why. It’s hard to enlist people to an agenda you can’t articulate, or make them care who runs a government that has stopped working. Voters see politics as a cesspool and Congress as a sideshow. So do progressives, yet they act as if the next Democrat in line will get us where we need to go. Here’s some really good news: the merry-go-round on which they’re trapped can’t run without them. Not only can they get off, but if they do, it stops for good.

Regardless of how Democrats do on Tuesday, many progressives will rush to hop on another horse. Someone should stop them. The time has come for progressives to hit the pause button on electoral politics, to take some time to reexamine their agenda, rethink their strategy and recognize their power. Some thoughts for them to ponder if they do:

Focus First on Policy

Policy precedes message. First, figure out what you think, then how to tell people about it. By conflating these two sequential steps, or skipping the first altogether, Democrats have come to the place in which they find themselves: clueless, rudderless, unable to win an argument even with a Republican Party being piloted by angry juveniles.

In their years spent cohabiting with Democrats, progressives picked up many of their bad habits. One is an obsession with storytelling. Obama persists in believing that if only he were better at it, all his troubles would be over. But every vision needs a blueprint. Democrats used to get their blueprints from progressives. That was before progressives joined them in their endless hunt for the perfect savior and the perfect slogan.

This rule implies another: No more impulse shopping. Sad to say, it’s the key lesson of the Obama experience. In our political ecosystem it’s the progressives’ role to hold Democrats to account. Engrossed as they are in picking winners, they do it poorly. They should stop acting like political consultants, which means no more tactical voting. I’ve a hunch John Kerry won those late 2004 primaries because liberals who didn’t like him looked at his résumé, his hair and his lantern jaw and thought someone else would. When the marketplace of ideas is consumed by second guessing, it becomes, like the stock market, just another casino.

When progressives do their homework they’ll know their bottom lines. Only then will they be able again to hold politicians’ feet to the fire. When Obama quietly dumped the public option it should have been a deal breaker. When he decided in his first term to maintain radio silence on global warming, it too should have been a deal breaker. Instead, progressives let political consultants lecture them on the politics of the possible, as if oblivious to the stark truth that nearly all Obama’s deepest wounds were self-inflicted in the name of pragmatism.

There’s work to do and choices to make. Or we can wait for policy scraps like dogs at a kitchen door. We yearn for a president to tell us the truth about current global chaos: that our security doctrines are defunct, that militarism and unilateralism can’t save us and that our safety lies in multilateral conflict resolution and the rule of law. It means reining in drone strikes, submitting with everyone else to international courts and fixing the U.N. Late in his life Ronald Reagan embraced elements of that agenda. There’s no reason Obama can’t, but he won’t if we won’t.

Talk to America

Quakers rightly admonish us to speak truth to power. The problem is power’s a little hard of hearing. It takes many voices speaking in unison just to get its attention. To enlist those voices progressives must talk to America with clarity, specificity and conviction. This requires them not only to clarify their thinking but to withdraw from the many fruitless discussions in which they are now engaged.

First on that list is the feud with Fox News. It gets harder every day for me to listen to MSNBC. As when reading those Democratic emails, I too often feel handled; “Tell me, Congressman, doesn’t this prove just how out of touch Republicans are with average people?” There’s no one in the public arena I admire more than Rachel Maddow. But many nights I want to shout that there’s no one left to persuade of Republican insanity whose vote we don’t already have. People long for adult conversation about the real problems in their lives. If we did our best to ignore Fox and other Republican propaganda we could give them one.

Another conversation progressives should quit is the one in which they’re always defending Obama. It’s hard for them. One reason is the degree to which progressives have become partisans. Another’s the vicious nature of the attacks made on him which elicit a reflex response of protect and defend. Liberal pundits call on them to defend Obamacare and Obama in this election. It’s bad advice. Better to tell the millions of small business owners and self-employed who were losers under Obamacare that we know it and have a plan to fix it.

Progressives should in fact deepen their critique of Obama, but that will be even harder. Democratic elites have them snowed into thinking it’s never the right time for criticism. You can’t do it in an election year, or just before one (the cycle starts so early now) or just after, (Give us a chance) which leaves a brief window in odd-numbered years running roughly from Groundhog’s to Saint Swithin’s Day, unless you count local elections, in which case there’s never a time.

Progressives who shielded Obama from criticism did him no favors. Entering the post Obama Age—it would be premature to say it if he himself didn’t seem halfway there—it’s still a conversation we need to have. If we don’t know what went wrong we won’t know what to fix. Many say it was only the brokenness of the system that kept him from doing all they’d hoped for. My own research suggests that his policy choices were often other than they seemed. It’s a question worth asking: What did the president want and when did he want it?

Another bad habit you can pick up from politicians is rationalization. Watch for it this week. Even if they pull off a Houdini-like escape and keep the Senate, Democrats will lose seats in both houses to the scariest, craziest Republicans ever seen. Democratic analysts will cite the sixth year election and the luck of the draw and remind us that Republicans are on the wrong side of history and demography so we can all just sit back, relax and wait for the good times to roll. Progressives must hold themselves more accountable, recognize their own flaws and not fear change.

Build a New Movement

Through most of its history America has been blessed with strong, progressive reform movements: independent, largely nonpartisan and truly democratic. In the 1980s they entered partisan politics and evolved into far more bureaucratic institutions. A question for progressives is whether they can reclaim their strength, independence and grassroots identity while remaining in politics, a pursuit they’re unlikely to forsake.

Assuming they answer yes, a second question is whether they should continue to align with the Democratic Party, as most now do, or engage as many do in third-party politics. The number of activists involved in third-party politics is small, but so is the total number of activists. There can never be unanimity on this point but there can be movement.

One questions whether the Democratic Party can be reformed. It would be some feat to educate or depose so many career politicians in thrall to moneyed interests. But the Tea Party proved you can work within a party and be fiercely independent. Republican leaders fell. Why not Democrats? In some ways the party’s structure—its committees and nominating processes—is like a factory abandoned by its owners. Its workers could buy it cheap; maybe get it back on its feet. Of course it isn’t actually for sale; they’d have to fight for it.

My guess is if you can’t take over the Democratic Party you can’t take over the country, so I’d give it a try. But it need not be the primary task of progressives whose focus must be on developing policy and a grassroots base to advance it. One organization fitted to the task is 350.org, the group founded by environmentalist Bill McKibben. In September its work was on public display.

In the midst of the “historic” midterms a Woodstock-sized chunk of the Democratic base headed off to New York City for the People’s Climate March. Politicians weren’t allowed to speak. It had to be the first time ever that more than 300,000 people got together without anyone giving a speech. For a micro-fraction of the wad blown on the elections, sponsors did what no party did all year–raise awareness of an urgent and vital issue.

Organizer Jamie Henn thanked the big environmental groups for helping out, but this was the work of grassroots activists. Like the marches of old–the ’82 Nuclear Freeze March, the ’63 March on Washington–it was a gathering of communities, people who came on buses filled with friends. Knowing politicians count heads even better than they do money, they chose to speak by their mere presence and numbers: a silent tableau of a new and better politics.

About the Author ()

Jason330 is a deep cover double agent working for the GOP. Don't tell anybody.

Comments (20)

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  1. Jason330 says:

    Shorter Joe Biden: We are going to keep the Senate, but if we don’t it is okay because Republicans will come to their sense.

    So…Biden is just BS-ing or he really is the idiot that Republicans make him out to be.

    “I don’t agree with the oddsmakers,” Biden told CNN. “I predict we’re gonna…keep the Senate.”

    But if Republicans do win control of the chamber, Biden said the Obama administration’s priorities won’t change.

    “I don’t think it would change anything, in terms of what we’re about,” Biden also said to CNN. “We know what we have to get done the last two years. And —quite frankly— going into 2016, the Republicans have to make a decision whether they’re in control or not in control. Are they gonna begin to allow things to happen? Or are they gonna continue to be obstructionists? And I think they’re gonna choose to get things done.”

  2. Delaware Dem says:

    Here is the thing: What is the alternative? Vote third party and allow the GOP to control everything? And hope that the idiots that are the swing voter recognize how extreme and evil the GOP is?

    Fuck.

    That.

    You can’t win the game if you are not in it. Fight for the party you want. Don’t unconditionally surrender it to Carper and the corporates. Which is precisely what you are doing. So here is a hearty screw you to abandoning the cause.

  3. Jason330 says:

    Agreed. However, every Dem office holder must feel some measure of pain otherwise nothing will change.

    I am in favor of Dems winning by 5% instead of 10% and winning by 1% instead of 5%. We’ll have to thread the needle and maybe lose a couple, but the the upside is great.

  4. liberalgeek says:

    I think the key here is a real takeover of the Democratic party. I assume that this means that Jason and others would have to join the party on their terms and take leadership, lend endorsement and put up real alternative candidates. I think that goal is achievable. But it requires more work than showing up for a rally every 14 years.

    Honestly, a relatively organized effort to do so in Delaware could easily be accomplished in the next 2 years with just another 100 volunteers and smart leadership. Half of the people that participate in the Democratic party in some official manner are already progressives that probably just need critical mass and a catalyst.

  5. Geezer says:

    You know what? We shouldn’t have to work that hard just so the most intelligent policies win out. Lecture folks all you want; as long as Democrats keep giving them Coons, Carney and Carper, people will have to choose between right-wing lunacy and centrist mush.

    Ultimately, you realize, Jason doesn’t need this crap. He doesn’t need to vote Democrat(ic) for his own benefit. After a while you give up on trying to get unwilling children to take their medicine when they aren’t your own children.

    Make no mistake: Most Democratic office holders are not there for society, but for themselves. The choice is only between how much the elected person will steal.

  6. mouse says:

    Good point

  7. Terry says:

    Ain’t gonna happen.

    Remember, the Tea Party started a as grass-root Conservative movement that was against the “status-quo” GOP party – didn’t take long for that movement to be taken over by the insiders to the point that the grass-roots ideology was bastardized for something completely different.

    Additionally, the Occupy movement was taken over by the media and entertainment elite and lost it’s purpose before it ever had to opportunity to establish a meaningful one.

    At the end of the day, no Party represents the people, they only represent themselves. You’re only useful to them on election day and how much you’re willing to contribute to their party and/or campaign.

  8. Geezer says:

    Occupy wasn’t taken over by the media. It was sabotaged by the police, who flooded the encampments with the homeless and mentally ill.

  9. Jason330 says:

    I agree with Geezer. My job is to demand more from the people who have picked a career in politics. Their failure doesn’t force a career in politics on me.

  10. SussexAnon says:

    The tea party was bought by the GOP. They first tea party rallies INCLUDED, “throw the bankers in jail” signs and outrage. After they were bought, notice the silence on that issue.

    The Occupy movement refused to be bought and couldn’t (or wouldn’t) get organized and coagulate around a simple 3 or 4 point message. What happened? Without your own message, a message will be created. “dirty hippies, get out of my park and get a job” is what the message became.

    Anyone who has worked in either party will know that there are the volunteer activists, party structure, then the “other” party structure.The one in the back room that you can’t attend. The money people that candidates have to suck up to. CCC, Markell, etc. have all reached the upper tier of Delaware politics and no longer need input from the plebes and commoners of the party/activists. They are owned by the elites now. And both parties will throw meat to the masses about gay marriage or hating the poor or robbing social security, while maintaining the real goal, keeping the power brokers rich and powerful and getting richer and consolidating power. The Republicans might be more overt about it, but you don’t see any of our DC elite representing Delaware taking a vow of poverty, sending a banker to jail or creating meaningful credit card/student loan reform now do you?

  11. Geezer says:

    The Occupy movement, unlike the Tea Party movement, was infiltrated by government forces almost immediately. That’s how the cops knew where to attack them. Because they allowed everyone to participate, the cops sent in people who weren’t interested in the movement at all, but drew the sympathy of the occupiers.

  12. Terry says:

    Exactly my point. A grass-roots movement, no matter which side of the political spectrum, that attempts to disrupt the status-quo has no chance. There is way to much money being filtered into both parties (by the same people) to allow any kind of takeover, whether internal or external.

  13. Jason330 says:

    True dat

  14. SussexAnon says:

    Yeah, it was all because of police infiltration. Its not because of a lack of a clear message, organization, list of demands or agenda on how to get whatever they wanted done. The local occupy movement here told me point blank they weren’t going to play ball with any parties or make lists of demands. That it was going to be a populist uprising where everyone would see the truth plain as day. And that was from one of the organizers of a rally. We see how well that worked out. Thinking like that INVITES people to step up and say crazy shit.

    Not every hippy camping out in the public park saying something stupid and discrediting the movement was a gov’t informant or crazy homeless person delivered there.

  15. liberalgeek says:

    I guess the plan is to win hearts and minds with an air war. Sounds reasonable.

    If you are clamoring for the Democratic Party to move to the left, but are unwilling to actively participate in politics outside of election day, you will be left with exactly what you already have.

    The only reason that there are any progressive voices around here is due to the Dean campaign. The beauty in his campaign was the ability to get people involved in the campaign. There were meetups, blogs were started (this one included) and people stepped up to join committees and start organizations (like PDD).

    A decade has passed since then. Some of us are still involved, some have settled in for armchair bitching and some have dropped out of politics altogether. But if you don’t think that the Howard Dean message was “Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work”, you weren’t paying attention.

  16. Dorian Gray says:

    The reason a grass roots movement has no chance is because most people think like Del Dem and Progressive Pop. The conventional wisdom is a vote for a Green or a Socialist will just be a de facto vote for a GOP candidate. While that’s true tomorrow and the next day and the day after that it very well may not be true say 10 years from now.

    If you’re shitting your pants about the big GOP gains tomorrow I don’t know what to tell you other than try to think beyond a week’s time. No Dem candidate is ever going to listen until you prove your vote isn’t a foregone conclusion.

    If you want to go vote for some corporate center Democrat that’s your right, but just understand that this is the very reason shit like Occupy doesn’t work in the end. Because liberals and socialists in this country don’t have the guts to stand out there in the street with the radicals and activists.

  17. Dorian Gray says:

    @LGeek… This…

    “If you are clamoring for the Democratic Party to move to the left, but are unwilling to actively participate in politics outside of election day, you will be left with exactly what you already have.”

    …is exactly correct. Sorry I didn’t see it before I was finished writing my bit.

    Everyone is focused on VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. That’s basically irrelevant because by the time you get in the booth your choices are a handful of turds. Hence you have to hold your nose and choke down the least revolting shit sandwich on offer.

    Wow, I’m so proud of our democracy…

  18. Tom Kline says:

    Why doesn’t Biden consult Cory Booker like Coons did?

  19. stan merriman says:

    I agree, PDD can be the vehicle to literally take the Party offices, Chair, Exec. Committee et al. It would require refocusing its mission, organizing to recruit party office candidates, sort out those already in office who are progressive and creating some localized chapters as well will deepen the bench for not only party offices, but recruiting for elected offices.
    Then, with control of a revamped progressive party, we can do endorsements that have real clout, not from the fringes and can primary miscreants and give alot of shit to incumbents who are furniture. It can be done in two years with skilled organizers and some vision.

  20. John says:

    Yes, it will be painful at first – but the only way for real change is to get the people who don’t agree with you out. A protest vote is good for progressives as well as so-called “tea-partiers”. If the guy you have doesn’t stand with you – GET HIM OUT.