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So You Want To Form A New Party? Hmmm, Come With Me.

by: Something The Dog Said

Sat Aug 29, 2009 at 14:35:58 PDT        
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From time to time over the last few years there have been some of our fellow Progressives/Liberals who despair of the Democratic Party getting its act together and thus out of anger or frustration float the idea of abandoning the Democratic Party and forming a new one to the left of the Democrats. The Dog is not in favor of this, but he thinks he has not been very clear in why it is a bad idea. First off if you want to bail on the Democratic Party, don't wait! You have a hell of a lot of work to do in order to get an agenda passed so why are you hanging around here? In the spirit of being helpful, the Dog would like to offer a bit of a run down in what it will take to get your new party up and running.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
Something The Dog Said :: So You Want To Form A New Party? Hmmm, Come With Me.

Most of the issues the blogasphere focuses on are national level issues and this is where many of the folks the Dog sees floating the new party idea have the most heart burn. In order to influence national policy, you will need a party that is national level too. So while most of this organization takes place at the local or county level, to get to the changes desired there will need to be a roll up to a national party.

Getting Started:

So, lets get started! First off you will have to found your party. The laws on this are going to vary from State to State, but you will have to find enough people in at least one State to get things rolling. The best way to do this is to have a convention, as you will have to create the By Laws for everything your party will do internally. Will you Caucus or will you do Primaries? What officers do you need for your Party? You will have to have a Chairman, a Treasurer, a Secretary and a Vice Chair at the very least. Who is qualified to hold these offices? What are their responsibilities? How long are their terms office? Can they run again? How many times? Who gets to vote? How is the vote held? What does your party stand for? What are the rules for joining? What are the disciplinary methods? What is your platform right now?

These are all questions you will have to answer before you can really say you have launched your Party. They are not all of them, but they are good sample.

Candidate Recruitment:

So, now you have your shiny new Party! Congratulations! Now it is time to find some folks to run for office. This is going to be hard, as even established Party's' have trouble recruiting people to run. Since you are leaving the Democratic Party, you are not very likely to have any experienced folks to run. This is not a complete disaster, everyone who would serve has to have their first campaign, right?

What makes a good candidate? Well you want someone who is going to follow the party platform right? They will be someone who is more to the left of the Democrats as this is the primary reason to form this new party, right?

The Dog thinks there is going to be a real problem finding quality candidates, at least at first, since most of the time your new party is going to lose until it really gets established. It is really hard to find someone who is going to step up to get their ass kicked in an election, but there are true believers every where, so there should be a few who will take one for the team of this new Party.

Getting On the Ballot:

Now you have your candidates, you are ready to try to get in front of the people of your State and make the case about how electing them will be better than a Democrat! But there is going to be a real problem now. Getting on the ballot is really hard in many States. Here are a few facts you should keep in mind as you start your Party:

1) Some States require really high filing fees. The State of Florida requires fee of 7% of the annual salary of the office you are filing for. This means for a US Representative campaign the filing fee is upwards of $9,000. You will need these fees for every office you want to run for.

2) There are also the signature requirements to get on ballots. The State of Georgia has requirement of 5% of the population, not the registered voters for a third party to get on the ballot. As of the last census this makes the requirement for your new party to get on a State wide ballot (Representative, Senator, Governor, Sec State, AG, etc) upwards of 484,000 legal signatures. It is expensive and time consuming to gather signatures, so you better be ready.

3) One more from Florida - In addition to the high fee you will have to collect more than 196,000 signatures to get on the State wide ballot. If that does not seem to bad, you need to know the following fact: No third party candidate has ever completed a signature requirement over 135,000 anywhere in the US.

These are few of the worst examples, but even in places where the laws are more lenient there are fees and signature requirements which you will have to meet. It looks like you are going to need a lot of Staff to be successful.


Recruiting Staff:

What the Dog means by staff is the pro's the folks who do the organizing work for a living and are the ones who keep your army of volunteers going in the right direction. These are the folks who have the specialized skills to keep the campaign on track (including the Candidate). To raise the money, to define the field strategy which not only targets the voters but gets them to the polls as well, they are the ones who keep track of every penny since rising or spending money improperly can send your candidate and Treasurer to jail.

This is going to be another really tough thing. The pros are all working with the existing party's. The ones who are going to be simpatico with your goals are mostly going to be from the Democratic Party. There will be some who are feed up like you, but they still have to make a living, so they are not going to be real excited about running candidates against the party where they do most of their work.

Still there will be the young hot shots who will throw in with you, in order to prove something. Some of them may even be in the top tier of skill sets, but finding them in all the places you need them to be a national party is going to be hard. You are going to have pay well and be ready to grow a lot of your own.

Which brings us to fund raising.

Funding the Party:

This is another trouble spot for a new party. This is doubly true for a new party on the Left. There are lots of left leaning groups who will support your platform goals, once you get them established. After all you want to be more than left of center in this new party. But the thing is they will want to support a party and candidates who are going to get elected and will be able to do something with their support. The Trial Lawyers and the Labor Movement have to able to show their members something for their efforts.

Your new party is going to have unknown candidates, inexperienced staff and a hard time getting on the ballot, so there is going to be hell of a hard sell to get them to throw some ducats your way. It seems likely you are going to be really short of dough. Maybe you should look elsewhere.

Getting a billionaire or two to really back you might get this new party off the ground pretty good. The downside of this route is billionaires, even more than interest groups are going to want a lot of say in what they give money too. They are used to pulling the strings with their funding, so this has it's problems too.

There are always your party members, though! They will support you in some level or other. However, it takes a hell of a lot of small donors to get to the millions you are going to need to raise. The other issue is the Democratic party is going to be asking many of them for these dollars too.

Being National:

Let's assume you get this all together in one State and have some good success (the Dog is willing to be an optimist as much as the next hound), now the challenge is going national. Let's look at some numbers.

There are 3,140 Counties in the United States. In order to be a national party which elects national office holders you will have to have County and State level elected officials. To do this you have to have County Party's. Lets assume you don't have to have a party in every county in the nation to be a national party. Let's call it 80%, no, let's call it 70% of the counties.

That means you will have to go though the above processes 2,198 times before you will get there. That is a hell of a lot of work. How long would that take?

Well, let's look at a party which has been working on doing this very act for a while, the Libertarian Party. They Libertarians where founded in 1971. They have been around for the last 38 years. They have founded State Party's in all fifty states and have 250,000 registered voters.

In their 38 years as a party they have elected no national office holders. They have elected no Governors, no State Senators. They have had 12 State Representative victories, but currently the do not have any holding office.

The Libertarian Party is a example of a good success story for third parties. If we combine the total votes for State House races received by the Libertarians in 200, 2004 and 2006 it tops one million, which is more than double the number received by all other minor parties combined. This is what a successful third party looks like after nearly four decades of existence.

Summary:

So, here is the way it looks to the Dog. Even if you do every thing right, even if the Dog is completely underestimating the desire and size of the group who wants to split way from the Democratic Party and found a new one, the ROI is really bad.

It looks like a hell of a lot of work, for a hell of a lot years, and at the end of that time you will not have gained enough prominence to work on the issues which you find critical today.

But let's take the wildly optimistic point of view, shall we? Lets assume you bust your asses for only a decade, and in that time you are successful beyond belief. You have tapped the zeitgeist. The is a significant portion of the American Electorate who is buying what you are selling and you elect say, 15 to 20 Representatives, two Governors and some State Reps. Now you have voice at the table. The problem is, you will have to ally yourself with the very party you split away from in disgust to get anything close to your agenda moved. Yes, you might be able to hold up legislation, but you will never get to write it. Your party will never hold Committee Chairs and you will still have to justify your compromises with your base, who left the Democratic Party because of its compromises.

All in all that does not seem like a winning plan for moving the nation to the Left, does it? However there is another way. It still requires a lot of work over a lot of time, but it has a far better chance of succeeding. Get into the Democratic Party structure yourself. You don't like our candidate recruitment, well get on the group that does and make your case. You think we need to be harder lined with keeping discipline? Well that happens not at the national level but at the State level. If your ideas are better, then go where you can prove it, get involved where you can have a decent chance at making a difference. Don't kid yourself that you will be able to jump the leadership right away. You might if you bring in a lot of new Democrats, who think like you, but even then you are going to have to spend some time paying your dues, this is true in any organization, even one you might want to start from scratch. Party politics takes a lot of hard work, so be ready.

But if you do get in there, work hard and rise in the Party, then you will have what you were trying for with a new Party without having to start from scratch. You will not have the problems of becoming national, you will not have the staffing or fund raising problems for your candidates, you will not have the issue of never getting on Committees or Chairs. You will be able to affect change.

One last thing, it is never going to go all your way no matter what. If you are going to be part of the governance of a democracy, you are going to wind up with compromises you don't like. You are going to have allies in your party who don't follow through with their promises. You are going to have differences inside the party as to what the goals are and they all get decided by compromise, every single time. All you can really hope for is to get a few things you want. To do that you have to have most of the party structure behind you, no matter what party you are part of. This is why it is so critical for those who are to the left of most of the Democratic Party to get off their asses and get into the structure! If there really are enough of us to form a new party, there are more than enough to take over the existing party.

The Dog is going to end as he started, by saying the following: If you don't like the Democratic Party enough to stay and try to make it better, then Go! Get out there and form you new political Party. You have a ton of work to do, and staying around and arguing with those of us who are going to stay does nothing to get to the day when you can affect the course of the nation.

However, if you are really ready to do all that work, why not take the best shot and make the Democratic Party a party you can be proud to be part of the leadership of?

The floor is yours.  
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So You Want To Form A New Party? Hmmm, Come With Me. | 127 comments
The above is not a complete list of what (3.57 / 7)
has to be done to establish a new party, but just the highlights.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
I, for one, agree with you, Dog (4.00 / 1)
and I would love a third party, if there were any chance it would not take away anything that would help, and not hurt, the conservative movement (which wants to go backwards, apparently)

If we had a set up like Iceland, for example, where there are 4 parties, Left, Left center, center right and right, it might work, but even then coalitions are required, and that is not enough for some.

As much as the current state of sordid affairs frustrates me to no end, I do NOT want to see another Nader pave the way for the next Bush.

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?' - 1984

[ Parent ]
You could have a worthy new political party -- (4.00 / 1)
And it wouldn't really be all that hard.

Having been a member of the Green Party for a decade and a half, I'd argue that the main problem encountered within third parties comes from the third parties themselves.  The Green Party is enamored of all sorts of "supermajority" and "consensus" voting schemes, and so time and time again they allow individual members and small groups of members to screw up decision-making processes at party meetings.

The result is that the Green Party does really well in ballot access drives, but not much else.

Thus the main difficulty with third parties, as with all political parties, is that of the internal organization of the party.  How can you be sure that your third party actually represents you fairly while at the same time it gets something done?

"Mientras el trabajo sea una comodidad, un mecanismo de extracción de plusvalía y un arma de alienación, el sistema y sus miserias sobrevivirán."  -Peter McLaren

[ Parent ]
The people who founded the Republican Party in 1854 were undoubtedly (4.00 / 10)
provided with similar assessments. They wisely rejected those assessments, took their best shot at creating a new party, and only 6 years later, they won control of Congress and the White House.

No one is saying founding a new Progressive Party would be easy.  A new party can't be competitive with the major parties unless it has a leader with national status. A Progressive Party would need someone like Howard Dean to provide leadership and attract progressive House and Senate Democrats into the party.

The Republican Party was able to gain power so quickly because of Lincoln's leadership and the sectional crisis over slavery and states rights. If the banking system collapses and takes the economy down with it, this country will be in a crisis just as dire, and the two major parties will be discredited, providing a new Progressive Party with the opportunity to attain widepsread support and national status.

IMO, events will be the biggest determining factor in whether a new party can gain traction. If economic conditions keep getting worse for average Americans, contempt for politics as usual in D.C. will intensify and this country will go either hard left or hard right. Despite all the corporate media propaganda about the "far left", I think a majority of Americans would support progressive policies rather than right wing policies if economic and political conditions continue to deteriorate.

Well, you are baising your premise on a national disater. (4.00 / 1)
It could happen. On the other hand it is more likely to be a catalysis to drive even more folks to the Democratic Party.

But that aside, you still have to do all the things I listed here and more. It seems unlikely that it will be do able. The amount of people required is orders of magnitude above that required for the Republicans.  We have 10 times the population in the US than in 1850.

The policies of any new party don't mean anything without a structure which allows you to get them to the people. If you don't address this in your thinking than you will surely fail.

Why not spend that energy on an existing Party until and unless your disaster happens. That way you split the difference and still are able to make changes if the disaster does not strike.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
We're in a national disaster now. (4.00 / 9)
And the political establishment is refusing to address the fundamental causes of it. The banking system is still hanging by a thread, and if the Fed is audited the shit is going to hit the fan.  

I've supported Democrats for 40 years, Dog.  I've heard the arguments you're making many times.  You're not saying anything new.  

We keep supporting Democrats but they never come through for us in any meaningful way.  You're telling us to stay the course, you're telling us to keep doing the same thing over and over again, even though we never get different results.

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results has been defined as insanity, and that definition is valid.                    

[ Parent ]
Okay, do what you think is best. You still have to have (4.00 / 1)
the structure to get to the people. As much as it feels like it the blogs is not going to do that. You still have to fund your candidates, you still have to have staff. I don't see more than a 1/4 million people nation wide who would agree with you, and that would make you just as big as the Libertarians. It would also make your party just as effective.

But hey, I could be wrong. Go! Prove that I am wrong. I have been involved in politics since I was 6. I have run campaigns and candidates and issues and I am telling you my 30 years of experience in this tells me that what you propose is a waste of resources. But they are not my resources, so all I can do share what I know.

Good luck in your quest, you will surely need it.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
All those campaigns you ran? (4.00 / 10)
Were they for candidates in the Democratic party? LOL. Your position, and thesis, is laughable.

We almost had the emergence of a viable third party in 1992. Remember? It could happen again, except this time with a serious candidate.

People who always believe that we, at this place in history, are somehow different than at other times in history crack me up.

It was only six or seven generations ago that our country was in a civil war. Our country is going to continue to decline economically. Social unrest will continue to increase. Nobody fucking knows what's going to happen. That's the thing with stability, as it decreases, so does predictability.

You have already demonstrated your detachment from reality by effectively stating that we aren't in a national disaster. We're in a global disaster. I don't mean any offense.

But it's unbearable hearing yet another message/warning that the Democratic party is all we've fucking got. I was born a Democrat. Fuck them.

Far from being a vehicle to advance the progressive agenda, it is a sedative to prevent the left from getting out of control. Their control.

Wake up. The Democratic party is history.

[ Parent ]
Yeah, and where is it today? It crumbled when the self (0.00 / 0)
financing billionaire who wanted to be president left it. It never elected a single mayor, it never elected a single Governor, it never elected a single Congress man. Not really a party, eh?

As for detachment from reality, it is pretty sad that the great defenders of a different point of veiw sling themselves down to name calling when someone stands up for what they think. Really sad to my way of thinking.

But none of that matters. If you think you can create a new party, do it, prove me wrong. But I don't see any of you getting out and doing it. I see a hell of a lot of talk, but not much more. So, if that is what you want to do, knock yourself out. Me? I am going to keep working to make things better.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
30 years of Democratic betrayals is proving you wrong, Dog. (4.00 / 10)
Democrats haven't taken a stand on anything important since Reagan.  They concluded long ago that they don't ever have to take a stand, because progressives always keep letting them get away with it.

And you seem bound and determined to let them get away with it again. You're saying that even if they betray us on health care reform, we have to keep supporting them.

You want to talk about wasting resources?  Millions of progressives spent all the time, energy, and money they had to give so Democrats would have overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, and a president with a mandate for change.

And what do we have to show for it?  

Chuck Fucking Grassley and his corporate hack friends in both parties are dictating what will be in the health care reform bill and what won't be, while Obama makes deals with Big Pharma and Rahm tells us to go fuck ourselves.

That's the hole we're in, Dog, and you want us all to keep digging.  Well no one's ever gotten out of a hole by digging it deeper, and I for one hope Progressives finally figure that out.  

   

[ Parent ]
So the scale is bigger. (0.00 / 0)
We have 10 times the population in the US than in 1850.

That's ten times more people to organize a party with!

"Mientras el trabajo sea una comodidad, un mecanismo de extracción de plusvalía y un arma de alienación, el sistema y sus miserias sobrevivirán."  -Peter McLaren

[ Parent ]
True, but you have a lot more States to get on the ballot in as well. (0.00 / 0)
You also have the population spread out more too. On the plus side you have better communications.

But the real deal is the collapse of the Whigs. The Democratic party is not the party most likely to collapse in the next few years. That is the Republicans. Most of the folks who are newly unaffiliated are ex-Republicans. They are more likely to coalesce into a new party than people fleeing the Democratic party. That makes it a lot harder to form a new party to the left of the Dems.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
The Republicans are dying -- (4.00 / 1)
because fewer and fewer people are going for their crap anymore.  They had a coalition for the ages with Nixon in '68 and again with Reagan in '80.  Ideological conditions changed, and they failed to adapt.

Expect new ideologies to replace theirs.

"Mientras el trabajo sea una comodidad, un mecanismo de extracción de plusvalía y un arma de alienación, el sistema y sus miserias sobrevivirán."  -Peter McLaren

[ Parent ]
But there is a conservative section of the nation., I agree (4.00 / 1)
there will be new ideas to replace the ones of the Republican Party, but it seems likely to me it will be a conservative one not a more liberal one.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
What's "conservative"? (4.00 / 1)
The Bush administration portrayed a "conservative" image, and with that it ran with some of the most radical policies ever.

Practically all of the progressives believe in some sort of "conservative" values.  This was true from the time of the mid-1980s, when Anthony Giddens picked up on it.  The only genuinely conservative force of 1980s US politics was the Mondale Democrats; the rest of the establishment was for the coming dangerous experiment with neoliberalism.

To avoid being co-opted by this version of "conservatism," the Republicans invented "more conservative than thou," and "more conservative than thou" appears to be running its course.  We had eight years of Bush -- practically nobody is clamoring for more.

Obama has co-opted what is left of it, outside of the genuine racists who were once the core of Nixon's "Southern strategy."  What's left of those people are your wingnuts, and they do their cause no favors by threatening to assassinate Obama.  Their populations are shrinking in every part of America but Appalachia (Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana) -- Kos displayed a graph some time ago illustrating it in great detail.

The "conservatives" have lost the culture wars.  Some of them have even begun to know it, now.  Most of the ones who don't are growing old and dying of cancer.

The political worldview of the past four decades has reached the end of the line.  The "progressives" and "liberals" have been mostly co-opted by the Blue Dogs; the Right opposition has degenerated into wingnuttery.

The political oppositions of the future will be between those who genuinely feel ripped off by the system, and the co-opted.  The old "liberal" vs. "conservative" opposition will not survive into mid-century.

"Mientras el trabajo sea una comodidad, un mecanismo de extracción de plusvalía y un arma de alienación, el sistema y sus miserias sobrevivirán."  -Peter McLaren

[ Parent ]
However, they were operating in the collapse of ... (4.00 / 5)
... one of the two national parties and building in part using those people that had been purged from that national party as a part of its collapse.

That purge business really flips all the above around ... you have experienced campaigners, experienced politicians, experienced party functionaries, all of whom used to be part of one of the two main parties, but no longer part of the main party because of their anti-slavery views.

And they are spread all around the country.

And on top of that, the nascent Republicans included Free Soilers, Abolitionists, Know Nothings and assorted other existing third parties, each with local power bases.

The test of whether or not the Democratic party is capable of reform is to build a movement within the Democratic party and attempt to reform it. If the end result is that all who join the movement is purged from the Democratic party, then that is part of your foundation.

The central dilemma for that approach is that the moderate Democrats and Hedge Fund Democrats in many respects lay ideologically between the prospective purged progressive coalition and some of the largest groups of available non affiliated voters, on the centre-right and driven out by the Republican party.

A mass progressive walk out, even assuming it could be engineered, could well leave the Democratic party attracting the unaffiliated former Republicans than the new Progressive Party, ending up with the right wing of the Republican party under that name, and the attendant two-party privileges, facing the moderate wind of the Republican party and moderate and Hedge Fund wings of the Democratic party, under the Democratic label, facing a 15% Progressive Party.

Without some form of proportional or second preference voting, the Progressive Party would simply be a way of removing the need for Democrats to run a bit more to the left during primary season.

Support Lesbian creative works, 100% Yuri from ALC Press

[ Parent ]
The Democratic Party is already the new Republican Party. (4.00 / 5)
While we were yakking about taking our party back, the corporations and centrists took it over.   There is no Democratic Party left.   Since Johnson, all we've had in the WH are conservative, corporate Democrats.  If Johnson hadn't of run all of the southern bigots out, the Democratic Party would be even worse than it is.    
[ Parent ]
The corporations and centrists had it all along ... (4.00 / 3)
... Johnson operated in a time when the Texas Oil Companies wanted the economy to be buzzing along, because their quotas were cut back when needed to keep the oil price stable.

It was always an accommodation, and without an organized progressive movement, it will always be an accommodation in which the centrists and corporations hold the whip hand.

Support Lesbian creative works, 100% Yuri from ALC Press

[ Parent ]
you got that right Bruce (4.00 / 1)
as things currently stand. I think what all the hot-blooded people saying is important too--but that energy needs to go into something and progressives are in the sad shape they are in because they lack good organizations and a mythos that presents a powerful way to go. The feeling I get in many blogs is impotent rage. Many of us bit on the Obama mania and are now really pissed because it was another psy-ops scam. We need to have someplace for this frustrated energy to go--why aren't we providing it?

Visit me at Sacred Bells
[ Parent ]
Ah, since I never bit on the Obama mania ... (0.00 / 0)
... I don't have that psychological hurdle to work through.

The misnamed "Conservative" Movement identified the strategic opportunity to capture a number of national employer organizations and to bring the Republican party to heel through using the primary as a strategic weapon putting the interests of the Movement ahead of the interests of the Party.

And it took them over a decade to get a Conservative standard-bearer, and then 16 more years to get a Conservative Movement President. This is not something that can work on individual enthusiasms or charisma alone - it requires entrenched support institutions.

We have three Congressional elections to learn how to primary Democrats in safe Democratic seats, to install Progressive Movement democrats in those seats in their place. And to primary the occasional Blue Dog, to be able to exercise Progressive Movement discipline on moderate Democrats.

But it can't just be a Progressive Movement alone, it has to be in coalition, which means the painful task of deciding what are the core structural reforms we want to accomplish and what non-core policies we are willing to fight for on behalf of potential coalition partners.

The Establishment Party will always slide toward the mushy middle and the fight over the standards to put on the shock absorbers for the long downward slide of an economy unwilling and unable to adapt itself to the future. A Progressive Movement must force it to decide whether to move ahead or to eject the progressive wing by acting to turn its progressive lip service into reality, with the mushy middle deciding whether or not they are willing to accomodate themselves with us.

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[ Parent ]
ok (4.00 / 1)
I didn't bite on Obama either because I bothered to listen to what he said--and he was saying nothing of substance--he just said it well, which charmed much of my family and friends (particularly that we are multi-racial).

As far as primary battles are concerned what you say is the way to go but it also demands a disciplined set of organizations which we don't considering the talent and resources that progressives have and the task ahead.


Visit me at Sacred Bells

[ Parent ]
Yes, it requires building a disciplined set of organizations ... (0.00 / 0)
... if we don't have the resources or talent to do so, then we don't have the resources or talent to organize a third party, so the point is moot. If we have the resources and talent to do so, and its just the doing of it that is missing, then failing to try will be failing to succeed.

Support Lesbian creative works, 100% Yuri from ALC Press
[ Parent ]
What a load of nonsense (4.00 / 7)
Sure as hell won't read all this namby pamby trype by any means.

First of all there are several parties that already exist--the Greens the Socialists etc.

Secondly, progressives have been trying to take over the Democrats for 40 years at least-- and have failed miserably, because the Republicrats run on money, something Progressives will never have more of than corporate America.    

F*ck this shit.


Why thank you for citicizing something you did not read! (4.00 / 1)
But what you fail to notice, and it is in the essay, is the Libertarians are the most successful third party, and they have never had a Governor or a Senator or even a Congressman.

Form a third party if you like, but don't kid yourself that you will be affecting the national debate.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Don't kid yourself that you are either. (4.00 / 2)
Unless you own a bank, or a defense contractor that is.
[ Parent ]
I could fail. The efforts of other Liberals and Progressives (4.00 / 1)
could most certainly fall short. But working within the party is the best shot. That is the whole point. Why not put all the energy which starting a new party would require and put it into the existing Democratic Party. It has more a shot at working than a new party, which can also fail to be effective.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
You HAVE failed already... (3.40 / 5)
The Democratic insiders are failing right now.

And either you are a fool, or, you are far to the right of me and therefore are quite happy with what's going on.

Either way, it's people like you who have screwed up the US, just as much as Republicans-- because there will always be that percentage who are just plain stupid warmonger racists, while you are smart enough that you should know better.

If it's not clear that this will inside the party crap never work, after looking at the abject failure of the last 8 months, then you'll never see the truth.  

You either can't handle it, or you want to 'fit in' to the closed minds on DK.  

The Democrats will never ever have more power than they do right now, and yet the list of things they are currently doing that are dead wrong is longer than my arm.  

[ Parent ]
Thank you for calling me names, and thank you for putting words in my (0.00 / 0)
mouth. You don't know me, but you might want to go read my stuff. I am not happy about things, but I don't for a second believe there is a need to take my ball and go home.

If that is what you want to do, fine, but it is not going to get you any of the things you want. It will just make you irrelevant. Have fun with that.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
You're already irrelevant (4.00 / 5)
We all are.

That's the entire POINT.

WE ARE ALL UTTERLY IRRELEVANT TO THEM.

If you really think you're relevant, you're delusional.  

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
People are already irrelevant to them. n.t (4.00 / 3)

[ Parent ]
If only progressives had been in a position to do that ... (4.00 / 1)
... for forty continuous years.

Unless you mean "trying to" in the sense of giving lip service to the idea, for much of that period there was far more defense of past gains against the rising Conservative Movement threat, and far more individual dealing by single-interest-group organizations, and far less work on hammering out a serious coalition platform, to be able to count it as seriously trying to build a progressive movement able to primary Democrats in safe Democratic seats.

Support Lesbian creative works, 100% Yuri from ALC Press

[ Parent ]
Bingo! Thanks for pointing that out Bruce. (0.00 / 0)


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[ Parent ]
Your argument is old and stale (4.00 / 9)
I've heard it so many times over it's like a cliche, sorry!

I don't know if your intentions are good or not, but let me tell you, the two-party system we have now is beyond repair.

If you're happy with THAT, then go about banging your head against the same wall you've been banging it against for years now, and hope for a different result.

Go ahead.  Isn't that the definition of insanity?

I don't really give a rat's ass how HARD it is, the bottom line is if you want things to actually change in this country, it's the only way.

It was hard to do a lot of things in this country.  Our forefathers didn't compromise with King George because founding a new country and staging a revolution was gonna be HARD.

Our forefathers who founded the first Unions didn't decide NOT to do that because it was HARD.   Hell, they got fucking SHOT for their trouble, a lot of them.  They sacrificed.

So yeah, if you want to sit back on your ass and drink your iced tea and chew on your chew toys, "Dog", then fine.  Go right ahead.  But do NOT expect anything to change.   You can then complain all you want, write angry letters, blog until your paws fall off, and you're gonna just get euthanized before you see anything change for the better.

I guess you're a "yellow dog", then, aren't you dog?   Rather vote for a yellow dog than anyone from ANY other party?

Sounds like it.

Well at least you're loyal.  Dogs can be that way.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

Yeah, this post offended me so much... (4.00 / 8)
...I had to come out of exile.

How fucking stupid do some people think we are? Nevermind. This tripe is a recommended diary over at Botnet.

The Daily Kos and other netroots sites have just become front organizations for the Democratic establishment. Their little army of loyalists fighting the good fight to preserve power for other people who couldn't give a shit if they lived or dies.

Geniuses.

[ Parent ]
Yeah, botnet is right. A bunch of people (0.00 / 0)
trying to prove how much like everyone else there they are.  Sometimes failing with hilarious results. The Head Fake, and 11th dimensional chess brigade.  
[ Parent ]
Thanks for the presonal attack! Wow, that will make you really popular (0.00 / 0)
with your partisans. It won't do dick for your agenda. You know why this argument is old, because the idea of a third party is a bad one., It was a bad one 40 years ago, it was a bad one 20 years ago, it was a bad one 10 years ago and it is a bad one today.

What is more insane, working where there is a chance to make change, or working where there is no chance?  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Start living in reality (4.00 / 1)
Working with the Democratic party, there IS NO CHANCE.

Hasn't 2009 shown you anything?

"Hope" is for dopes.

Listen up, Obama is the best the Democratic Party can come up with.  And he's quite likely the best Republican President ever.

And where's the personal attack?  Your response to me will get you one if that's what you want.

What has the Democratic Party done for you in the last, oh, 30 years or so?   Name something.   When did it go to bat for ANYTHING or ANYBODY other than their supposed "opposition?"    They kissed Reagan's ass, they kissed Bush's ass, they continue to kiss Cheney's ass even though he was the biggest war criminal to come down the pike in YEARS, and they're not doing squat now except fucking us all up the ass and having secret meetings with the same corporations that pay them their money, the people they actually work for.

There is simply no room in the Democratic Party for anybody but the insiders who are already there.  It's a club, and we're not invited.

If you think that somehow, out of some goodness of their heart that doesn't exist, they're gonna let you in and make changes, you're, frankly, delusional.

You might as well think you can come to Hollywood and start dating movie stars.   Forget about it.



"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
Sorry but you are full of shit about the Democratic Party. (0.00 / 0)
I am a delegate to my State and County party. There is plenty of room for new folks. That you seem to want to have everyone agree with you all the time would be a draw back, I am sure, but that should not prevent you from taking part.

But it seems to me you would rather just throw your hands up and say there is no chance rather than have to actually do the hard work of trying to make change happen. I think you will be very frustrated for a very long time because of this.

But let me get to the whole point. As deluded as I may be (at least to you) none of you have given any answer to the problem of founding a party which will have enough influence to get the change you so desperately want. We need change so that is a good thing, but what is this party going to be based on? How do you intend to fund it? That is particularly important as you don't seem ready to do things the way they are done now, but it all still costs money.

Where will you start? What is the plan for getting your farm team for national candidates set up? You have to have candidates who have been in elected office before, so you will need State Senators and State Reps and Mayors and Governors if you expect to get elected at the national level, so how are you going to do that?

See, I will start to think you guys have a chance at making any kind of change when I see a plan, any plan that addresses the reality of the situation. Until that point all you have is invective and sloganeering. Neither of which is any more effective than throwing your hands in the air and saying it is not fair.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Oh go fuck yourself (2.00 / 2)
You are a patronizing asshole.   You think the whole idea is bad because I, Inky99, isn't going to be THE ONE to actually go out and be the guy to do it.

Yeah, that makes it a bad idea.

Asshole.  

It's a terrible idea to quit cutting down rainforests, too, because, well gosh, I'm not the one who can get off my ass to go do it, and gee, it would be really HARD to do that, and I haven't written up a 200 page business plan to DO IT.

Why the acrimony, and why did you spend all afternoon writing with your "I"m a dog and here's how I talk and ain't it awwww so cute?" bullshit style an essay DELIBERATELY designed to insult people who are smart enough to realize that the Democratic Party is an utter failure?

Why are you shoving your ideas down our throats like this?

What's in it for you?  

Do you really think insulting everybody as to your views on "gosh, you're an idiot if you think you should have anything to do with a new party" is really gonna make people think "gosh, this guy who pretends to be a DOG is right -- I'm gonna stick with the Democratic Party even though they let murderers, rapists, and thieves run free in our streets, even though they ever did jack shit about the banking industry nearly DESTROYING THE WORLD ECONOMY (and mine!), even though they continue to not say a WORD about our losing 45 soldiers in Afghanistan last month and killing hundreds of civilians and wasting $133 million dollars every goddamn DAY there and all the while telling us that "we're the ones who have your best interest at heart" while they're actually saying to each other that they don't give a rats ass what we think.

Yeah, your argument is oh-so-persuasive, you're so right, I'm gonna stick with the Democratic Party, which has moved actually far to the right of where the Republican Party was when Eisenhower was President.

Yeah, the party that doesn't fight for anything, anything at all, except to give lip-service faux opposition to the True Ruling Party of the country.

If you think that you can affect change from within this bogus and utterly corrupt system, well, you go right ahead, I'm not gonna stop you.

Woof woof.  

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
He's made some good points, though nobody should deny that the Democratic Party is a failure (4.00 / 3)
In my view, there's unnecessary tension between those who want to start a new party and those who want to reform the Democratic Party. That's because, as things stand right now, reforming the Democratic Party is hard, and starting an effective, new Party is also hard, and either task gets even harder if it loses supporters to the competitive approach.

What will make both reforming the Democratic Party easier, as well as forming a new Party easier, is something like Nancy Bordier's invention, described at reinventingdemocracy.us. The reason that both will be easier is that it will become relatively easy to form voting blocs, which can operate both within traditional parties, be used to support new parties, and be used to form transpatisan alliances. These voting blocs can then act to pressure existing office-holders, and if they don't respond, guarantee their defeat in their next primary. (I'm assuming that the vote bloc forming tool gains wide acceptance, of course. But I believe that doing so will prove to be relatively easy.) As icing on the cake, note that moving towards facile voting bloc formation is a process that creates win-win scenarios, at least for like minded voters. E.g., when you build up your progressive voting bloc sufficiently, you can either play kingmaker and determine who the Democratic nominee is, in a given district or the voting bloc could collectively decide to support, e.g., a superior Green Party candidate.

We will need an e-democracy (plus 'non-e'-democracy) ecosystem that supports the central vote-bloc generating functionality. E.g., 'dog' asks "What is the plan for getting your farm team for national candidates set up?". And that is, in fact, an excellent question. One that I have thought about, myself, and intend (God willing) to work on, myself. I have called for a 'Candidate and PreCandidate Pipeline', described (very briefly) here.  

Nancy Bordier has discussed her project at openleft.com, and a couple of her diaries were front-paged. See also Announcing the Accountability Now 2010 Primary Project

Primary challenges work.  The threat of a primary challenge in 2010 will change behavior in 2008.  The question is -- how can we create a system where we aren't dependent on chance for a Donna Edwards (or Ned Lamont) to emerge?

Earlier this year, our Accountability Now PAC raised money for the purpose of holding our elected officials accountable.  We have been working since then to try and figure out the best way to use that money, and ultimately decided that it could best be used trying to find more candidates like Donna Edwards.

So Accountability Now brought together partners including MoveOn, SEIU, They Work for Us, Color of Change, the Steelworkers, DailyKos and BlogPAC and are funding a project to look at districts across the country and try to figure out where we can find great candidates to challenge incumbents who have become more responsive to corporate America than they have to their constituents.

I will never understand progressives who are still in the Democratic Party, but who do not join and support the PDA. What's with that?

At the end of the day, there will still be lots of political fights, but they will be more ideologically oriented. Right now, we're really fighting with the corporations and banksters. Shallow ideological narratives are created and propagandized to fool the public as to what are essentially corporatist and plutocratic agendas. And, as Bill Moyers has recently pointed out, both Dems and Republican parties are "corporate parties".

Finally, regarding the fundraising problem mentioned by 'dog', please note that a vibrant, popular e-democracy will minimize that problem, and make it as cheap to reach reasonably motivated voters as it does to receive an email. The real need for fundraising will be to reach voters who are both low-information voters and too behind the times (or poor, or whatever) to use the internet. That segment of the population will eventually die out. (If not completely, they will be reduced to relatively insignificant numbers. See Bordier's writings on the millenials.)

Two things that won't help are whining and recrimininations....

for a FULL COURT PRESS
DemocracyABC.org

[ Parent ]
This diary inspired me to write my own (4.00 / 1)
[ Parent ]
Well, there we are. The last resort of those who will not (0.00 / 0)
disagree in good faith. Fine Inky we are done. You have no interest in trying to discuss things. You know it is funny for those who so decry the group think at Kos, you seem to want to enforce it here.

Good luck in being anything other than ineffectively angry.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Yeah, you're one to talk (4.00 / 2)
You post a Democratic-Party-Fellatio diary, something that would almost be over-the-top even for Dailykos, then you get all pissy when people disagree with you.

You were the one who got pissy, pal, get a thicker skin.  

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
It must suck to feel so powerless, To have no way to control any (0.00 / 0)
events and to have to take it out on those who are your nominal allies. Tell me, does venting your frustrations on me make you feel any better? Any more in control?  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
Not a thicker skin... (0.00 / 0)
...just a different attitude, one which does not have such an overweening need to be right.

The fierce urgency of now.  Martin
[ Parent ]
I don't need to be right. I just base what I say on the data (4.00 / 1)
I have. I will admit it comes off as arrogant when I am arguing against folks without data to support their contentions.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
Good self awareness... (4.00 / 1)
...that you do come off as arrogant sometimes...

Thanks for seeing this and understanding.

The fierce urgency of now.  Martin

[ Parent ]
No worries. I try not too sound or be that way, but (4.00 / 1)
I guess I am not very good at achieving it.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
WITHOUT DATA? (4.00 / 2)
30 years of Democratic betrayals is the DATA!

You're starting to wander into DHinMI land, Dog.  You can argue about the difficulties of starting a third party, but don't fucking tell us we have no data to support our contentions that a third party is necessary.  

[ Parent ]
Rusty, you keep missing the point. You don't want to be in the party, (1.00 / 1)
cool. But all of the details I put above are things any viable national third party will have to overcome. You want to talk about that or just keep repeating that you think the fact we could not make the Democratic party more liberal as the nation went more conservative?

The fact that younger voters are signing up as Democrats in numbers not seen over the last thirty years is exactly the reason to assume there is a chance to do things differently.

You may disagree, but that is up to you.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Rusty, you keep missing the point. You don't want to be in the party, (1.00 / 1)
cool. But all of the details I put above are things any viable national third party will have to overcome. You want to talk about that or just keep repeating that you think the fact we could not make the Democratic party more liberal as the nation went more conservative?

The fact that younger voters are signing up as Democrats in numbers not seen over the last thirty years is exactly the reason to assume there is a chance to do things differently.

You may disagree, but that is up to you.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
They are signing up (4.00 / 3)
because of of Obama's campaign, his rhetoric. Hell I went out and signed them up! I told them that this was not just more of the same, that in order to get change we had to vote in a Democrat. That there was a difference that Obama was going to reprsent us we the people, all the bs. I should have known when at my indoctrination/training they told us not to talk about policy just tell your own story. I do believe that these young people are being coming more active politically and they are not like the co called centrists afraid of the right or the left of the left. The movement will continue but it won't necessarily be Democratic. The times they are a changing it's the entrenched political machines and the fools who think this is all we can get that aren't.  
[ Parent ]
Well, like I said in my other reply to you it is not what we (0.00 / 0)
know from the data. You are making an argument that we have reached a new place in politics and there are going to be be new trends.

It's possible, but unknowable except in hindsight. We will know in about 10 years if the trend is the same or something new.

I agree we can do better, but it is always a question of how. If you go to form a new party, I wish you good luck, but I will stay and keep working for a better Democratic party.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
the data of the past (4.00 / 2)
does not work so well when the times are this crazy and the politics they are changing. Data is also in the eye of the beholder and when pols and the media are the ones deciphering the tea leaves you get a very skewed picture.
[ Parent ]
Well, I don't take what other pols or pundits say to heart. I look at the facts (0.00 / 0)
the history and I make up my own mind. I don't see us anywhere near revolutionary levels of pain, as painful as things are, they are nowhere near what they were in the 1930's or before.

If you see it differently, okay. We don't have to agree on opinion. Just be sure whatever you are advocating you know what the advantages are and what the speed bumps are.

No one on this thread has asked if I think it is right that there are so many speed bumps to getting a functioning new party going, but I will answer it anyway. No, I don't think it is right, but it is the way things are right now, and we have to deal with the real over the ideal or we will get our asses handed to us every time.

That is why my advise is what it is. It is the bet that can be done with the tools that exist. Now if we want to talk about changing those tools, great! Let's table the talk of other party's until we can get the infrastructure in place. Then I might sing a different tune, but I also might not. Until there are different ground rules, I can't say how I would interpret the chances of success.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Thanks for Wrong! Rusty. You really hate it when someone won't (4.00 / 1)
just knuckle under to your view of orthodoxy, don't you?  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
That's a bizarre accusation to make Dog, considering the fact that YOU are (4.00 / 1)
telling everyone to knuckle under to the orthodox Democratic view that they can shit on Progressives with impunity.  
[ Parent ]
You keep putting words in my mouth. At no time have a said in any (0.00 / 0)
fashion that any one should knuckle under because they are unhappy with the Democratic Party. I have pointed out the difficulty in getting to the level where you would be able to influence policy at a national level by forming a third party. I have also noted that there is a better way to get a better return on that investment, which is the self same progressives who are unhappy get involved inside the Democratic party. You have asserted that this will not work, but you have not made any arguments past the past being an indicator of the future.

I would love for all the passionate progressives around here to get involved with the party. It makes the work I am trying to do inside the party that much easier. I just don't see how going somewhere else is going to be more effective. Especially with the flood of new Dems we are getting and the start, not the completion nor the fullest swing, of a swing back to the left in this country.



Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Do you even know what orthodoxy means, Dog? (4.00 / 1)
I didn't put any words in your mouth.  You are saying we have to keep supporting the Democratic Party no matter what, even if they betray us on health care reform, even if they keep betraying us.

You don't want to call that knuckling under to the orthodox Democratic establishment, but that's what it is, that's exactly what it is.  

[ Parent ]
Sigh. No, I am not saying that you seem to fail to read (0.00 / 0)
what I am righting. I am saying you don't the way the Democratic party is doing things, then get in there and change it! How is that unthinking support for the party?

You have decided you know who I am and what I stand for, you have this filter you keep running me through. It consistently makes you miss the point.

Why am I involved with the Democratic Party? Because I am trying to move to the left. Why do I choose this method of getting Liberal agenda items done? Because every other one is less effective.

But for the tenth time or so Rusty. You think I am wrong. Okay don't tell me, show me. Frankly I am a lot more impressed by actions than words. You have all these reasons to go and either start or take over some other party, go. Do it.

I will keep doing what I am doing and advocating for this as the best of some bad choices. In about a decade we will see if you were right or I was or we were both wrong.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
30 years of Democratic betrayals has SHOWED YOU you're wrong, Dog. (4.00 / 1)

You claim . . .

Frankly I am a lot more impressed by actions than words.

No you're not.  Actions in the form of 30 years of Democratic betrayals haven't impressed you at all. 30 years of Democratic betrayals doesn't seem to be enough DATA for you.

We have 30 years of evidence, all YOU have is repeated insults that we're "missing the point" and a condescending attitude that your "vast experience in politics" confers superiority upon you and places the burden on us "to prove" you are wrong.

Then you sigh and graciously inform us that we can "disagree if we want."    

Your own words show us who you are and what you stand for--continued support of the Democratic Party no matter how many times they betray us.      


[ Parent ]
Charlie Cook and Nate Silver warning about the loss of 20-50 Dem seats (4.00 / 1)
in the House next year will "convince" your heroes to cave on the public option, politics as usual will triumph over real change, and all of those young voters who worked their hearts out to get Obama and Dems elected will walk away in disgust from the Democratic Party.

You are the one who keeps repeating yourself.  WE KNOW obstacles to forming a third party need to be overcome. No one is missing that point. If you want a flame war like this blog has never seen before, Dog, one more insulting claim that I'm missing the point will guarantee it.  

       

[ Parent ]
We make our living off (4.00 / 2)
data, market research data, polls you know. The trouble with data lies in the analysis and the questions that keep all the choices provided at a yes or no level, not to mention the shady collection demographics. Plus hindsight seems a really stupid way to view politics, as there reaches a point where the devil you know is way worse then any that lies in the future.

You seem to have absolutely no interest in any thing other then electoral winning based on the same dynamics that got these creepy DLCer's in power in the first place. The ones that lost to Bush twice... Obama broke the chain by offering change the politics of the new. You think he can hold all these new coalitions and voters who expected audacity and are getting the same lame excuses for lawlessness and corruption that the Bushies used? How can you even call this winning? This is a bamboozle that is unsustainable as we live through what's going down.

The fierce urgency of now is what got us in the door. All the pols are doing is trying to limit the real issues to 'These guys are scarier then us'. While implementing the same agenda and policies and even taking it one more step by codifying them and turning the unthinkable into law or necessity and calling it by-partisan or a consensus, or moderate, or compromise?

You think that the independents or the  movement that got these Democrats, including Obama, will turn out to vote for this crap again no matter what the rhetoric? Maybe but only the deluded partisan so called moderates who have it fuckin upside down. You have been bamboozled, the rest of the country just wants relief from the crooks no matter what they call themselves ideologically or party.
Most call it betrayal. Not likely to rush out and vote for it again. So maybe after we've been jerked around by the latest batch a third party will emerge. Sometimes money takes a back seat to history. The fierce urgency of now doesn't look to be going anywhere under this administration.      

   

[ Parent ]
I have never given a hide out on DD (4.00 / 2)
but I gotta here, Inky, and not for your arguement, but for the personal attack.

And you are the last person I want to hide, and I don't do it in defense of DKos or the Dog, for though I agree with him I respect your right to as well, but the personal attacks are unnecessary, bro, and I think you are better than that.

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?' - 1984

[ Parent ]
That's cool (4.00 / 1)
I totally respect that.  

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel
[ Parent ]
We have "two corporate parties, the Republicans and the Democrats". (4.00 / 2)
That was Bill Moyers saying that.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo...

If you think little old you is gonna get into the Democratic Party, when it's owned by the likes of the biggest corporations in the world?    Well, who's being unrealistic here?

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
Just me fix this, no. Of course not. That is why I have consistently (4.00 / 1)
called for all of us to act. I respect Mr. Moyer, but I also disagree.

Here is the thing, the probability of achieving anything on the goals you have by starting a new party is extremely low. It may be a low probability the way I propose too, but at least it has a higher chance.

But if you think I am wrong, do it. The thing is I hear a lot of reasons to do this, a lot of the why, but none of the how. Without a plan that addresses the state of play, there will never be a new party. If a new party is what you want, then you should be focusing not on my objections to it as a strategy but the nuts and bolts of how to do it.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
OK (4.00 / 2)
Thanks for a reasoned response.

If you want to reform the Democratic Party from within, go for it.  But don't insult those who believe that it's pointless.  

I am of the firm conviction that only completely new parties in this country will change things.  Even then, they won't change things as much as we'd like, but at least they would side-step the existing power structure, which has a powerful vested interest in keeping progressives OUT of it.  

If you feel otherwise, great, go for it, but don't insult me for thinking differently.

The only real progress that has ever occurred has been against what seems to be impossible odds.  And often with great sacrifice.  

To say "gosh, that will never happen because it's hard" is simply an insult to every man, woman and child who has thrown themselves into the gears of the machine to affect change, and there are a lot of them in our past.  

Not so many in our present.  In my opinion, people in this country are brainwashed by marketing, 24/7, everywhere they go.   And our political system is marketed to us as being just the greatest thing ever.    The Obama marketing machine was right up there with any corporate marketing scheme I've ever seen in my life.   In fact, that was my very first impression of Obama.

There's a reason for this -- it wasn't an accident.  



"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
And (4.00 / 1)
I don't give a flying fuck about being "popular".  I'm not a politician, I'm never going to run for office, and I'm not a guy who can start a new party.  I'm barely able to feed my family right now, I've been laid off my job and there's nothing in sight.  

And talk about "personal attacks", your entire essay here is nothing but a personal attack against anyone with enough brains to see that the two-party system as it exists in this country is a complete and utter failure for the PEOPLE of the United States.  It's great for the corporatocracy, which is serves brilliantly, and with a lot of money lubricating its moving parts, but as far as what we're supposed to have in this country, the whole "by the people, for the people" stuff, that has turned into a pathetic joke.

I don't know where you've been living the past eight years, but your beloved Democratic Party didn't do SQUAT to cage in the Bush administration, it fucking PLAYED ALONG and continues to do so.

And it continues to do so until it is replaced, by people, for people, with something that actually represents people.

You're like someone who sees two beers for sale in the United States, dominating the market, Bud and Miller, and you actually go out of your way to TELL people, in the most patronizing way you can possibly muster, that "oh, gosh, you can't sell any new beer in THIS country, no sir, it's HARD by golly, it's a lot of WORK, you'll NEVER pull it off, no way, why don't you just try to get a job at Miller or Bud, and propose your great new ideas at THOSE places?   Yeah, that's what you should do, and you're an idiot if you think otherwise".

That sir, is your position and it's a goddamn fucking insult.


"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
And where does this great knowledge of yours get you? (0.00 / 0)
What change are you affecting? Where is the throng flocking to your leadership?

You are very angry and it is clouding you thinking. You would rather talk about things which are not going to happen than try to make a difference in the now. That is you choice, of course, me, I'd rather try, even if I get beat.

Cheers.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Can you read? (4.00 / 1)
Where did I say I was the fucking Great Messiah of the Common Sense movement?  

Oh yeah.  I didn't.

I'm just a Dad trying to feed his kids, and just about to fail dismally because of the failures of your beloved Democratic Party.

Fuck all of you.   If I end up living in my car, I'm not gonna blame the evil GOP assholes -- those are the people who ALWAYS try to screw people over -- I'm gonna blame the Democratic Party who fucking LET THEM DO IT.



"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
Inky, I say this with concern and as someone that has (0.00 / 0)
struggled with anger problems for a long time. You are letting your anger and frustration get out of hand. Why do you care what some dude who writes like he is taking dictation from a talking dog on the internet says? If this is that personal to you, you need to decompress, not because I say so, but so you can provide for your kids and have a reasonably satisfying life.

If focusing on these issues is giving you that much metal anguish, then stop. If that anger can't be channeled into constructive action, you would be best severed to give it up, it will eat you alive, I have personal experience on this.

In any case I don't see either of us changing the others mind or having a productive discussion, so I am going to end it now.

Good luck and Cheers,


Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
well as the now-old saying goes (0.00 / 0)
If you're not completely outraged you're not paying attention.



"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
Okay, I hope that anger keeps you warn, because it can (0.00 / 0)
cost you everything else. I hope it does not, but I have seen how rage devourers people, until there is nothing left but anger and rage. Just a word to the wise, be careful.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
what the diary seems to say (4.00 / 2)
is that the game is rigged and the Dem Party is our only viable option. I share your opinion of the Dem party. The corporations have both parties and the status-quo stays unless we move. I don't believe electoral politics is a good way to go at this time for an opposition movement. Nurturing each other is the key for starters; then, understanding that we don't have weapons to fight the fight. That means organizing to find new ways to participate in the real political game that has little to do with electoral politics. Let's build strong communities and start building economic power--we have the resources and the talents to do that.

Visit me at Sacred Bells
[ Parent ]
No chance? (4.00 / 2)
that is just what the One Big Party, owned lock stock and barrel by the too bigs, wants you to feel. Politics are not static, neither is history. A third party is not a bad idea, our system is broken as we only have one party. What about the Independants? They constitute a large block of voters who find both party's useless.

The status quo is intolerable and getting more so. The Democratic party won 2006 and 2009 mainly because of the Bush coup and it's attendant horror show. The minimal differences between the Parties have boiled down to a bunch of lunatics and the other party which is defined by the lunatics reality and has the same agenda.

How can they maintain power when the reality especially economic is becoming more and more unavoidable and the policy is becoming more and more untenable to everybody regardless of currant partisan politics? You seem to miss the whole point of our system. You have the cart before the horse.

The Democrats had the opportunity and support needed to take back the country, people responded to the fierce urgency of now as it is bearing down on us all. Most people don't care whether they are being screwed by a Democrat or a Republican, most don't care about progressive vs centrist they do however realize that the government both parties are not representing them and are corrupt as hell.

Your scenarios for a third party emerging are all based on current political coalitions and the fictions both party's adhere to. The way forward they talk of is a hard bamboozle to sell when you must live with the results and pick up the tab for the gangsters who operate on fear of things falling on you, be they 'terrorists' or corporate Visigoths. A third party would actually be a viable option preferable to many then the collapse of our republic. Don't Tread on Me, has been an American trait way before there even was a Democratic party.

Fear can only work for so long especially when they turn out to be nothing compared to the reality.. Change is the only inevitable and if the Democrats won't deliver refuse to represent the people use ideology that is meaningless it deserves to go the way of the whigs. To me a third party is the best hope for our situation that is unsustainable ad pretty damn hopeless.    
       

[ Parent ]
Okay, you have reasons you want a third party, now it is all about (4.00 / 1)
the how. I make no premise on how a third party will form, only that any third party faces these challenges. Funding being the biggest of all. Now, we have seen there is money at a national level through the internet, but does that translate to the local and State wide? Out here in Colorado the answer is still up for grabs.

There is also the issue of folks treating the Democrats in Congress as though they are all part of the same party. They are not. They are all part of the same caucus, the Democratic Caucus, but they are members of the State parties from their State.

But even if there is a third party formed, or an existing one taken over that is no guarantee of getting enough people or votes to have a chance to change things in Washington in any reasonable time frame.

The Libertarians have a quarter million. The Democrats have 62 million registered voters. Even if you can get 10% of the party to leave you will have a lower number than that of elected officials but lets say it is 10% for them too.

That gives you a party, spread over the nation of 6 million people, or 2% of the population. It would give you 26 Reps and 6 Senators. Anything you would hope to achieve in Congress would have to be in conjunction with the Democrats there, who would still be the majority, though they would tend to be more conservative than they are now, as your party will have taken the most liberal of them.

You still have to compromise with the Democrats to do anything. This is why I just don't see all the work and heart ache as worth it.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
You have forgotton the indies (4.00 / 2)
what % of the voters are they? The national party does control the states via s you said money. I feel the same way about the Democratic party at this point they are not worth the heartache or the effort. Your also predicting your how on the political fictions were operating under now. Look at congresses polling, this is not because they are too liberal I don't think it's partisan ideology that makes people distrust and lose faith with the government it's the basic fact that they are corrupt and do not represent any of us.

Take my son a Democrat who went Republican somewhere in the Clinton era. He perceived the Democrats as a wimpier, more corrupt version of the Republicans. He is not a looney right wing nut but he figured at least with the Republicans his taxes would be lower. By the end of the Bush era he was horrified at what they were doing and his tax issues actually got worse.  He liked Obama, he thought he was a liberal who was going to govern like one and was going to stand up for his beliefs and promises.

I think your stuck in the present/past and politics doesn't work like this. If the Democrats continue to offer no relief and insist that this is a moderate agenda while continuing the same extreme agenda and policies then it will die or be replaced. What ever happens it is not as hopeless as what we have now.

Parliamentary systems have to split power, perhaps that's not so bad if there was a third power at least it would keep them busy fighting each other instead of screwing us and the world. The split we have now is a sham, that I and many do not believe in. One that is falling on every ones heads while they rake in the money,power and destroy the very fabric and laws of the system that is supposed to both offer representation, checks and balances and a set of laws for the common good.            

[ Parent ]
Well, here is the thing about Indy's and your son's experince (4.00 / 1)
supports it. Most people sign up for a political party in their mid-20's and they will vote with that party most of the time for the rest of their lives. I don't know the sociology on this, just that it is a consistent predictor of who will vote for what party.

Indy's even though they have left the party still follow this pattern. They are going to, most of the time, vote for the party they came from.

Now, as for getting them into a new more liberal party, there is an issue there. Even though they have increased to about 30% of the registered voters recently, most of the new ones are disaffected Republicans. They are far more likely to support a new party on the center Right, than the Left.

That follows their money too. But all of this comes with a caveat. I think it is a bad idea to try to form a new left party for two reasons, one it is really hard and too it going to take a long time to get to the level of prominence required to get on to be senior in Committees and have enough heft to push through the agenda from the left of the Democratic party. But, I could be wrong. I have my view of what will be most effective, it is based on my experience and the info on electoral politics I use all the time. Still if folks want to go and try, well I can't stop them, only encourage them to do what I think works best. It is always up to the individual to decide.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
I don't quite agree ... (4.00 / 5)
... with this:
But if you do get in there, work hard and rise in the Party, then you will have what you were trying for with a new Party without having to start from scratch.

Those who get in, work hard, and rise in the Party will tend to be those who make sufficient accommodations with the Party establishment that their progressivism becomes indistinguishable from a wishy washy moderate Democratic "I'd like things to be better, so sorry they can't be".

We've seen this approach taken, and we've seen this approach work at taking over a party, and we've seen both the political benefits and the political risks of this kind of take-over, because what you describe is one ingredient away from the "Conservative Movement" take-over of the Republican party.

That missing ingredient is organization. The "Conservative Movement" did not just dive in and work to make the Republican Party over into what they wanted as an inchoate mass of individuals, but rather as an organized network of interest groups working in coalition.

Its that organization that your description of "taking over the Democratic Party" is missing - without that organization, it is inevitably the Democratic Party taking over the inchoate mass of self-described Progressives.

Support Lesbian creative works, 100% Yuri from ALC Press

in short, a party within a party n/t (0.00 / 0)


Visit me at Sacred Bells
[ Parent ]
A movement working through a party ... (4.00 / 1)
... as well as outside it, with the capacity to develop a long term coalition policy platform which a major political party necessarily lacks the ability to develop, though a major political party can adopt one if it is politically successful.

Support Lesbian creative works, 100% Yuri from ALC Press
[ Parent ]
Good essay Dog. (4.00 / 2)
You're taking a lot of undeserved grief about this because people who feel disempowered typically like to transfer their frustration and anger onto whomever they can make a convenient target. And since you stuck your head up, they're taking their shots a you.

But you're right.  Starting a new party is very hard, so if people want to go that route they should get off their asses and do it, and meanwhile stop wasting their energy on silly, non-productive ranting against people who ostensibly agree with them on almost every political issue.

Personally, I think the focus on whether there should be a new political party misses the point.  Progressivism isn't a club - it's a concept, a movement, and to corral it within the label of an organized political entity simply gives cover to the other established parties to be anti-Progressive.  Believe me, a third party that purges the 'troublemakers' out of the Democratic Party is just what the corporatists would love to see happen.

But don't get me wrong, if some Progressives want to start a new party fine, I truly salute them. But it need not be either/or.  In fact, if a third party is indeed going to rise, there still need to be Progressives working within the existing power structure to undermine it.

If a viable Progressive party (whether we call it Dem or something else) is truly the goal, Progressives still need to continue to infiltrate the traditional Dem party structure to short circuit the cozy corporate money relationships that drive the current power relationships. Indeed, only by hamstringing the Dem leadership from within can any outside party hope to compete. Yet if we simply remove ourselves from any influence within the Democratic Party we give up on the Progressive inroads we have already made.  

And we are making inroads - a lot of them.   Dems like Rahm and Reid and Baucus are feeling the heat like they have never felt before from their local precinct captains. There are also a lot fewer Blue Dogs than there used to be in Congress and a lot more Progressives.

The momentum is with us right now.  Why people want to just throw all that away simply because Obama is finally showing himself to be the corporate hack we all knew he was doesn't really make any sense to me.  

All that campaign cash buys a lot of stupid.

He isn't taking any undeserved grief. (4.00 / 3)
The Dog seems to think he's a teacher here and we're all supposed to take notes when he chooses to share some of his wisdom with us.

Well fuck that.  I quit reading his essays long ago, I'm only involved here because the Dog took a shot at me with his condescending title.

[ Parent ]
Not talking about you Rusty. (4.00 / 2)
There's a lot of valid substantive arguments for a third party and you articulate some good ones upthread. Most importantly, you do it without resorting to all the vitriol and name calling.

And yeah, Dog's writing has a tendency to come across as pedantic at times, but tone aside the bulk of the essay does a very nice job of laying out the challenges a third party faces.

To mind my, arguing about whether or not we need a third party is fighting the last war.  In this post-industrial age national parties have become basically superfluous. As corporations know full well, party affiliation doesn't matter so long as their agendas are represented.  Why don't we figure that out as well?

Nader had a point when he said that there is no real difference between the parties.  We basically live in a one party state, we just don't yet call it that.  But you know something? This nation was founded as a one party state and its Constitution works best as one because then the powers-that-be can't use meaningless party labels to divide the public among itself.

Look, one way or another Progressive Change is coming, if for no other reason than because the status quo is just no longer sustainable.  And to tell you the truth, I really don't give a shit whether the agents for that change call themselves Democratic or Progressive or Green or even Martian.

Just so long as whatever they call themselves, they keep working to make that change a reality.

All that campaign cash buys a lot of stupid.

[ Parent ]
I wish I could see what you see. (4.00 / 1)
Labels don't matter, but a Progressive Change is coming?  Change may come, but where do you see progressive?  Despite the voters demand for change putting this country back on the right track, what response to this demand have you seen that didn't involve their middle digit?  

All pretenses, veils, illusions have been stripped.   So now what?   I don't think we need to call anybody names, but cheer leading for the Democratic Party, progressive cause #1,234,567, or taking our party/country back is over.  

Supporting Dems because they are Dems is out of the question.  Unless a third party miraculous appears out of the muck, a third party is out of the question.  So now what?   I think metamars comment up above is at least worth a look.  I don't see any other good ideas around, and I think it is time we are started looking for one of them.  

[ Parent ]
Think back just five years ago... (4.00 / 1)
and think about where we are now. Not quite there yet but we're getting really close.

Modern Progressives are far better organized, funded, and influential right now they we have ever been.  We have a substantial and growing media apparatus that gets our message out, and polling on our positions continues to move in our favor regardless of the antics of the establishment trolls.

Also don't underestimate the impact Howard Dean's tenure as parth chair has had on the local Dem networks. There's a reason Rahm dumped Dean so unceremoniously from the DNC, yet Dean's network of Progressive Dem party regulars and lower level officials continues to grow, while Rahm's hand picked replacement, Tim Kaine, doesn't even rate the support of Dems from his own state.

All pretenses, veils, illusions have been stripped.   So now what?

We keep doing what we're doing.  The corporatists are scrambling hard right now to stem the Health Care tide because all their old con games have been blown. And while they may yet succeed this Congressional session, they have already assured themselves of an ever shrinking pool of willing dupe Blue Dogs and Goopers who won't be there next time.

Bottom line: History shows again and again that insurgent movements always lose more battles than they win early on, but in the end those losses almost always make the opponent weaker and the insurgency stronger. The vote on Health Care vote will be no exception.  It may not be Obama's Waterloo, but it may just be the Corporatists' Tet.

All that campaign cash buys a lot of stupid.

[ Parent ]
Thanks for taking the time to explain... (4.00 / 2)
If you look at the progress liberals have made in apparatus, you are right.  It is huge compared to.  I guess I was looking as the results in DC and omitted that it isn't the only game in town.

Dean is something to reckon with.  Who knows.  Maybe Dean, Bernie Sanders, Barnie Frank, Kucinich and others with balls and principle will get fed up and go around the Democrats.  In their own ways, they have all tried.    

[ Parent ]
I respect what you say (4.00 / 2)
but I just don't see it.

What we are doing is not using the full potential of our power. Without disciplined organization we will always be outflanked. This is not longer the old republic but the Empire. The oligarchy has perfected the means of control--mainly mind-control.

The health-care debate is a case and point. Obama's basic proposals are bullshit at best. The debate does not include the fact that there are dozens of good health-care systems around the world from which we can learn something from. Many are single-payer and some are private insurance dominated but all are highly and (for the most part) intelligently put together by smart people who understands systems as a discipline. Why no discussion of the plethora of options we have for changing our systems? Why not publicity about WHO and OECD statistics?

All the left has to do is insist on a rational discourse using science and logic. That's it.

It wouldn't take that much to organize around being pro-intelligent, pro-science, and pro-logic. But we haven't because we are fractured and undisciplined to a narcissistic extreme as can be seen from the bad-feelings among people on this blog who insist on being right. What the fuck does being "right" get you? We work as a team or we get washed out (and rightly so) by history.

Visit me at Sacred Bells

[ Parent ]
substandard dialog (4.00 / 4)
I don't entirely agree with the dog, but it is in fact an uphill battle against vested interests. It may have been more productive to offer solutions rather than demonize him for his opinions.

However, you get liberals telling eachother to fuck off, and t.d.v coming out of hiatus to again demand what we may or may not write and its pathetic.

Heated PLATFORM or PRINCIPLE debate is good. Douchebaggery makes the buddha weep.


Visit me @ The Wild Wild Left! Crossposting is good for us all!

Thanks Diane. I don't expect everyone to agree with me. (4.00 / 2)
But it is nice to think we can disagree without being disagreeable. I will own that the tone I wrote this in is less than fully respectful to those who think a new party is the way forward. I state that I think it is a bad idea at the start, but I could have pulled back and been more factual, that probably would have been better.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
Nice that you get it (4.00 / 1)
but you seemed to get your opinion without insulting anyone personally, while the commenters went overboard.

Sigh.

I wonder if we could not make the existing Green Party more palatable and supported?

Visit me @ The Wild Wild Left! Crossposting is good for us all!

[ Parent ]
Well, that is the path I did not talk about. Say you are really (4.00 / 1)
going to leave the Dems. Now, I urge you to work within it, but that is not for you. Well your other choice is to take over another party, like the Greens. It is still hard, but it faces less challenges than starting from scratch.

Do you think it is worth an essay? I don't really encourage it, but it is an aspect of this fight that might be worth talking about.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Truth be told (4.00 / 5)
I am torn between voting out every incumbent Dem who did not vote according to their constituents (like the 75% who want universal health care) and refusing to give any money or support to the party at all.

The greens could be viable if enough people supported them, and make a showing in the mid-terms the way things are going.

I think our biggest obstacle to changing a system rotting from within is in CONTRIBUTION reform, campaign finance reform.

That is unlikely to be voted into existence by the very people who profit from it.

I think neither the Dems or a 3rd party will make a difference right now, because the 2% holding 90% of the assetts run the fucking show.

I might humbly suggest that as things turn worse, an enormous general strike may be the only thing to bring those into line, but in this militarized state, I imagine we would be brought into line with the wrath like that when they pulled the Shock Doctrine in Chile.

We need a bottom up Populist Revolution.


Visit me @ The Wild Wild Left! Crossposting is good for us all!

[ Parent ]
Amen, Di! (4.00 / 1)
Righteous rant, babe

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?' - 1984
[ Parent ]
Well I think this is going to be one of those times where we (4.00 / 1)
agree on goals but not means.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
you're definately part of the solution (4.00 / 2)
but I'm not sure about a populist revolution since the populists would create an even more authoritarian state governed by the same people who are now manipulating the rubes to believe whatever the oligarchy tells them to believe (e.g., Death Panels etc.).

In fact, I see no future for Democracy--we are headed into some neo-feudalist order with organized crime on top of the pyramid (more or less the current situation). In view of that we need to organize our own communities to survive and not concentrate so much on electoral politics--not that it doesn't count.

Visit me at Sacred Bells

[ Parent ]
This conversation needs to happen (4.00 / 6)
It needs to happen here, because Botnet is full of censors; and it needs to happen without the angst because when you get right down to it everyone HERE is actually, in their own way, trying to solve Rusty's very well stated problem.

TdV has the right of it, as much as he's being unnecessarily rough on the Dog. The problem is the corrupt BlueDog sellouts have money and power, and people with "hearts and minds" like Kucinich, Wexler and Feingold can only go so far against that. That's just the cold hard reality of it.

No party will win against money and power until and unless those holding the money and power are made to see how they are fucking themselves over by running this government into the ground.

I live on the Long Island gold coast. There are still people who live here who think that NOTHING AT ALL is wrong and that we are all nuts. The homeless, the jobless, the poor, the people without health insurance are INVISIBLE to these people. They live in a fucking unreality bubble where nothing has changed since the 1960s except the price of gas, and so long as THEY can still afford to fill their tank every week, what's the problem?

We have hearts. We have minds.

Now we need fangs and claws. We won't get that without numbers, and we won't get numbers without effectively showing the rest of this country exactly, in excruciating detail, how badly they're getting conned and by whom.

Anyone who fails to see the historical parallels between Blackwater & the Nazi SS, or the DHS & the Gestapo, needs a serious reality check.

fangs and claws (4.00 / 1)
don't necessarily mean numbers. Look at AIPAC or the Cuban American community in Miami (thought that's breaking up). It is the willingness to play hardball and having the money to do it.

That means creating alternative economic institutions to harness the superior talent of the professionals on the left towards our well-being rather than the corporate state.

Visit me at Sacred Bells

[ Parent ]
"The pros".... the organizers..... (4.00 / 5)
are by and large for the status quo.

And until we have public finding for elections which I am starting to think is never, even well intentioned progressive Dems will be forced to accept tons of money from corporate America. Their goal is to mediate and direct "change" as it relates to maintaining high levels of consumption and to harness it to keep themselves at the top of the food chain which is why meaningful change can't come from the "good" Dems.

I don't doubt you are one of them Dog, but your buddies are power and they seem quite willing to bend over and not deliver on health care. They are wheezing and waffling and in the end Americans will not get what they so need.
They won't get health care or decent funding for education or the right to marry who they want. Why should I give money to the man or woman who slaps me? Why should to fork over to get fucked ( and not enjoy it very much I might add ), I appreciate your faith in the process. I just do not happen to share it.

Yeah, the actions of some of my fellow Dems gets right up my (4.00 / 1)
nose. But to paint the whole conglomeration of party's as a single unit is a mistake. While there is a Democratic National Committee, there is no actual national Democratic party. Every State part has different rules and by laws, and many of the County party's do too. This perception of the Democratic Party as monolithic is a mistake caused by the short hand of reporting over the last...I don't know how many years it has been treated like that.

What I can tell you from personal experience is Michigan Democrats are not the same as Colorado Democrats by a long mile.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
No doubt.... (4.00 / 3)
Tennessee Democrats are not even Dems.

But you are profoundly influenced by your participation and that of your family's so of course you are going to advocate fighting from within. You are a bit self interested, you have even spoken in the past about running yourself. I see the Democratic party as being monolithic in behaviour because they are more than willing to accept donations from people who are indistinguishable from those who donate to the Repubs. Corporate America really doesn't care which of the twins wins as long as they can influence them.

[ Parent ]
I'll own the self interst, though from where I sit it is (4.00 / 1)
tempered with the desire to serve the people. I don't feel any need to be called Rep. Dog by any means, running is just a means to an ends.

I can see how it it might feel like it is monolithic, but it really isn't. To say "Democrat's" take money from X group is to paint with too broad a brush. Not all do. Many in long term positions of leadership do or have and that is a problem, but it is not the same as saying we all do.

This is the point, by making this a blanket statement it leads to the idea there is nothing that can be done. That is really not true. We can affect who is recruited, we can ask them to agree not to take certain kinds of money, we can hold them to their words, all of that can be done by any constituent in any district. It is just that when we are inside the party we get more weight behind our demands.  

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[ Parent ]
And I am not being sarcastic but.... (4.00 / 1)
Can one get elected to higher office without being forced to take money from despicable sources? Seriously?

Yes. I was painting a broad brush. How do we tell people not to take money from certain sources? How can we hold them to their word?

It hasn't worked so far.....

[ Parent ]
Well, it depends on what you consider dispicable. (4.00 / 1)
And it depends on how you count that money. You take money from your allies, you don't from your opponents. What if someone from an Insurance company wants to donate? if they are a low level person is that different from a high level one? Does the amount matter? All of that has to be answered by the candidate and it is a slippery slope no matter what you do.

Can you do it? I think so, it is my intent to try if I run.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
Michigan's Democrats are pansies just like the nat'l party. (0.00 / 0)
Granholm has busted butt to bring jobs and money into MI, but her ability to take down Bishop isn't.   She keeps "negotiating" with the party of no - sound familiar?

Cherry?  Ha!   We will have a Republican Governor come the election.      

[ Parent ]
Also..... (4.00 / 2)
Being wary of the party does not mean "taking your ball and going home". There is meaningful work we could all be doing in our communities to provoke change that are outside and independent of traditional party politics.
That is an important point. But I was not addressing the (4.00 / 1)
folks who are weary of the party, just those who are making the case for leaving it and starting a new party.


Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
Imagine if you were married to some woman (4.00 / 3)
and she cheated on you over and over again.

Would you stay with her?   Out of "hope" that things would change?    

I think I'd go find me a new wife.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

[ Parent ]
Great point, Inky (4.00 / 1)
and I agree, except I wouldn't want to burn my house down just to spite the cheating wife.

And I think, if the left does branch out a thrird party, the only ones it will benefit is the GOP and ConservaCrats in general.

Dividing ourselves just because we don't all agree on the points will only help those who wish to conquer us, IMHO.

But yeah, I am pretty sick and tired of it too

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?' - 1984

[ Parent ]
Depends on the house and (0.00 / 0)
how the benefits of home ownership are distributed

The party is a cheating spouse that doesn't even feel the need to hide their disregard for their partner or the marriage.  This makes the marriage the house, and it does require the marriage to be burnt to the ground.  Where the marriage is housed is as unimportant as the clothes the couple is wearing.    

[ Parent ]
I don't think that is an apt analogy. (0.00 / 0)
You, I, none of the members of the Democratic Party are married to it. We are the party. That is the point I think you keep missing. You say "Democrats" as if they are somehow separate from those who are registered members. It is a false dichotomy.

Like most things in any democratic form of government, we are all responsible at some level or another for the conduct of our nation or our party. If we don't like it, we have to change it.

Now, you seem to want change. Okay, that is a good thing to me too. But what you advocate has an enormous amount of hurdles which you don't seem to want to acknowledge.

Just yelling for change rarely achieves it. If you want something different, if you want to be less angry, then get in there and make a difference. Just be sure you are choosing the right tools. Personally, and I think I have made this really clear, I think forming a new party from scratch is a lousy idea because the chance of it being effective is very, very low. Your mileage may vary.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
well, actually (0.00 / 0)
I would take her back if it was my wife--but then I've been married 28 years and we're such good friends no sexual adventures would make any difference in our fundamental relationship.

The Dem Party is the only game in town in terms of electoral politics--I just don't think electoral politics is where it's at man. Power comes from the ability to project force as I say over and over again around here. People don't seem to get it. Right now the only option is to organize and create communities and economic institutions that can be a power base. Then we can lawyer up and get the PR wizards to work for us--there are also tactics of creating buying clubs or organizing boycotts to bring the more fucked-up corporations to their knees. Force--that's what the left lacks. When I was a young man that's what we did in the anti-war movement we disrupted things and applied force--often stupidly but that's what we did.  

Visit me at Sacred Bells

[ Parent ]
We could stop the circular firing squad...... (4.00 / 3)
Just sayin....

I actually rarely agree with Dog but he has a point of view and he is sincere as are those who disagree with him.

And I am sure we will have this little discussion again. And disagree again.

Okay. I'm willing to let this go. For this round. (4.00 / 1)
As you say this is not settled nor will it be today. Who knew you mostly disagreed with me?  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
Just because I don't agree with (4.00 / 1)
what you write does not mean I don't think it is worth listening to. I frequently do not agree with many people here and I am sure they feel the same way about me.

What kind of learning environment would this be if we spent all our time saying,"Wow, you are so brilliant UCC blah, blah." We have vastly different life experiences here. And we aren't the fascist right. I prefer mess over order.

[ Parent ]
And Just to clarify.... (4.00 / 1)
I think I have often struggled with your style as opposed to your content which is usually well thought out and logical.

And that is MY issue not yours.

[ Parent ]
This isn't DK (4.00 / 1)
This place has many people who have moved beyond that.   And find their "rah rah rah" schtick kind of juvenile.    

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." -- Rahm Emanuel
[ Parent ]
Did you read the essay? There is no rah rah for the Democratic (0.00 / 0)
Party in it. There is an assessment of what it takes to form a functional national party, and an assessment of where your efforts might bear fruit, but there is not an ounce of rah rah.

One other thing there Inky. Until and unless I see Buhdydharma say it I am unaware that this place is anything like what you describe. I have been posting here for years now and I would not be so arrogant as to presume I have a lock on what this place is for and not for.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10

[ Parent ]
In the "next round"... (4.00 / 2)
...may we remember "to be excellent to each other," at least a little bit more excellent!

The fierce urgency of now.  Martin
yes, we must realize that individually we don't know shit (0.00 / 0)
but collectively we can find some correct solutions that will work. As long as we insist on being right we are wrong (even if we're "right").  

Visit me at Sacred Bells
[ Parent ]
fundamentally you are right (0.00 / 0)
the option is not to form a new political party--the system is fixed in a two-party format.

The real power doesn't lie in conventional party politics but in economic and military (the application of physical force) power. First we need to first form alternative economic entities and use our talents to feed each other rather than the corporations. Second that economic entity has to be prepared to take pretty drastic action to defend itself and elbow onto the political playing field--this will bring us to electoral politics at some point.

Visit me at Sacred Bells

No (0.00 / 0)
I want to be a shaman to one of the best survivalist groups.
I also have practical skills in many other areas.  Just don't ask me to grow stuff.

Whatever you do to others you also do to yourself!
My model has always been the Goldwaterites (4.00 / 1)
and Reaganites taking over the Republican party and making it more "pure". Maybe the Dog could write a diary on what it would entail for progressives to take over the Democratic party and remake it into their own image.

In terms of a third party, I would imagine it would have been easier for the Republicans in the 1850's. With their inception they became the second major political party. We would be shooting for becoming major political party number 3. At the time the Democrats didn't have any competion, with the demise of the Whigs. The Republicans filled the void to become the second major party. Alot of ex-Whigs, like Lincoln became Republicans.  

"Are you trying to play Darwin to the lemurs in your head?"

Someone at Kos asked for the same, so I am going to give it some (4.00 / 1)
thought. The issue is that every State Party has different by laws, so it is going to have to be either really general, which doesn't really help, or it is going to have to be a long series State by State.  

Care about Civil Rights? Click Here to Donate to Vote No On 1!? - 6.25,  - 6.10
[ Parent ]
What's to take over? (0.00 / 0)
there is only the bought and owned One Party at this point? Locally you can do it, but your still fighting the money that's funneled though the DCCC straight from the one that own the place. Lots of countries have more then three parties and they seem way more democtratic then we do.  
[ Parent ]
Dude, everything has to start local and work up. (0.00 / 0)
But thanks for posting this.  It gives people some idea of how tough it'll be to start a new political party.  Would you mind posting it on my blog?
So You Want To Form A New Party? Hmmm, Come With Me. | 127 comments
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