Footnote to the preceding

There are some folks who are starting to consider the idea that their efforts to convince the hapless and hopeless Dummycrats that chasing the GOPpers to the right is not the way to win elections may be futile - and who are tired of being taken for granted by a party hierarchy more interested in poll results and focus groups than in actually standing for anything worthwhile.

Here are two items to consider for those not rigidly tied to repeating past failures. First, DDJango at the Progressive Blog Alliance says, in part:

In recent posts here and elsewhere, I have called on progressives to abandon the Democratic Party and organize on our own. ...

The biggest reason I reject the Democratic Party is that there's just too much "you can't do that, it'll never work" going around. Never have I seen an institution so in need of creativity, risk, and change be so resistant to those very things. The same folks (McAuliffe, Sasso, Shrum, etc.), with same old tactics and strategies, using the same money sources. Ugh.

The only way the Democratic Party will change will be as a result of a vibrant, credible, momentous threat from a progressive populist movement from outside the Party. We need to state our own vision of the world. Then, if the Democrats like what we see, they can join us.

Writing in supportive response, Harry at Scratchings chimes in with

[t]he Republicans are dominated by their most doctrinaire wing. ... They will also take their ball and go home rather than compromise. The Democrats have no such worries. The Republicans are guaranteed to be incrementally more evil to liberal and progressive sensibilities with each election. They can stuff Clintons and Kerrys down progressive throats knowing full well that liberals and progressives can be guilt tripped into support. Personally, I'm sick of their tired canards about Nader and the regurgitated psychobabble analysis of him, his supporters and other progressives. ... [T]hey have no respect for the political power of progressives and won't have any because we can swayed by their shit. In politics, you don't make concessions to people you don't have to appease.

So now is not the time to build bridges with Democrats. The squishy liberals and the quivering moderates have lesser-eviled us all into the Bushist swamp.

I have to put myself in the "tired of compromising" camp as well. I said during the campaign that I would vote for Kerry if I lived in a swing state strictly as a tactical maneuver to slow the seemingly-relentless slide of the political center to the right. Specifically, I thought he would be an improvement in certain areas directly related to the exercise of Executive Branch powers, such as protecting civil liberties and maintaining environmental standards; I disregarded the chances of any actual improvements. (My favorite poster of the campaign was one that read "John Kerry! He'll go backwards slower!") But I will support (and have for some time supported) any available progressive alternative. I harbor no illusions that some progressive movement will suddenly emerge and sweep to victory, but frankly if I'm going to lose I'd rather lose saying what I actually think than saying what focus group-tested BS I've been advised will gain another part of a percent of the "undecideds."

On the other hand, Katha Pollit, writing in the November 3 issue of The Nation, seems ready to just give it up altogether.

Mourn. Please. Just right now, don't say, "Don't mourn, organize" or "Pray for the dead but fight like hell for the living." ...

It's an article of faith among progressives that moving to the left wins votes, and I have written many columns in witness to the creed. But what if it isn't true? What if it wins fewer votes than being a liar and a bigot? ...

The logic of the "Left Is More" position seems to be this: What people really want is a Debs or La Follette who will smite the corporations, turn swords into plowshares, share the wealth and banish John Ashcroft to a cabin in the Ozarks. But since the Democratic Party denies them their first choice, they will - naturally! - pick a hard-right warmaker of staggering incompetence and no regard for either the Constitution or the needs of the people. Better that than settle for a liberal centrist who would only raise the minimum wage by two dollars. ...

This makes no sense to me as an explanation of the recent election. ...

Maybe this time the voters chose what they actually want: Nationalism, pre-emptive war, order not justice, "safety" through torture, backlash against women and gays, a gulf between haves and have-nots, government largesse for their churches and a my-way-or-the-highway President.

Where, I wonder, does that leave us?

I have several problems with this, the biggest being the claim that those of us who argue for advocating more aggressively left positions do so because we think the American public really is on our side on all matters. Nonsense. It's rather that a large portion of the American public can't be divided easily into "smite the corporations, turn swords into plowshares, share the wealth and banish John Ashcroft" on the one hand and "smite the unions, turn plowshares into swords, hoard the wealth and put John Ashcroft on the Supreme Court" on the other. There are a good number who, for example, think we need a lot of swords but also would "smite the corporations." There are others who would think "Chief Justice Ashcroft" has a wonderful ring to it but will also gripe about an unfair tax system that favors the rich.

Recently, I objected to a characterization of the election as reflecting the desires of "middle America." I noted that, based on demographics of age and income, I am part of middle America. I was tartly told to check out my local American Legion hall where I would be "disabused of that notion." So do it, I said. Go there. And ask the folks there how they feel about Big Business and about the rich screwing "the little guy." You might, I suggested, be surprised at the answers.

Yet we have persistently, foolishly, allowed the reactionaries to determine which parts of those varied feelings are the issues to be discussed. We have allowed - allowed, I say - issues of corporate dominance of our economy to be swept from the table. We have allowed - allowed - the issue of a system run by and biased in favor of the rich to be turned into a referendum on "government regulation." We have allowed - again I say, allowed - our issues, the issues where the majority of the people do agree with us, to become non-issues because we've been two busy trying to pick up 0.2% of some voting bloc by finessing some proposal or another.

This is not, I emphasize, to say that an openly and aggressively progressive platform would carry a national election. It wouldn't. But by failing to say what we believe, we make that a permanent condition.

So where, as Pollit asks, does that leave us? It leaves us exactly where we've been: As progressives, as radicals, we are a minority. We represent the majority on particular issues, even a number of them, but taken as a whole, presented as a whole, our platform would not carry the day. We could easily find ourselves in Barry Goldwater territory. We might well have cause to echo Bill Buckley's famous line: During his 1965 run for mayor of New York City on the Conservative Party ticket, he was asked what would be the first thing he'd do if elected. He said "I'd demand a recount." We could easily be losers on that scale.

And that indeed would be a terrible thing - because we all know what happened to the Republican Party and conservatives in the years since. They just vanished altogether, didn't they?

Bottom line: If I'm going to be put to the sword anyway, I'd rather do it as the bull in the ring than the pig in the slaughterhouse.

Footnote: Check out Goldwater's acceptance speech at the 1964 GOP convention. See if it doesn't lay out some familiar lines of argument.