Jackie Minchew on Friday’s Hearing on Feingold’s Censure Resolution: “Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) and Markos Zuniga (DailyKos) have a new book out called Crashing the Gate. Their point seems to be that, rather than exhausting ourselves trying to change the Rs, we must devote our energies to changing the gutless Ds.”-from his comment on Roger Fulton’s post on The Backbone Campaign, where you can learn the identities of the Ds who didn’t show up.
33 Comments
The list of no show? They haven’t been showing up for quite awhile now. Fienstein will be hearing from me….AGAIN!
Bitch her out for me too!
Will do kid! She drives me apeshit batty.
Cool!!!
First of all, I didn’t initiate the name Markos in this thread.
The ridiculous thing about that premise is that Markos has chased out (read that: banned) those who don’t practice his BRAND of Dem politics (his term, his threads but of course that was years into all our involvement at Dkos). By the very action of that kind of banning he and the henchmen his has chosen (quite a deserved term) push people away from the party instead of including them.
Passive/Agressive is the correct term.
oops “he has chosen”….. preview!
My point in posting this was draw our attention to the issue of how to go about “changing the gutless Ds,” whether it’s by replacement or rehabilitation.
the entire post was 2 sentences and one and a half of them showed a hypocrisy i felt compelled to point out. Clarity is important.
and let me add: what i’d love to see (check out liberal streetfighter) is to see 3 things: for R’s to be held accountable, for Dems to be a real Opposition Party and for America to get more Parties because the 2 we have are horrendous.
you’ll never get more than two parties. One party might get replaced by another, but that is the most you can hope for.
that is the worst kind of defeatist attitude (and an unbelievable limiting one). America has had more than 2 parties many times in its history and there is absolutely no reason to think we won’t have more again. I’m sure corporate intersts would prefer only 2 but screw them.
Never have the 2 parties been so woefully inadequate in my lifetime and it veritably screams for 2 things: rebuilding old parties and starting new ones.
it’s not defeatist for me, I never said we should have three parties.
There has never been more than two parties in this country. And unless you change the constitution there never will be.
I don’t know why this is so hard to understand. You can agitate for a parliamentary system if you want, but unless you like Republican rule I can’t think of more defeatist thing to do than to try to build a third party.
We have winner take all elections. Winner take all. Winner take all. Winner take all.
There is no way you can create a strong third party that will win more than it loses, or wins more than it costs Democrats losses to Republicans.
If a third party is successful it will only be after it supplants the Democratic Party, which put you back at a two-party system.
Winner take all, Wilfred. That’s how it works.
What a ludicrous comment!!!
Really, BooMan…back that one up or stand down.
That’s like someone saying on Sept. 10, 2001 “America will NEVER suffer a serious terrorist attack.”
The rule of three applies everywhere else.
Three car companies.
Three networks.
Etc.. (At least until the center no longer holds…)
Why NOT three parties?
AG
Here is why:
In this country, the winner of an election wins the seat. There is no proportional representation. In almost all jusrisdictions, a mere plurality wins all.
Therefore, a third party (let’s use a leftist one for our purposes) can only win a seat by getting the most votes. A leftist party that consistently got more than about 12% of the vote and occassionally won a seat here or there, would inevitably cost the more centrist left party many more elections than they won.
Net effect: more Republicans seats, less leftist seats of any type.
If such a leftist party became really successful, it would be the preferred party to gain an endorsement from. So, for example, if the Green Party started outperforming the Democratic Party, candidates would begin seeking to identify themselves as Green rather than Dem. And at some point, the Green Party would become the second party and the Dems would wither away.
You can have a different party become one of the two parties, but you can’t sustain a three party system.
This gets then to strategic losing. By running a green party candidate against a centrist Democrat you can cause that Democrat to lose. Then you can leverage the threat of a repeat performance elsewhere to get a centrist Dem to vote more to the left.
This is how Nader justified his runs. Nader cost Gore the election, but it did nothing to promote the Green agenda, it did not chastise the Dems and get them to be more leftist, and it did not build the Green Party into a more popular or influential party.
Of course, in different circumstances, some of those things might have happened. But under no circumstances could the left benefit from having two parties to fight against one right-wing party.
In the end, no matter what, equilibrium will settle out on two-parties.
You don’t seem to consider any fracturing at all from the right/conservative party in that. The argument appears to be based on only Democrat losses to a third party. I think there’s a real chance of substantial defections from the Republican party and if not now, it needs to be considered possible. A third party could form naturally from the more moderate centers of the two and balance the two established extremes.
I am not talking about voting behavior, or the actual blocs or constituencies that make up the parties.
In the South, it has gone from a Dem Party stronghold to a GOP stronghold, which only serves to prove my point. We are more likely to turn the GOP into the kind of party we want the Dems to be, than we are to dislodge the Dem Party as one of the two parties.
And there never will be more than two parties. The Dixiecrats and George Wallace’s Party and the Reform Party never became real parties. They merely served to realign the bases of the big-two.
And that is all third parties can do.
Therefore, ask yourself, of the two parties, which one is in more need of a realignment? The Dems? Or the one that is currently dominated by neo-conservatives in foreign policy and fundamentalists on social policy?
I think we are in a new era of political involvement and awareness. More of the average people are learning about the established practices and are disillusioned with both parties. Of course, most of them would never vote for the other party because of long held bias but there are more who would leave both parties for anything that’s neither.
Now isn’t the time but I don’t think the time is too far off. Your point of strengthening one party over the other doesn’t apply if the defectors are fed up with both parties.
Ultimately, it does.
Right now, people are fed up with both parties. But, that is not unusual. Americans do not like politicians. And more and more people consider themselves independent.
If a third party sprouted up right now that called for slashing the budget, ending the war, impeaching the President, and used a basic anti-government, isolationist, nativist, populist type of rhetoric, it would gather adherents from BOTH parties.
But the result would be that the Dems would sweep into office because the GOP was splintered by a popular out-of-the-beltway-tradional-conservative message.
The reverse is also true. A very progressive party that called for ending the war, balancing the budget, and impeaching the President, would get droves of Progessives to support it, thereby electing large swaths of Republicans.
The reason to push a third party is to change the nature of one of the BIG TWO, not to actually get your candidates elected.
But again, ask yourself, which party is the party that was lost its mind and run the nation off the tracks?
And, as I have said before, even if a third party was successful enough to displace one of the BIG TWO, we would still have only a two-party system. We’d just have a different two-parties.
Help fix the Dem Party, or go start a Republican leaning third party, but I’ll never support this effort to fix progressive politics by strategic losing. Not in this era.
The Dems wouldn’t be the ones sweeping into victory. A party/candidate on that platform would draw just as many disenfranchised Dem voters. Why is the thought of a bipartisan center impossible for you to recognize?
Because I just described a candidate running on Pat Buchanan’s 1992 Platform, maybe mixed with Perot’s platform, and you just called it a bipartisan center.
If you bash illegal immigrants, free trade, call for an isolationist foreign policy, and advocate fixing our budget problems by slashing government programs, then you are not going to win all that many progressives even if you are the only party calling for impeachment. You’ll certainly never win a plurality of the vote. So, who will you hurt? The Republicans. As Perot and Buchanan did.
However, if you adopt Madman and Wilfred’s strategy, you will win over droves of progressives and a lesser amount of Republicans, and you will help elect President George Allen or Sam Brownback.
You can’t empower progressives merely by forcefully advocating for their positions outside one of the two BIG parties.
Madman thinks we need a credible threat, at a minimum. I just totally disagree about where the threat should come from. I think, and am working on, making the threat come from within the party.
I understand that reasoning but I’m not sure it’s going to apply in the near future. If it’s simply a matter of getting elected, then all candidates have to do is offer broad, centrist favored issues but mostly, just be nondem/nonrep. This might not endure but it would draw enough to be competitive. How much more than 15%-18% from each party’s voters would it take? I don’t think it will happen but it is possible. I’m ok with rebuilding the dem party but the politicians don’t give much to hope for. They seem committed to their own interests and not those of the people but, hey, I’m not the one calling them ‘spineless’ 😀
I don’t think you read anything but your own writing.
OK, I’ll go with the Bush Rethugs as extreme right-wing, but what are the Dems?
Extremely ineffective?
Extremely gutless?
Extremely unprincipled?
Yeah, well, maybe you’re right after all . . . .
By this logic, Feingold could be “losing”the ekection for the DemRats right now simply by standing up and tellng the truth. That’s certainly the argument Party Central is using for not suppporting him. OR Conyers or any of the OTHER truth tellers over the past 7 years. For not challenging the election results in ’04 and ’00 as well.
Listen, BooMan…eventually you have to draw a line somewhere.
Give me liberty or give me death?
Well…give me the truth and let’s see where THAT leads.
This halfway house prevarication is what got us into this position in the first place. You can be SURE that the ’08 Dem Convention will be as rigged as the last one…and the fools will lose again.
So…what have we got to lose?
VAYA!!!
Try SOMETHING, for Pete’s sake!!!
THIS sure as hell ain’t working.
AG
that’s ridiculous.
Show me a logical thread in your argument. There isn’t one.
The “rule of three”???
This reminds me of the story about the Chinese generals who were having a war counsel and deciding whether to attack the enemy. They voted, and the score was 17 to 3 in favor of retreating. Therefore, they ATTACKED, because 3 is a perfect number. (from a book by C. West Churchman)
That what you meant, Arthur?
And to think I was hoping the post would raise the issue of how to give the gutless Ds some backbone. I guess one reason this issue is not getting attention is because some people don’t want to make that fight.
I’ve tried to discuss the issue before but it seemed to be accused of attacking the Democrats. That was said to be too divisive for party interests and working against the goal of gaining majority in the next election.
There was a time I voted Green. There was a time I felt strongly about a third party. Then I reevaluated that position. I agree with Booman because of where we are right now. It doesn’t just mean vote D for the sake of D but in my perception and I can only speak for myself, to stay within the party to change it. It means finding or being a great progressive candidate to replace the Dinos. This is not going to happen in one or two election cycles.Maybe if we all stop fighting each other and unite to make those that represent us accountable we stand a chance. It’s a long shot but one I am willing to take. One that I believe will advance our concerns a hell of a lot faster than trying to build a third party. Just this woman’s humble opinion.
One more thing…Howie imho is correct. It’s all about accountability right now. Why were those Ds not there. Pressure them to answer that question until they do answer.
The timing of the hearing was one factor but not an excuse. I don’t think many of elected officials are going to give in to pressure from the voters. Changing them doesn’t seem realistic anymore. The interests they support seem to be the ones that provide the money and not the voters. Pushing the illegal surveillance will be bad for many business interests and not many (incumbent)politicians will do that right now.
much aloha to you for your comment.
It appears you only recognize comments in agreement with your opinion so I won’t expect a reply to this question either.
When is it bashing and when is it waging a legitimate fight against your own?