The election is nearly upon us, and there is a lot of excitement, controversy, and anticipation in the air. What do we do about it? What are the practical actions that Leftists, Liberals, and Progressives can take to push the Democratic Party over the top, to capture the House and if possible, the Senate? And why is it important?
The second question first: It is crucial, critically important that the Republicans are defeated, resoundingly, this election season. The Republican leadership in Congress, their masters in the Whitehouse, and their bankrollers on K Street and in the corporate boardrooms are single-handedly responsible for some of the worst actions, stupidest blunders and most blatant corruption and foul demagoguery in the history of the United States.
These are the people who ignored the urgent warnings from a multitude of US and foreign intelligence services regarding terrorist activities.
link, link (PDF), link ($$), link, link
These are the people who crassly and calculatingly used the terrible events surrounding 9-11 to lie their way into starting an illegal war based on misinformation and fantasy. These same lying criminals have so badly mismanaged that war that the military infrastructure is strained to the point of breaking. These are the bloodthirsty idiots whose actions and inactions have directly led to the violent deaths of, according to statistically and methodologically sound research, more than half a million Iraqi people in the last 3 years.
Link, Link (PDF), Link, Link
These are the people who cut funding for research and construction projects in New Orleans for 4 years running, who gutted the infrastructure and expertise in FEMA and stripped that agency of any meaningful authority, who ignored the warnings and scientific and engineering predictions of a vast array of experts, and who sat by partying and preening for the cameras while an entire American city was destroyed and thousands drowned in the streets. Who, after the wreckage, spouted racist and stupid comments about the victims and the hundreds of thousands of refugees, and used these terrible events to try and justify more tax cuts for their rich patrons and country club buddies, who advocated bulldozing the city, and tried to blame the victims.
These are the people who have been caught in acts of corruption so egregious that several members of Congress are in prison, several more under investigation, and a large number of their lobbyist bagmen are singing to the FBI in at least four different investigations of confidence schemes, bribery, fraud, and misuse of government office.
These are the people who knew about and turned a blind eye to blatant and egregious abuse of minors on Capitol Hill, and simply ignored predatory behavior by their own party members.
These are the people who have destroyed the US budget, sent the country into staggering debt, and sent the deficit into astronomical territory.
Republican leadership is deadly. Republican leadership has destroyed our nation’s credibility, emptied our coffers, fractured our military, destroyed our civil infrastructure, gutted our disaster management agencies, and has directly and indirectly, through action and inaction, through blind ignorance, stubborness, and stupidity, led to the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people both in America and in the rest of the world.
What should Leftists do? First, vote Democratic. Second, organize, volunteer, canvass, work for candidates, bring people and organizations into the game at every level. Ignore the carping of purists and ideologically blinded doctrinaire dogmatists. A man that I know, have worked with, and have organized with, Stan Goff, wrote this recently:
Here is what will happen [on November 7]. Millions and millions of people … will vote for Democrats in an attempt to do what is immediately within their power to at least break the most dangerous of the two parties. That is going to happen. A miniscule number of self-professed radicals will stand on the sidelines and suggest that those people are oh-so ignorant… which will not affect those million one iota, nor will it cause any heartburn among the major parties. It will, however, further marginalize the left, and not just from a fraction of the working class, but from 90% of all politically active African Americans, who laid lives on the line in our lifetimes for the mere right to go into that polling place.
Stan is right. To sit on the sidelines now is self-destructive to the Left and to the country. Leftists advocating such action will lose the respect and trust of people crying out for change.
Even more important, if Leftists/Liberals/Progressives can bring serious talent and organizational muscle into the game, and help get the Democrats over the top, then we can get – EARN – a seat at the table for what comes next…
What comes next? Well, simple: The current electoral environment and the potential for an electoral blowout in both houses is a direct result of a number of factors, all of which have their roots in progressive populism; Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy, the Liberal blogosphere’s push for challengers in EVERY House race, that same group’s push for enhanced funding and organizing for those same candidates via both online fundraising and through pressure on sitting candidates with extra cash, and the use of the Internet to research, fact-check, and popularize important stories and events that have helped change the political environment.
The policies of the past – the corporate-friendly DLC’s kowtowing to entrenched interests and toeing the line of the “moderate hawks” in congress and in the think tanks, the “Swing State” focus, and general timidity in both electoral and political/policy fights have been shown to be morally, strategically and tactically bankrupt. Progressive losses over the last 20 years can, and should, be laid on the shoulders of timid, cowardly, and dishonest operatives who have been “going along to get along” for far too long.
With a sound thumping of the extreme Right on November 7, the writing will be on the wall as concerns those folks. If Leftists and Progressives put shoulders to the wheel NOW, get out the vote NOW, organize for victory NOW…we will be in the catbird seat when to comes time to sort out a wide array of important issues: who gets committee chairs (Progressive Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus), where do resources go (local parties, grassroots organizing outlets, progressive causes), who gets the state and county party control (activists who made this election a success).
The chance has arisen to change the face of a direction of the Democratic Party, to inherit the infrastructure and use it for pushing progressive causes.
We would be foolish indeed to pass up such an opportunity.
(This diary is cross-posted at Kos
Just thought I would dip my toes into the pond. It’s been a while.
Howdy Dan.
seeing as the party is pushing so many of their very own wingers, GOTV will only help move the caucus further to the right, and GENUINE lefties (NOT blinkered fanboys and fellow-travelers) should stay far, far away from that:
More opportunity to reach across the aisle, and you can bet that this new crop of Liebermanish Dems will reach right back. Hold onto your uteruses ladies, because the Dems will do everything they can to make sure it’s no longer yours to control for much longer. You gays, back into the closet with you! You make Harold Ford, Jim Webb and Casey Jr. feel all icky inside.
Your politics mean nothing if you abandon the people you profess to fight for.
Those people will hold you in the same contempt that you show them – and contempt it is, because your words and actions and statements are direct attacks on the people they support with their votes and dollars.
Have you read Gramsci?
The politique du pire that you espouse is deadening, pessimistic, arrogant and insulting, and completely undermines what is otherwise excellent analysis and critique.
You lack any concept of the “Long March Through the Institutions” that many leftists and radical revolutionaries, including Gramsci and Luxemburg, recognized as necessary during tomes of political retrenchment and reactionary upsurge.
Your prediction may come to pass, but I do not think it will, and I think that LATimes article is whistling in the wind.
We shall see. As for me, fellow traveling fanboy that I may be, I am willing to wait, and work, and try my damnedest to see the likes of Emmanuel, Schumer and the rest get their commupance.
We shall see.
In the meantime, you keep sneering from the sidelines and casting aspersions at all the stupid people voting for Democrats, people who are so much less evolved than you…never mind that those are in large part the same people on whose behalf you continually profess to agitate, never mind that those same millions of folks voting Democrat are the same folks that you would claim to be saving.
How about working WITH those people, rather than snarling and carping from the peanut gallery?
This is an especially nasty and unnecesarry attack. It’s also a complete twisting of what he’s said. I can’t ever recall Madman calling anyone who votes for democrats stupid or unevolved. I’m pretty sure though that he has called the democrats that. He’s freaked out and angry, like a great many of us, that the whole country is being pushed to the right and the democrats are equally guilty of it. I, as i’m sure he is, am getting pretty sick of being told to shut and vote for them and put our faith in people like you who keep telling us we’re going to hold them accountable later…right after we don’t hold them accountable. Please explain to me how you plan on giving Schumer and Emmanuel their commupance after you help them gain more power. Please tell my why the democrats are going to feel the need to do anything different or feel the need to listen to you. And give me something besides primary challenges alright?
well said.
You mean like
or like
?
Now, as to the challenge…
here’s how:
There are a lot of folks like me, both more radical and more moderate, but all of lefty leaning, who are members of Democratic Party local branches, state party organizations, committees, councils, and so on and so forth.
Folks like us were the ones who did a lot of the heavy lifting that got Dean into the DNC over Vilsack and Fowler (State party chairs were very important to that victory).
The state parties, local organizers, regional committees, and so on know very well why this election is so important, and know very well why the Democratic Party has both a decent slate of candidates (not perfect, and not what I would choose if I were given my druthers), AND a decent chance of pulling off a pretty big victory.
The reasons are pretty simple the 50 state strategy plus the fundraising, popularization, and strategy being incubated in that “think-tank” on the internet called the Liberal Blogosphere.
That fundamental reality is fairly clear to a large number of people in Secretary, Treasurer, State Chair, Town Chair, and other committee seats around the country and around the world in Democrats Abroad.
And we have votes toward who gets to represent us at the DNC. And those reps have votes at the DNC. And that is an important thing.
And the people we help get elected go to DC with full knowledge of where that came from, and who did it, and why. And that lead to (in most cases) support for those benefactors.
You think Chris Carney is going to fawn all over Emmanuel, who ignored his campaign for ages? Or do you think he’s going to be grateful to ActBlue, Atrios, Bowers, and some other no-names who pumped his name and battle against Sherwood?
Same goes for a lot of other candidates.
That’s why I think what I think.
Does that mean I Looooooove the Democratic Party, and Looooooove me some moderate, timid, lame-ass DLC/Centrist-Hawk/Clintonite bullshit?
No, not at all.
But I am going to go where the people are, and try as best I can to help, and learn from those people.
35-50 million people in this country are staunch Democratic Voters.
A large number of those people are minority, women, worker, environmentalist, gay, and so on.
Those people are the people I want to talk to about my opinions on politics, and why I think my ideas are potentially good for the nation and the world.
They will not listen to me if I have just spent the last X months or years haranguing them about how stupid/wasted/lame/doomed their support for their Democratic candidate is.
nice picking and choosing.
“Blinkered fanboys” was directed at party functionaries acting on behalf of the party “leadership”.
“Genuine lefties” was directed at Democrats who are called lefties, yet somehow find ways to throw other people under the bus in order to “win”
Those statements were directed at people exhorting voters to ignore their values and vote for the lesser of the two evils, NOT the voters, and you know it. Nice try though.
Schumer and Emmanuel will ignore you if they win, blame you if they lose. We know this b/c this is what the Dems have been doing since Bubba took over the party. If you feel it’s productive to keep enabling blinkered former Republicans in order to “win”, feel free. Hasn’t worked up until now.
I was going to ask why, if this plan is so sure fire to work, why then are we stuck with the mess we’re in now? Why haven’t these political geniuses been working to change the party before a national election was riding on our votes? I just can’t get the logic behind thinking that the democrats will give two shits what anyone from the left thinks when (if) this right shift strategy works out for them. It’s wishfull thinking in the extreme. That, or i need to start looking for a different planet to homestead on.
While Madman may not choose the warm and fuzzy route, I can’t honestly question the destination. If attempting to make people think about the votes they cast now qualifies as sneering…etc, then we have come to a bumpy place in the road, to extend the poor metaphor. We can’t continue to just blindly cast votes for any Democrats that happen to qualify to have their names on the ballot. To do that would result in more Liebermans, and one (at least) of those is enough. If this seems not to qualify as attempting to assist those allegedly being sneered at, then perhaps you need to take a step back and give further consideration. We have seen far too many Democrats roll over on important issues.
exactly.
what bothers me so much about these periodic fracases that I get into with Madman is that I actually agree with 99% of his politics.
The final destination is pretty much a shared goal.
I just happen to think that the route that he is traveling is one that is not going to get him, or us, anywhere near that final destination.
It has not in the distant or recent past, and it will not now.
there is no large revolutionary, self-consiously self-identified radicalized group of workers/farmers/peasants/intellectuals. There is no revolutionary moment right now. Period.
This is a period of strong and deep reationary politics.
In such a period, it is my opinion that we must do all that we can to help our allies. Sometimes that means doing things and supporting politicians that we may not like, but that our allies do. So, bite the bullet.