Books About Building a Better Progressive Movement And/Or Democratic Party?

Politics & Elections
21

Hmm. So maybe an effective information elite demands care and feeding of the grassroots. Why wouldn’t liberal blogs do this? Too many particularistic voices to deal with?

That’s why we would need to get behind the idea of an information elite…perhaps convince enough identity-based groups that they can have a say in the bigger picture as long as they make common cause with others. It would take a sizable conceptual leap - the idea that group self-obsession isn’t much better for anyone or everyone than individual self-obsession - but that leap could be made somehow. It sure ought to be.

22

People were saying the same thing in 1932 and in 1900. At any rate, countries with the English tradition of reformism do not suffer violent French-style revolutions with barricades and all that jazz.

23

To respond point by point:

Waterboarding has ended

Which was only abandoned because it was politically impossible.

Please elaborate.

I think we have plenty of that already.

Please elaborate.

See Dodd-Frank.

We withdrew from Iraq in 2010 and Afghanistan is winding down.

He attempted that in the Stimulus Package.

In other words, maintaining closed shops and listening to union demands on ever higher pay and benefits even with massive deficits.

I’ve skimmed through Hedges’ Death of the Liberal Class and he genuinely thinks America might become a fascist state (which generally shows ignorance of fascism since it isn’t just “right-wing authoritarians”) and seems to think there is a fundamental conflict between businessmen and other professionals (like academics, artists, and clergy) and that the former can’t really be a liberal force in society.

24

The democratic defeat in 2010 was about turnout. About 90 million people showed up to vote, 50 million GOPers and 40 million democrats in 2010. Compare that to 2008 when about 57 million GOPers voted and about 65 million democrats voted. Seven million GOPers stayed home vs 25 million democrats. That is assuming all the McCain voters voted GOP and Obama voters voted dem. I have no idea how valid that is, but the tea party (which was a major factor in 2010) is a movement where 90% of people are either republicans or independents who lean GOP. I believe tea party people made up 2/3 of all GOP voters in 2010. Either way, the number of dem who stayed home in 2010 was far higher than the number of GOPers. The party needs to address that.

So the problem is motivation. The dems won big in 2008 and it donned on people that the dems couldn’t use their supermajority very well, so why bother voting again in 2010. Of course doing that led to GOP takeovers on state levels and tons of laws passed on that level.

Also I don’t think introspection is a big strength of the GOP. No matter what happens they seem to believe moving to the right is the solution. The GOP seems to realize they are in a demographic bind, they are alienating non-whites, single women and young people all at the same time while these groups make up a bigger and bigger slice of the electorate (I have heard single women be referred to as a potential counterweight to evangelicals, they lean dem 2-1 and are about 20-25% of the electorate, a counterweight to evangelicals who are 2-1 GOP and about 20-25% of the electorate). The solution of the GOP isn’t to change policies to win support among these groups, it is to support voter suppression efforts to make it harder for them to vote. That shows an awareness of the problem, but it isn’t an introspective solution where people change the party.

25

I’ve been skimming it too, and at least in the first few chapters, Hedges doesn’t set much store by those other professionals either. They’ve been coopted by just having to get by in a corporatist society.

Hedges’ profile of the veteran activist suggests the only hope is the least privileged and the least educated among us. He may even be insinuating that such people aren’t going to have much use for civil discourse, or for those who practice it. We may well be left with a choice of servitude to an untouchable money/power elite, or thrown to the mercies of a new authoritarian left that believes only in violence and will no doubt be met with violence.

Does he think we’re really that far gone?

26

I think the threat of such a violent authoritarian left is probably necessary to make moderate social democracy look attractive to elites. Higher taxes and worker’s rights as an alternative to civil war.

But in a militarized right-wing state, can a leftist revolution have that kind of effect, or will it simply be stomped out in the name of order and conservative values? Maybe they’ll decide a long drawn-out civil war is preferable; they certainly did in Latin America, so why not in “Middle America”?

To have a credible threat, the left may have to become strong enough to not only threaten some of the elite, but to defeat them as a class, militarily. And if the violent authoritarian left is strong enough to do that, then* it* may not need a negotiating table.

Maybe peace through parity is the unusual outcome. Maybe the more usual, more normal, course of human civilization is victory through total domination.

So pick your fascist, strap on your boots, and kick in some teeth for totalitarianism. Is there really another choice?
_

Well, yes, of course there is. You educate people, and you do your best to keep the political process honest. Two things we’re failing to do right now.

27

We need to force debates. Go into churches, demand debates with business leaders, and make your case. Expect to be called satanist, communist, madman, and the rest. Remember, so long as they haven’t burned you at the stake, you’re ahead of Jan Hus.

Put together a corps, not just a core. We need election monitors who will stop the holy warriors of the right from stealing elections for God and Capital. Understand that we are up against end-justifies-the-means crusaders, some of them are in position to count the votes, and they have to be watched like hawks.

And prove as best you can that you’re the good guys, day to day. Be the party of living wages, affordable (or even free) health care, and so forth.

I think I saw a recent political cartoon where Obama got a laurel for being the gay rights President, but personifications of environmental and economic causes were left looking at each other, holding the laurels for those causes, just left out.

Even if it looks like the GOP is the conservative white party, We can’t just be the gay, black, liberal, multi-culti party. We have to be the “good for America” party.

That means caring about the well-being of all Americans, not just the ones who already have jobs. Be more than the “job protection” party. We have an opportunity here for a non-means-tested basic income guarantee, and I don’t think anyone in the party has noticed.

That means not just being an echo of Reagan on economics and foreign policy. Understand that the movements for ending the wars and holding the Bush-Cheney team accountable got the Democrats in office in 2006 & 2008, and then we were ignored. Give us a choice, not an echo, and spare us the twaddle about, “Politics stops at the water’s edge.”

And that means having the courage to stand up and call out those on the other side that are liars. Rest assured they say it about you, constantly and without provocation. Because they’re liars, so they don’t care if it’s true so long as it wins for them.

28

Well, it’s sometimes the wrong conclusion, but it is introspection. I saw absolutely none after the 2010 defeat, or the 1994 defeat, or the 1980 defeat for that matter on the part of Democrats. Nor have I seen much of an attempt to actually persuade voters on the issues. Mainly they just try to motivate their interest groups. Or pray for a demographic bailout, which I don’t believe is actually forthcoming.

29

This will be very difficult now that the party - hell, the whole left of center political spectrum - has been purged so enthusiastically of working-to-middle-class White “Middle” Americans.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you are a hardworking person with “character” and “values,” you live in a mental gated community. You think only of your family, your neighborhood, and your God, and to hell with the society that makes it possible for you and impossible for others.

30

Well the point I wanted to raise referring to Hedges was, does it make sense to build a better Democratic party? As we all know, the Democrats have either ignored or been totally ineffective at advancing progressive agendas. I think in large part this is because Democratic leaders have decided that they have already captured the votes of progressives. And because they are now as owned by Wall Street as Republicans, thanks to the realities of campaign finance. I think the right wing as now constituted would respond to the threat of violent revolution with violence. All the security apparatus developed by the Homeland Security State would be used against leftists. Drones would attack Americans on American soil. I don’t think this is actually ATTRACTIVE to anyone except those on the fringes of the right. But it could happen.

Maybe a strong progressive third party would jar the Democrats from their complacency, I dunno. It might just weaken the Democrats and further cement the plutocrats’ stranglehold on our government. I think trying to build a strong progressive party might be a productive alternative to violent revolution. I don’t know of any books that might be helpful to that end.

31

Like Chomsky when he was giving talks on the Vietnam war?

32

Some of these ideas are very good were I a progressive Democrat. Some more thoughts:

-Progressives need to adopt the rhetoric of nationalism and argue that social democracy/progressivism are compatible with patriotism. The Socialist International style movements are mostly a pipe dream and NWOish neo-liberal advocates of free trade, EU, NATO, interventionism etc. are all policies opposed by progressives, so be the nationalist party.
-Make a “Popular Front” with the Old Right (Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul types) who are isolationist and very suspicious of modern conservatives
-Stop self-righteous rhetoric and use arguments that will appeal to Americans, for example when talking about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t say “The evil American soldiers are slaughtering innocent civilians in illegal wars” but rather “Are you sure you want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to attempt to civilize and “democratize” a bunch of fanatical peasents in some Godforsaken corner of the world who’ll revert to stoning adulterers and mutilating girls anyways”
-Appeal to fundamentalists and Evangelicals not just liberal Christians (which as the NYT’s op-ed points out is dying without a strong base). Many of the great figures in Church history like Charles Spurgeon and J Gresham Machen for example were opposed interventionist foreign policy and imperialism. Steer the Christians from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell’s modern Religious Right

33

Parliament of Whores, by P.J. O’Rourke is a giggle, if not on [this] topic.

34

Qin, we are not going to do some myopic variation on, “socialism in one country,” and succeed. Nationalistic labor-union types who hold workers in Asia and Latin America in contempt will continue to lose their jobs to those foreigners, as they have been. Nationalistic center-leftism has been tried in this country; it gave us a régime where migrant workers can’t get visas.

The future of the left more probably goes through making common cause with workers in Latin America.

35

I will respond breifly, but none of these directly relate to the OP, and have been entire threads at times, so don’t want to hijack.

But not Gitmo.

I don’t think his heart was in it. Or to be more specific, I found that the made concessions to the Republicans far too early on and that the concessions were far too great. He did not fight for the public option the way a real progressive, or for that matter, a person genuinely concerned with reducing the cost of health care, would have.

We still have an elaborate spying infrastructure set up on the American people. Plus, strangers feel our genitals at airports. And not the one’s we’d pick to feel our genitals!

Bully for you! Hot enough fer ya?

So far as I know, Obama has not rejected the notion that we are allowed to imprison without trial persons that some govt. official identifies as a “terrorist.” Have you different information?

Toothless. See J.P. Morgan.

I’ll give you that one, though Obama does not seem to be making any sort of unseemly haste in leaving Afghanistan.

Yes, how much money was spent to help regular people in foreclosures? About $3 billion, I have heard. How much was spent to help banks out? I can’t remember EXACTLY, but I remember the word “trillion.” He has little or no interest in helping out the middle class. He is better than Romney only because Romney and the Republicans want to continue PLUNDERING the middle class.

Labor rights does not apply just to unions. Safety, decent hours, decent pay … it would be nice for American workers to enjoy those benefits.

I think he sees America’s wealthy elite as being much like wealthy elites in places like the Middle East, out solely for themselves.

Now let us return to the subject at hand.

36

I don’t mean nationalistic in pursuing autarchy or xenophobic but using nationalistic rhetoric to push progressive policies and make it look “American as apple pie”. Even more important than making common cause with foreign workers, IMO, is making common cause with workers outside of inner city minorities-the type who voted for Santorum-who in this forum often tend to get dismissed as “rednecks” or “fundies”.

Without continuing a massive hijack…

Incidentally the Tea Party doesn’t much like the TSA either and they violenty opposed the idea of bailing out the banks (which is why Orrin Hatch got primaried). So these ideas aren’t marginalized to a few Progressives.

Such laws currently exist, the main question is one of degree.

37

Tremendous lecture (just under an hour)

Don’t Think Of An Elephant!/ How Democrats And Progressives Can Win: Know Your Values And Frame The Debate: The Essential Guide For Progressives

And more:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=George+Lakoff

38

Don’t kid yourself for a minute that the mainstream media isn’t biased left. Read BIAS by Bernard Goldberg. It will open your eyes.

And your statement about talking points is hogwash.

39

Bernard Goldberg is hardly a neutral observer who can be cited in this context.

And talking points are, at best, half truths. Even half truths are defined as lies. This is true for all talking points on all sides.

40

Bullshit, the mainstream media is OWNED by the plutocrats, just like the right wing media. Watch the Youtube media like theYoung Turks and The Alyona Showon Russia Television (RT), they cover the stories the mainstream media won’t touch and say the obvious things the mainstream commentators won’t say … such as that Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are fucking American heroes!