But, they ain’t easy even to find any more!
Conservatives have been successful in America because they have seen that many Americans are so bigoted that they will vote against their own financial interests in order to repress a despised minority. So they’ve been able to use the issues of gay marriage and abortion to basically buy off the lower middle and middle middle class. The upper middle class is so close to the upper class that they can smell the money, its enticing odor keeps them safely in the Republican trenches even though they are just a job loss away from being lower middle class.
In America, the political game is always about the middle class because that’s where all the votes are, as the lower class, along with being numerically smaller, is less inclined to vote. Why screw them? They screw themselves! (And of course, suppressing voter rights also works wonders for the Republicans wrt lower class voters.)
Now, we on the progressive end just happen to have all the facts and numbers in our favors. We can point to charts that clearly show the increase in the wealth of the wealthy and the decrease in wealth for the middle class. This should be useful in persuading independent voters who are amenable to reason, but most independent voters are not like Doper independents, who carefully study the candidates and pick the best one with the best platform. Most independent voters are idiots, who are independents primarily because they do not much understand how Democrats and Republicans differ. It is a puzzle that they vote at all, but fact is, these idiots are who swing elections.
For them, we need clear, simple campaign slogans and themes. 99% vs. 1% … excellent! The wealthy are taking all the money, hoarding it while Americans go jobless … also excellent! You can keep the charts and numbers to prove your point to the ones who want proof, but most American voters vote on on the basis of sound bites. That’s why they work. Sad, but true.
Churches are also a huge ally of the conservatives, spewing out hate and bigotry. They are the ones that are keeping the fires lit on abortion and gay marriage, make no mistake. We need to confront the churches that are teaching hatred and bigotry and nail them on it. They ARE vulnerable. Just a week or two I saw a sermon on something called John Hagee Ministries. Hagee’s incredibly oily son Mike delivered he sermon. A lot of it was about the economy. He said the problem with our economy was that “the have-nots are taking too much from the haves”!!! In short, he lied his ass off. The old farts in the pews ate it up. We need to nail these bastards. And they are vulnerable. Churches have a long history of espousing love and and compassion and renouncing bigotry, in general. Well, call them to account on it!
I’ve always said it’s a good idea for the left/Democrats to downplay cultural liberalism and embrace economic populism. (As far as cultural liberalism goes, time and demographics are on the progressive side anyway, we can afford to be patient.) As for immigration, however, I think our course should follow the weight of public opinion – which, among other things (scroll to mid-page) broadly favors legalization and citizenship-tracking of illegals now in the country.
That was so formerly and is so now, but won’t be so much longer. The kinds of bigotry you are describing are on a definite generational decline. Look at the generation gap in public opinion about gay marriage, etc.
Calm down. The screaming won’t help.
Let me give you the overview of the speech I gave (as a candidate) at the my regional democratic convention last year (about this time of year, actually):
Calm down. We’re winning.
Let the Tea Party scream. They’re screaming because we’re winning.
30 years ago Reagan was on his way into office and the ‘conservative revolution’ was coming into play.
So it’s been 30 years of increasingly conservative politics from our opponents.
30 years ago could you imagine the prospect of gays serving in the military openly?
30 years ago could you imagine the casual attitude towards interracial dating and marriage?
30 years ago could you imagine that a black man would be President this fast?
30 years ago could you imagine that there would be three women on the Supreme Court? And that the black man on the court would be the conservative?
It’s not a straight line. And it’s not an easy path. It’s had it’s twists and turns and it’s unpredictable. But it’s happening. We’re winning. Those who hold out that the idea of justice and freedom apply to everyone are winning.
The reason our opponents are becoming increasingly strident is not because they are more powerful. It is because they are panicking. They know they’re losing the fight. Their children and their grandchildren will live in a world they don’t recognize and this scares them. Let them. It’s part of the process.
So work. Work to bring out the dream. We all have to do that. But know that time is on our side.
No, culturally/socially, we’re winning. That will take care of itself. Time is on our side. But the real, important political challenge for the left always has been, and remains, how to fight the economic PTB in our society. And that looks not one jot easier now than ever it did.
What sort of alternative voting systems?
Well if I thought it would take a generation or more for the conservatives to reap the electoral advantages of Citizens United, I’d be a tad more sanguine about the mess we’re in. But i think it may sway the 2012 election and could carry every election thereafter, unless we give serious attention to campaign finance reform.
We aren’t necessarily winning. Nothing takes care of itself. Women’s reproductive rights are still actively being restricted in red states, for example.
To win the fight, we have to define the terms of victory. We need a progressive Fred Luntz.
We need to clarify the terms of victory. Begin by acknowledging that, we’re sorry, but reproductive freedom, gay marriage, gay rights, any kinda rights, gun control, any cultural issue, is of secondary importance and must be of backburnered priority compared to the social-justice and distribution-of-wealth-and-power issues that really matter. That’s what we need to focus on. Break the power of the overclass, and the power of the Neanderthals will soon follow. Not even global warming is as urgent a problem as the existence of the power-structures that make addressing that problem so problematic.
I am totally with you on going after economic issues ahead of social issues, but you know, the overclass is USING social issues against us. They keep putting the “gay marriage” and “abortion” puppets on strings and dancing them before the middle class idjits even as they rob them blind. What’s to keep them from doing it indefinitely? Should we fold on these issues? We will lose a lot of women if we fold on abortion. Dunno about gay marriage.
No, no, we just say, any worthwhile progressive movement will hold the line on all those things, and support demands for advances at the appropriate times; but, we have a whole different set of economic priorities which we need to push firster and harder and always, because resistance is harder and more deeply entrenched and always better funded. And I’m not even talking about socialism, just what the West Europeans call social democracy and which practically all of them have in some form – the resistance to any move in that direction is harder, etc.
How about, the progressive movement should entirely and actively endorse all parts of the agenda of FairVote?
Any strategy designed to create actual progressive outcomes would be seen as a betrayal of the Democratic Party as it is. Trying to win, let alone effect progressive/leftist change, is not the Democratic ethos. The GOP are ideological, partisan, and willing to be extremist. The Democrats are NOT the mirror image of that. They may be partisan, but ideology, extremism, and above all passion are despised as evil.
And the progressives feel stuck with these losers (i.e., people who above all want to lose) because at least they are not the enemy of progressivism the GOP are.
Alternatives:
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Mass murder in the interest of changing the electoral map; usually unworkable for a party out of power, and we don’t have an army.
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Indoctrination of the next few generations through the public schools. The right already assume we are doing it (and note that I am a communist, and I didn’t say, “you”–they assume the hardest hard left are brainwashing their children), and have taken countermeasures for decades, so you may as well do it. In line with this, the end of private primary & secondary education may be* necessary*.
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Electoral reform, to end plurality winner-take-all and create a multi-party system. You’d have to win the war first. The GOP won’t give up their ability to gerrymander themselves unassailable majorities.
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Abandoning the Democratic Party in the short term. Might work, probably should have been done in the 1990’s, when Howard Phillips was pulling the right-wing version of this. Lots of pain in the next ten years, and the DLC may decide that you are a lost cause and go even further right.
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Building a party-internal organization to literally purge the DLC, no matter how much it hurts. The centrists want to be the center, let them build their own center party. Take the fuck over, use loyalty oaths and crypto-fascist tactics like the conservatives live and breathe. Make the Democratic Party ideological, by embracing the idea of internal factions, & fighting as an internal faction. Be nasty.
I probably am forgetting something, but just don’t vote for another Clintonista “community organizer.”
I think this is the one with the best chance of actually working. Unfortunately for progs they would gain control of a now irrelevant party as the U.S. becomes a one party state (or, like you say, the representatives of real power from the Dems form a different party).
OK, my last post was just something crabby I tossed off while watching television (& without reading the thread).
One thing I think could work is reverse gerrymandering. In my state, the GOP have unassailable majorities in both chambers of the legislature even when a majority of voters vote Democratic. What progressives and Dems can do is study the maps when new districts are drawn up and move great numbers of voters out of safe majority-minority districts into swingable GOP districts. “Hard-pressed” voters moving into a new area with new homes might vote for the group that got them there.
- Become an internationalist working-man’s party, throw away race-baiting in favor of class-baiting, take the side of and organize working people whether here or in Latin America, push for free migration and easy naturalization for manual laborers across all borders, basically become–oh, yeah, that’s why I’m a Communist.
Carry on, losers.
The example of the Negro activists in the 1960’s is instructive. Negroes were shut out of both parties, and decided to, in Bayard Rustin’s words, “select the one which stinks least,” & work within that.
Economic progressives don’t quite accept that they are now the outsider minority in this country, as despised as any nigger was in 1960. But in much of the country, that is exactly what they are. The Liberal Consensus is long dead, and never even had a funeral.
Actually, holding a funeral for the Liberal Consensus of Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, and Carter would be a good place to start. How can it rise from the grave if you don’t know it’s buried?
But if you do it, don’t just say, “There was this thing called liberalism once.” Talk about why we had high corporate taxes, high marginal income taxes, and loopholes and shelters to encourage pro-growth behavior. Point out that the policies of the “Club for Growth” get less growth than Truman-style taxation. Point out that even old white conservative (by today’s standards) types like Dick Nixon and Pat Moynihan considered a Basic Income Guarantee, that Truman wanted public hospitals and Johnson wanted Medicare for everybody, not just those who would never work again.
Piss off your own (soon to be former) base of retirees by pointing out that using every wage-earner in the country to fund the health care of retirees and the disabled (i.e., those who will never work again) is worse for business than universal single-payer. Right now the only people saying this are on the right–so the Dems, and the progressives especially, lose anyone with horse sense. The retirees will hate you, curse you, and bite off more young peoples’ fingers. Screw 'em, they’re the walking dead. As of right now, the future belongs to Paul (second coming of Saint Ronnie) Ryan, and he’ll make sure that those who are paying for Medicare now don’t get those benefits, turning your prize program into the generational theft the libertarian right claim it is.
Then you may need some Stokely Carmichaels, those for whom crumbs from the Bourbon Democrats’ table are just an insult. The Communist Party of the United States of America is pretty small and arguably could be repurposed for this, but you might want a new label, something that can move in and out of coalition with the Democrats, sort of like how the TEA Party brands itself.
But it probably does need a veneer of menace, like the Black Panthers and the TEA Party. No one expects the TEA Party on its own to win Congress, but they might shoot somebody–and the Panthers evoked that as well.
Then, after all that, you need your Bayard Rustins and Martin Kings: those who try to drag the Dems (or, heck, the Pubs) into looking out for the interests of working-class voters. But without the education, how will voters know they could do better? And without any place to go to look like a threat, how will you influence anyone in your direction?
Moral suasion is nice. Logic is nice. But politics is about love and fear. Real love is not cheaply bought, and cheap love is fake.
The last thing, the very last thing any Progressive in America do is link up with the Commies which
- Has been thoroughly and completely discredited-see USSR, Cambodia, Poland, PRC, North Korea
- Is the bloodiest ideology in human history-responsible for tens of millions of deaths in every corner of the planet
- The more “pure” communism you try to get -ie Cambodia the bloodier results you get
- Is hated and reviled by the vast majority of the American populace
Nobody except idiots and paranoidacs expect the Tea Party to resort to violence. And the Black Panther were rightfully suppressed by the magistrates of the Republic and many of its leaders-such as Eldridge Cleaver renounced its laughable ideas.