Glenn Greenwald has just
written
that President Obama, by playing a leading role in pushing for cuts in
Social Security benefits as part of the whole kabuki-theater drama over
the debt ceiling, and the alleged crisis of America’s national debt, has
cut out the “soul” of the Democratic Party.
Let’s start by saying that if the Democratic Party ever had a soul,
it was sold long ago to the Evil Ones who run corporate America, and
especially the horned legions on Wall Street.
But the point Greenwald
makes is a good one: Obama and his backers in the Democratic Party in
Congress -- the power brokers like Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy
Pelosi, and the sell-outs like Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Kent Conrad
(D-ND) and Mark Warner (D-VA), who are the Democratic half of the
so-called Gang of Six currently putting forward a proposal to raise
working class taxes while cutting taxes for the rich, and to slash $3
trillion from programs that are critically important for the poor and
the sick -- have abandoned any commitment they and the party might once
have had to working class America and to the poor and have gone over
completely to a strategy of trying to compete with Republicans in
currying the favor of the rich and the powerful.
There is at this point only one thing to do, and it’s not to
encourage some liberal figure to run a quixotic primary campaign against
Obama for the 2012 Democratic Presidential campaign. Nor is it to write
a letter to the President vowing not to vote for any reduction in
Social Security Benefits, as 61 House members of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus did late this week. It is to move forward with a strategy to develop a fully-competitive
progressive Third Party to run races in every Congressional district
and for every Senate seat up for grabs in 2012, and to run a serious candidate for President.
There is only one way this could be done, I believe, and that would
be for the labor movement, or at least those unions that realize that
it’s over, in terms of getting any substantive support from the
Democratic Party anymore, to make a bold offer to members of the
Congressional Progressive Caucus to bolt the Democratic Party, en
masse, and together, with the help of existing progressive organizations
and citizens, to form a new American Progressive Party.
The advantages of this approach are enormous and self-evident. Such a
party would begin with the edge of having incumbents already sitting in
Congress, who would be running not for election but for re-election,
who had a track record in their districts, access to money, and with
plenty of name recognition. There would be little downside in terms of
lost power in Congress, since the Democrats have been pathetic in that
regard already: the Republican minority has stymied any action on almost
any front in the Senate, while in the House, Republicans already run
the show, and Democrats are basically passive spectators to the lunacy
on display.
A dramatic break-away of the Progressive Caucus, or even of a
sizable percentage of that 76-member group (Sen. Bernie Sanders of
Vermont is already outside of the Democratic Party fold), and the
formation of a new political party, would be a huge political story. So
would any announcements by major trade unions that they were switching
their allegiance and financial support to such a new party.
It would generate an enormous wave of enthusiasm among an electorate
that is clearly fed up with the current political duopoly. Disaffected
young people, frustrated, angry and depressed workers, abandoned
minorities, educated elites, activists of all stripes, and movement
organizations around issues like peace, the environment, women’s rights,
etc., would be re-energized. Even the corporate media, in the control
of the very corporate entities that have been usurping control of the
American government, would have to report on such a political
earthquake.
I don’t know if such a thing is possible. It could be that even
within the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the lure of easy corporate
cash, and the comforts of incumbency won through going along with the
leadership, are too attractive, and the risks of rebellion too great,
for its members to follow what, clearly, was once their hearts. It
could be that the leaders of America’s trade unions are too lazy and
coddled in their dues-financed offices to do the right thing by their
members.
But I do know this -- if there were a any way to quickly create a
genuine threat to the wretched “two-party” system that has been leading
this country down the road to ruin, to imperial misadventure after
misadventure, to bankruptcy and to eventual Third World status and
perhaps even to fascism, this would be it. If there were a way to shake
Americans out of their torpor, pull them off of their sofas and away
from their screens and bring them out onto the street and to get them
passionately involved in politics again, this would be it.
Certainly there are myriad ways such a movement could founder.
Dealing with the politics of Israeli/US relations would be one big
hurdle, since many in the Progressive Caucus are beholden to AIPAC. The
best idea would be to keep the new party focussed on domestic
issues--especially labor rights, women’s rights, support for the poor
and elderly, job creation, and tax equity, and on education and
energy/environment issues. The one global issue that should be a core
position of any real progressive party would be ending the wars, closing
foreign bases and slashing military spending.
I’m not sure how such a movement could be started. Perhaps Sen.
Sanders, who long ago showed the way to run and win House and Senate
elections as an independent and a self-described socialist, could start
the ball rolling by contacting some of his caucus comrades and any labor
activists and leaders he’s close to, and proposing the idea. Maybe
Elizabeth Warren, who was betrayed and trashed by Obama after developing
the idea for a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and who is said to
be eyeing a run for the Senate seat held by Massachusetts Republican
Scott Brown, would decide running on such a party’s ticket would be a
satisfying form of payback, and could tip more principled members of the
caucus, like Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Keith Ellison (D-MN) or
Shiela Jackson Lee (D-TX), to come over. (Kucinich, who has been
humiliated by his party repeatedly despite being one of its smartest and
most principled members, and who has now been gerrymandered out of his
job, should finally be willing to stop helping the Democratic Party
pretend it is a progressive organization, and should walk out.)
However it happens, the time to move is now, so that the hard but
essential work of getting the new party on every state’s ballot can
begin.
