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Published on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Flares in the Political Dark
The winter solstice of 2009 arrived as a grim metaphor for the
current politics of healthcare, war and a lot more. “In a dark time,”
wrote the poet Theodore Roethke, “the eye begins to see.”
After a year of escalation in Afghanistan, solicitude toward Wall Street and the incredible shrinking healthcare reform, we ought to be able to see that the biggest problem among progressives has been undue deference to the Obama administration.
In recent months, the responses from the progressive base to the Obama presidency have often resembled stages of grief -- with rotations of denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance.
Mobilization of progressive movements to pressurize Obama in the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill has always been essential. It hasn’t happened. Instead, among Democratic loyalists, reflexive support for the latest line from the administration has made it easier for Obama to move rightward.
In 2010, we should concentrate on generating the kind of public information, vigorous debate and grassroots organizing that could shift the center of political gravity in a progressive direction.
At every turn, progressives should be putting up a fight -- not only in all kinds of venues outside the electoral system but also inside the Democratic Party. Winning elections will require doing the methodical and difficult work of running candidates in Democratic primaries, sometimes against entrenched incumbents.
For instance, that’s what stalwart anti-war progressive Marcy Winograd is doing in her challenge to Congresswoman Jane Harman in the Los Angeles area. Across the country, dozens of strong progressives are running for Congress with a real chance to win. They need our volunteer help and our financial support.
In some congressional districts with many progressive voters, blue dog Democrats are running for re-election without any declared primary opposition so far. That should change.
It’s time for progressives to get out there and fight the good fight in election campaigns. We should do what our conservative and centrist and mushy-liberal adversaries least want us to do. They don’t want more progressives to seriously engage in electoral battles.
This year, left to their own devices, the Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House have managed to demobilize the progressive base that swept them into office. The latest nationwide polls are foreshadowing grim consequences; Republicans express far more eagerness to vote in 2010 than Democrats do.
In Washington, the conventional wisdom of top Democratic strategists has run amok, continually splitting the difference with Republicans. All year long we’ve seen Congress undermine basic progressive principles, whether for healthcare or peace or economic justice or environmental protection or civil liberties.
Despite the Democratic Party’s leadership, we have a huge stake in thwarting GOP ambitions and in replacing tepid Democrats with progressives. It might be more comfortable to just engage in the politics of denunciation -- but we also need to change who is casting votes on Capitol Hill.
Among progressives, in these dark closing days of 2009, there’s a surplus of frustration, anger and despair. Let’s transform those downbeat energies into fuel for the imperative political work ahead.
After a year of escalation in Afghanistan, solicitude toward Wall Street and the incredible shrinking healthcare reform, we ought to be able to see that the biggest problem among progressives has been undue deference to the Obama administration.
In recent months, the responses from the progressive base to the Obama presidency have often resembled stages of grief -- with rotations of denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance.
Mobilization of progressive movements to pressurize Obama in the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill has always been essential. It hasn’t happened. Instead, among Democratic loyalists, reflexive support for the latest line from the administration has made it easier for Obama to move rightward.
In 2010, we should concentrate on generating the kind of public information, vigorous debate and grassroots organizing that could shift the center of political gravity in a progressive direction.
At every turn, progressives should be putting up a fight -- not only in all kinds of venues outside the electoral system but also inside the Democratic Party. Winning elections will require doing the methodical and difficult work of running candidates in Democratic primaries, sometimes against entrenched incumbents.
For instance, that’s what stalwart anti-war progressive Marcy Winograd is doing in her challenge to Congresswoman Jane Harman in the Los Angeles area. Across the country, dozens of strong progressives are running for Congress with a real chance to win. They need our volunteer help and our financial support.
In some congressional districts with many progressive voters, blue dog Democrats are running for re-election without any declared primary opposition so far. That should change.
It’s time for progressives to get out there and fight the good fight in election campaigns. We should do what our conservative and centrist and mushy-liberal adversaries least want us to do. They don’t want more progressives to seriously engage in electoral battles.
This year, left to their own devices, the Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House have managed to demobilize the progressive base that swept them into office. The latest nationwide polls are foreshadowing grim consequences; Republicans express far more eagerness to vote in 2010 than Democrats do.
In Washington, the conventional wisdom of top Democratic strategists has run amok, continually splitting the difference with Republicans. All year long we’ve seen Congress undermine basic progressive principles, whether for healthcare or peace or economic justice or environmental protection or civil liberties.
Despite the Democratic Party’s leadership, we have a huge stake in thwarting GOP ambitions and in replacing tepid Democrats with progressives. It might be more comfortable to just engage in the politics of denunciation -- but we also need to change who is casting votes on Capitol Hill.
Among progressives, in these dark closing days of 2009, there’s a surplus of frustration, anger and despair. Let’s transform those downbeat energies into fuel for the imperative political work ahead.
- Posted in
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85 Comments so far
Show AllProgress will never happen through the democrat party.
Solomon is in the darkness of which he speaks.
Right on Buck. The democratic party (another oxymoron!) is not the route to change, reform or any type of salvation from the corporate-controlled empire under which we struggle to survive.
The Obama scam is almost a relief to me because it proves without a doubt that liberational change will NEVER occur within this nominal 2-party system. NEVER. It is a wild goose chase with the survival of the species at stake, and we are set up to lose every time. The D-ticket functions as a siphoning off of transformational energy.
We now have a dem president elected with a landslide majority and initially anyway, almost endless pol capital, and both houses of congress with dem majorities.
Yet we have a continuation of Cheney/rep policy across the board.
The "lesser of 2 evils" dragon has finally been slain, once and for all. Don't let the 'blue dog' excuse be a distraction. With a very few notable exceptions, the dems are ALL 'blue dogs.' Look at their voting records.
The miniscule number of dems worth salvaging should leave the context of the D-party and join the efforts to build a representative alternative. This is the HOPE that rises tantalizingly from the current abyss.
In my opinion, you are positing a false choice. Progressives do not have to choose between either completely abandoning the Democrats in order to build a grassroots third party alternative to the existing duopoly, or focusing purely upon challenging the DLC-"centrist" Democratic Party from within.
I say progressives should do both at the same time.
Bill from Saginaw
The most powerful way to move the Democrats left is to abandon them, either they move or they become history.
Why split your forces? The enemy is too pwerful for anything less than a unified populist front that knows nothing of the old corrupt system.
Yes! and it's much simpler than this highly stylized strategy voting. People want to vote with their hearts and minds. Last year, many progressives, including Solomon, advised against it. Vote for the lesser evil and then "hold their feet to the fire." what fire? and what is this so called fire made of, hot air? You have to use something that will burn. You have to give them reason to vote progressive. They have plenty of $reason$ not to. Calling them up is not real fire. Signing a petition is not real fire. Both are forms of begging.
How about this for fire: If your representative votes to fund these wars, tear up your voter registration card and then call them and tell them what you did - and mean it! Pussy-footing with the Democrats is counter-productive.
"Whenever we compromised, we lost." the Arch Druid, David Brower
Respectfully, Bill from Saginaw, the strategy of buildding a dynamic alternative to the current political establishment will not exactly be a part-time task.
It will require the undivided devotion of a committed cadre of determined people. The old labor jingle said it best "which side are you on?" I myself simply can't waste any more time on the mainstream pol parties. I think we're running out of time to salvage the planet from the effects of rampant greed and aggression. I'm afraid for the future of my grandkids and other people's grandkids.
Is compromise the new word for capitulation?
Although I haven't seen any compromise, I have seen boatloads of capitulation from Democrats approving the Iraq invasion and Medicare drug extortion act in 2003 to serial capitulation that started when Nancy Pelosi made her debut as speaker in November 2006 and announced that "impeachment is off the table".
Supporting progressive and anti-war candidates (they're unfortunately not always the same) is essential, regardless of their party. If no Democrat is anti-war, a third party candidate is necessary. In fact, progressives should finally wake up and abandon the Democratic Party, which long ago ceased any pretensions of being progressive.
Meanwhile, we should also be bombarding the pro-war corporatist-militarist media with protests, complaints, and boycotts (as well as buy-cotts). Next spring's anti-war marches in San Francisco and D.C. should revive massive street protests.
The entire system is rotten: both major parties are merely one huge corporatist-militarist party with corporate media as its propaganda arm, all doing the bidding of their corporate-militarist overlords in service to the corrupt, destructive, imploding U.S. empire. As more and more of us realize and accept this, we need to build just, non-violent alternatives, not merely throw out all the Corporate Tools of Empire masquerading as President, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices.
The progressives along with many new young voters voted the Democrats a clear majority and they sold out to special interests, now you ask that they do it again? How does the saying go: Fool me once.... so on and so forth? Com'on, I thought you were smarter than that!
“The Game is Over In Afghanistan
America’s New War on the Americas hits the ground running in 2010 with Honduras and the new bases in Columbia. Already Pentagon press releases have set-up the Venezuelans as villains. Watch the NY Times the UK Guardian a slip story into their newspapers questioning the motive of Venezuela’s complains of US spy planes violating its sovereign air space.
With the US Secretary of State following the plans of her boss the Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the known confabulator from the Iran-Contra days, The United States of America has its Fourth Fleet threatening all the Americas, but especially Venezuela. Here, are the wars the Obama Administration can win and regain its stature with the American voter a la the Reagan Administration.
As Chile will once again be ruled with the firm hand of its oligarchy, the USAID’s plans push its goals for the same stability for Brazil and Argentina. Only the solidarity between the Mercosul or Mercosur can deter United States intervention, so a major crisis shall be implemented to break that union.
Many other interventions are right now in the works and in the planning for the decade ahead as the Peace movement is distracted entirely on the last war. As Mexico’s electrical workers are locked out, the public electrical grid privatized and the Mexican government privatizes its oil industry, the chaos in Mexico will be used to frighten the Americans in actions that are illegal as the US of A sends troops to restore order in a similar fashion to a century ago.
The difference in this coming decade is that the US Military is mostly a mercenary force and that force may be willing to mutiny in the Americas as the Pentagon runs out of money when resistance overwhelms the Americans plans.
It’s a sorry state of affairs these days as we can see the civilian control of the military is no longer possible. Robert Gates is the de facto military head of state. The War on the Americas has begun in earnest “ Matt Drayton
In order to run progressive candidates in the Democratic primaries, activists must be registered Democrats, otherwise, they don't choose the candidates. Regardless of what party you support (I'm Green), Register D, so you can vote.
When you hear someone b!tching about the choices in the General Election, ask them who they worked for in the Primaries. 99 out of 100 will tell you (proudly) that they don't belong to either of the EVIL major parties. And there you go. There is a process that provides US with candidates, but you have to participate. If you only look at the penultimate outcome, of course your choices won't be to your liking. Progressives need to learn to think and work strategicaly.
One reason the political Center has shifted so far to the Right is that Progressives have opted-out. Less than half of the eligible voters actually vote. And the Right has been very successful at motivating their base. The Left, OTOH, has been very successful at supressing it's base with the circular firing squad routine. It is just the nature of liberal minds that we don't march in step, ever, on anything, whereas, the Right can rely on it's partisans.
Greens need to recruit and run strong Green Party candidates (see gp.org).
A continuation of past failed strategies (working within the Dem Party),
hasn't brought us any closer to ending the wars, providing universal healthcare,
stopping the corporate give-a-ways and bailouts, or saving the planet.
Leave the Past...Build the future!
In CT, there are less than 4000 greens in a state with 2 million voters. A relatively liberal state. I doubt that that 2 in 1000 (.2%) ratio carries through the South and West. We stand zero chance of prevailing in National races at this point. We have had recent successes in putting Greens into seats in local government, New London now has a Green City Councilman and a member of the Board of Education. But we are not able to field a viable candidate for Governor or Congress. We haven't been able to get into the General Assembly, YET.
We did, however, prevent Rob Simmons from continuing his incumbency. Greens were instrumental in coordinating the defeat of this GOP/Spook, working with Labor and MoveOn, we beat him by 99 votes out of almost 100 000. And the Democrat that took his place, while not my first choice, has been very good on progressive issues, very responsive to his Green constituents, not because we threatened him or "showed him who's boss" but BECAUSE we supported him. He knows that the hundred or so Green/P&J activists that dogged Simmons were instrumental, the margin of victory, in his win, we showed up.
But WHY do the Greens have so few members even in a likely Green State like Connecticut?
WHY do the Greens "stand zero chance of prevailing in National(sic) races at this point"?
WHY haven't you even "been able to get into the General Assembly, YET"?
Could it be BECAUSE you and so many other Greens insist upon making the Green Party into an adjunct of the Dem Party in their "lesser of two evils" game with the Repubs?
Speaking for myself and quite a few others I have asked about this, we don't currently support the Greens because of exactly the kind of idiotic action your example represents and you seem to be proud of. If the Green Party is so not a real "political party" and so just another "constituent interest group" that you can actually write "Green/P&J activists", why the hell SHOULD we join you?
Many of us would like a REAL alternative party to the Dems and Repubs.
That means one that has its own candidates and backs them over all others UNLESS some other party gives them a real quid pro quo incentive (like back our candidate A. and we'll back your candidate B) to change this.
I'm not saying the Greens should want or need my support or membership, I just thought it might be helpful for you to know the reason they don't already have it.
-matti.
The best way to evaluate the Green Party is to get involved in your local
area...forget about the hearsay, generalizations, and so-called "inside/outside strategies" with the Ds. If you want a Green Party that runs lots of candidates, without regard to "spoiling" (actually one of the most potent tools we have!), then it's up to YOU to find the Greens and build it into a real political force in your community. Greens are winning political office around the world...even in the U.S...in historical terms, it's only the beginning!
Forget the damn Democrats!! Get a clue. THere is NO DIFFERENCE between one corporate party and the other. We can not 'save' the Democrats working within that party to push it to the left. Can not be done. That party, like the other corporate party, is funded by the top 1% of this nation that are the cause of the shit we are in. Those fat cats are doing just fine, thank you. THey love to send our jobs offshore to take advantage of slave labor and they don't give diddly squat for protecting our planet earth. THey want more money---that's it---they have mental sickness and can never be sated. More, more, more is their mantra---more for them that is.
Forget the Greens too. THey are dead. They are in terrible debt and state after state is going inactive. They died because of the lack of democracy. Took money from the Dems to prevent Nader spoiling a Democratic victory---the 'victory' of O bomb a.
We need many political parties and many independent candidates. First of all we must severely damage the concept of the two party system that has gotten us to the state we are in today. Forget the little D or R after the name of your Congressional Representative. If he/she voted for the bankster bailout, for the surge in Afghanistan and did not support medidcare for all, Single Payer--don't vote for that corrupt person ever again!
In NY, we have a similar system of registration -- unless a voter is a registered Democrat, he, or she, cannot vote in the Democratic primary. After moving out here from Nebraska, I tried to get involved with Greens, but no one ever got back to me. Maybe, today, they are more organized, but I don't know. Friends have told me that they have had similar problems. Anyway, after investigating the NY rules and regulations, and seriously thinking about registering as an Independent, I finally decided to register as a Democrat so that I could actually vote in the primary. When I vote, I make the best choice that I can according to my research on each of the candidates. More often than not, in the general elections, I vote 3rd party.
Good luck!
Even the Pacifica Radio was snookered into believing that Obama's first hundred days were going to duplicate FDR's first hundred days.
It looks like the hapless Democrats are now hoping that Obama will do something in the first thousand days.
like quit?
Pacifica Radio? Who exactly?
I listen to Flashpoints, Hard Knock radio, Guns and Butter, and Uprising. None of the hosts of those shows were under any such illusion.
Letters from Washington: The first 100 Days
Mitch Jeserich, yes I see what you mean.
Well, don't give one more vote to a scrot; DEM or miserepublican incumbent!
Our upbeat energy, to do the imperative work of burying the slimy worthless Democrats in the dustbin of history and move on to a new uncorrupted begining of populist solidarity triumphing over the entrenched corporate plutarchcy.
Glad to see 99% of the posters are ready to progress instead of trying to move the rotten body politic.
When you try to move something throughly rotten it just breaks off in your hands and stays in place.
Even with no statistical chance of an immediate win, crushing defeats of Democrats due to mass progressive abandonment is the strongest way to get the bums to move left, either they move left or they are gone forever.
As of today with the OBomber administration, with an israeli child, Rahm Emmanuel, of an zionist arms dealer terrorist in a major power position, there is very little to lose with a Repulican victory.
Dem/ Repug - flip a coin ! Time IS now for a total PEACEFUL
Revulucion ! Go green/ peace party !
No we can't....
...protect a womans right to choose; get a single-payer healthcare system; stop the phoney "war on terror"; preserve our civil liberties; look back and prosecute Bush crimes; get a medicare buy-in option; get a public option; stop the obscene bankster bonuses; create green jobs; get fair, not free trade rules; stop supporting Israel; pass a free choice labor act; stop secret deals with pharma; get out of Afghanistan and Iraq; stop the obscene use of private military contractors; get a meaningful climate change deal; stop the corporate takeover of everything; cut back on $636 billion defense spending bills; use reconciliation for anything in the Senate; re-import drugs to save consumers $100 billion; make anything in the USA; find anything to buy that's made in the USA; stop the auto based transport system...
Sioux Rose
FALLEN: Great list and powerful satire.
And the Peace Prize Guy refuses to negociate a peace, most conflicting groups are requesting, in Afghanistan or convene a Chavez suggested study committee to analyse Columbian conflicts.
let's not forget that obama got his 1st coup against a democratically elected governemnt in Honduas quicker than Bush got his 1st coup.
If Obama can't stand up for democracy in Honduras - which would have been easy and painless to accomplish we have to KNOW Obama IS NOT FOR DEMOCRACY.
The democratic party sold out the people, with a little help from self-denial from the very people who were sold out.
People who hoped Obama would be different were not looking at the evidence already there that would cause a reasonable person to question the democratic party loyalists claim that Obama would be the 'progressives' solution on issues like the war, health care, corporate corruption.
so it goes
Bumper Sticker -
Support Repulicans
Vote For A Democrat
Norman Solomon: the DNC delegate who campaigned for Obama, denouncing those that critiqued him for this unfortunate lack of analysis and foresight.
Now this doooshbag has the audacity, like the Pope of Hope, to come and write this nonsense?
Please, Norman, just retire and STFU. You have no credibility here.
So, no one can move or grow or admit they were wrong? Progressives need all the help they can get. Why continue to trash those who show signs of seeing the light? Should progressives say to the 70 million (?) Obama voters---"get lost, suckers"? It seems to me that we might need some of them in the future.
I agree one should not commit ad hominem attacks. But one may criticise Solomon for the offering the same old trite useless advice of just work harder with a 99% corrupt organization.
Working within the Democratic party is still stumbling around in the dark or worse, empowering corporate monsters.
It is not worth the digits it is printed with.
Would you say that the D-party was once more Progressive---say in FDR's time? Would you say that the bluedogs/DLC corporatists have moved the party to the right? If you agree with that, then what's wrong with trying to push the party back to the left by supporting Progressive democrats? That seems to be what Soloman is advocating. Are we to jettison the Kucinich's and Feingold's because they're democrats? Maybe, if there really was a third party out there somewhere that could get people elected, I'd say get rid of the D-party. I just don't see it.
You "just don't see it" because you are refusing to see it.
If Kucinich and Feingold would abandon the Dem Party that consistently craps on all that they profess to hold dear, there WOULD be a real "third party"!
These Reps are not constrained by some sort of immovable chains to staying in the Dem Party. They do so because of financial backing and the mistaken strategy that you and Solomon also advocate.
What some of us are saying is:
1. People like you and Solomon have been arguing for such a "progressive takeover" of the Dem Party since at least 1968.
2. 41 years might be a long enough time period to give a strategy before deciding that it is a failure.
3. We should try the new/old strategy of leaving the Dems and forming an independent Progressive Party-type party.
4. The Dems were only "more (p)rogressive" in FDR's time BECAUSE of the Progressive Party, the Socialist Party, and other "true left"/populist parties which forced them to be so or lose the electorate's loyalty and therefore their power.
5. A strategy that demonstrably succeeded is superior to a strategy that has demonstrably NOT succeeded.
-matti.
What do you think will happen if progressives stay home or move to third party candidates in 2010?
The R's win big in 2010, maybe even take over control of congress. Not one person in congress will have a (G) after his/her name. The dominate meme pushed by the corporate media will be that Obama was too liberal, and tried to do too much. So in the next two years he'll have a nice excuse to move further right.
I don't see any viable option other than to support progressive democrats over the bluedog/DLC corporatists.
Give me a third party that can actually get someone elected, and I'd be happy to go that route.
First, you give me a democrat that I can actually support, who won't betray me, who won't make me feel that I threw away my vote.
PS - That's why I vote third party or write in. The democrats can't have a person of integrity, action, and leadership on behalf of the public. Of course, when it comes to helping out the corporate elite they fall all over themselves getting the 'job' done.
Be the change you want. It takes time, but if enough people started voting third party, eventually the third party candidates would become viable and winnable, and certainly more agreeable than the democrats. Nothing is improving under the democrats anyway so you are just throwing your vote away.
www.NotOneMore.US
The big if...
You're right, that is a big IF...
But it hasn't been tried yet. And even if those in power don't yield, that is not the point. It is doing the right thing.
And a further point, it may not succeed. The point is if someone is going to hit you over the head, do you want to give them the stick? I prefer they find their own stick.
I vote third party for many reasons. First, they are the candidates that meet my criteria of minimally acceptable candidate, and usually exceed it.
When people tell me that my candidate can't win, I tell them that they won't be 'winning' when their candidate gets elected.
I like the feeling that I wasn't betrayed by my candidate. And while I recognize that no candidate is perfect, I prefer not to support a process of the lessor evil, or voting against something (the republican party) when in fact the other choice is almost as bad.
Eating slightly less spoiled food is not a big draw for me, just as voting for the lesser evil.
peace
Can Obomber actually run to the right any faster than he is already?
The stratgey is to destroy the dynamics.
R&D leave little in between.
You have nothing to lose but your chains.
During the Depression there were 10 million card carrying communists in the Good ole US of A.
The Red Soviet initiated USA soup kitchens paid for with aristocratic White Russian gold bullion, caused the reactionary USA Congress to enact a law which made the possession of Gold Bullion illegal.
All Power to All People !!!!!!!!!
It is a power tactic to revamp the political scenario.
Either Democratics move left or they are never elected again, thus there is a third party, hopefully of your making.
This new party will take years to grow but will eventually replace the Democratic party in a more left position.
Even a party that steadily obtained a few positions would yeild some power.
This is a peaceful and possible way to change the existing dynamics.
Also many small, but active parties would also be preferably to the system of corporate rule of today.
The problem is that Norman, even though he 'recognizes' the folly of his ways today, will again push the Democratic party in time for the next election. Because after all, you shouldn't vote for the republican party, just someone who will vote like they are in the republican party.
It's called the Charlie Brown syndrome. This is the time that the football won't be snatched away at the last minute. Snatch... HaHa. You lose, again, Charlie Brown. Democrat voters fall for it every time.
It was clear in 2000, 2004, 2008 that the democratic party was serving corporate interests. And the argument that the 'republicans' were worse is not reasonable when you consider that both parties were working against the public's interest by bending laws. Gore had Lieberman as his VP. Kerry is now working on promoting nuclear power under the guise of making the US energy independent, but won't insist that automobiles and trucks get significantly better MPG even though the technology is here.
And again in 2012, people will again hold their nose and vote democrat because of some compromised reason (lesser of 2 evils, Palin etc), despite evidence pointing to the fact that the candidate will not carry out their 'promises.'
Support Republicans
Vote for a Democrat
Name calling is counter-productive and juvenile. Maybe I've succumbed myself, but when I read this from agitkid, I cringe. It's so unhelpful. That said, I don't agree with Norm either. I think we are better off keeping things ....
simple:
Pressure our elected officials by withholding your vote. If they vote for war funding, don't vote for them, period. Same for for this fiasco of a health care bill, no matter what Paul Krugman says. The Obama campaign let a lot of steam out of the pot. An example of what happens when you support the Demo-rats.
If we all did this, it could grow an empowering force. As it is, we are constantly jerked around by the two-party who, BTW, collude! We're hostages, basically. I say, tear up your registration card and go Green. That will get their attention. Calling them up, marching around on the sidewalks, carrying signs, signing petitions are all just various forms of begging (see below), and it has little impact. You have to hit them where it hurts - their job, their position.
"If we can't be strong and uncompromising, how can we expect our elected officials to be?" me
"Whenever we compromised, we lost." the Arch Druid, David Brower
"Begging on our knees only makes us shorter." me
For a clear message, register Green Party. "Independent" reads as moving to the right, or just wishy-washy. Not the way you're feeling, is it?
I'm not particularly interested in being all nice and polite to Mr. Solomon. He has demonstrated his complete lack of vision, lack of a systemic analysis about the Dems, and has had zero vision when it comes to the future, given the stakes.
If calling him a 'dooshbag' bothers you, it's clear we come from very different political backgrounds ( i guess you never watch the Daily Show, because John Stewart is far more offensive than me to many of the Dems).
I want systemic, radical change. I want to delegitimize capitalism and the state. Indeed, if the recent data on global warming is any indication, it may be a prerequisite for survival of our species.
If you think you are going to vote your way out of this mess, I think you have been drinking the Democracy Koolaid for far too long. Elections will not solve our problems.
Solomon is recapping what us Third Party voters asserted over a year ago. Nice to see some people are waking up.
He seems to be saying vote Democratic, which is a waste of energy, how does that coincide with voting third party?
yes but I don't call it third party. Non-Duopoly is more accurate. We don't elect our leaders anyway, they are pre-selected with corporate money. Elections in the USA are the world's most expensive by a huge margin; nothing more than a PR stunt.
when your spouse keeps lying and cheating on you it gets hard to support them and stay with them.
Bye bye democratic majority.
End of story.