As for the 2008 election, the current Democratic Party strategy of playing to the middle, of giving in to the president, of ducking their responsibility to end the war and to hold the president to account, are going to lose that election. Forcing the party to change course by quitting and threatening to withhold our support is the only thing that can prevent that disaster.
Finally, the primaries. If you live in a state like California, Virginia, New Jersey, South Carolina or New Hampshire, it’s no problem. You’re allowed to vote in a Democratic Party primary even if you are an independent, so go ahead and quit the party and vote in the primary. If you live in a state like Connecticut or my state of Pennsylvania, where you have to be a Democrat to vote in a Democratic primary, and you really want to vote for Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel, or against Hillary Clinton, you still have options. Quit the party now, and when you do it, check with your election officials to find out the last day for registering with the Party in order to vote in the primary. Go ahead and re-register, cast your vote, and then quit again! There are no rules limiting the number of times you can change your party affiliation.
Now it may be that I’m wrong, and that the party leadership is so afraid of progressive ideas, so afraid of taking a stand on an issue of importance like stopping an illegal war, or starting an impeachment proceeding, that if progressives resign from the Democratic Party, that it will continue on its death march. If so, then by quitting publicly, we will have created the historic conditions for establishment of a new party—a genuine progressive party that could threaten the sclerotic two-party fake democracy that we have lived with since at least the mid-1970s.
The Democratic Party has made its position clear: We progressives don’t matter any more. Our job is to hold our noses and vote for the candidates they offer us, and while we can complain all we want about their policies and principles, or lack of them, in the end, we are supposed to ignore our principles and vote for whoever is a Democrat.
Now we have to make our position clear: No! We are no longer Democrats. You can’t have our addresses. You can’t send us solicitations for money. You can’t count on our votes. We are leaving the party, and until you end funding the criminal war in Iraq and bring all American troops home, and until you start impeachment hearings against the most criminal president and vice president this nation has ever known, we are gone.
Quit this party!
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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