It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The only thing more depressing than watching the Democratic Party cower cluelessly in a corner while the country goes to hell in a hand-basket is reading the pathetic pleas of the liberal punditocracy exhorting their party to grab the reins and forge ahead. I hate to be the one to break the news to you, folks, but your horse is dead. Flogging it is unlikely to lead to its revival.
What will it take for you to understand this?
How many golden opportunities can the Democrats blow before you get a clue?
If your party can’t make hay out of illegal wire-tapping and torture, the bloody mess in Iraq, the Abramoff scandal and Hurricane Katrina, then isn’t it time to consider an alternative?
If you really care about your country and the future of the planet, consider your options. But understand that trying to reform a stagnant, out-of-touch, corporatized culture from within isn’t one of them.
I pity you. I do. But I pity our country and the people suffering in Iraq in more so. We need you. We need you to get a clue and jump ship. The Democrats aren’t going to change—at least not the way you’re going about it.
You know who you remind me of? Charlie Brown. Poor old Charlie Brown. He really believed that Lucy was going to hold the football still when he ran up to kick it. He believed it each and every time. The next time, he told himself, will be different. You guys are the same. You think the Democrats are going to change—they’ll get a spine, they’ll stand up to Bush, they’ll oppose the war, they’ll nominate a presidential candidate who doesn’t mimic the Republicans. Charlie Brown thought Lucy was going to change and that she wouldn’t yank the ball away at the last second. Yet all of you wind up flat on your backs, looking like fools.
The best thing that could possibly happen to the Democrats would be for all of you progressives and liberals to bolt from the party. That’s the only way the Democrats will change.
The Democratic Party isn’t really the place for you anyway. They don’t share your values. Why try to reform a party that supports the war in Iraq, the so-called Patriot Act and the corrupt, cash-drenched culture of corporate-sponsored campaigns when you have a viable alternative?
The Green Party is the place to be. Greens support Clean Elections, publicly funded campaigns, universal health care and renewable energy. The Green Party has consistently opposed the senseless slaughter in Iraq and the evisceration of our civil rights at home. When the Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election in Ohio and John Kerry turned tail and ran before all the voters were counted, it was the Greens who stayed behind to demand a recount and clean up the mess.
The Greens have put hundreds of people in office from Hawaii to Maine. Even with the decks stacked against us, we’ve elected mayors, judges, city councilors and state legislators. As our country moves towards genuine democracy, embracing voter-owned elections and instant runoff voting among other essential electoral reforms, we’ll see more and more Greens elected to higher and higher offices.
Despite a track record of success, the Greens may still seem like a long shot to some people. At least the Green Party is in the race and running. That dead horse of yours isn’t getting up anytime soon.
Blair Bobier is not now nor has he ever been a member of the Democratic Party.
My own resolve is to give the Dems one last chance to win a majority in 06 to stop the bleeding. Whatever happens, a Democratic majority in one or both of the houses of Congress will stop the horrendous neo-con agenda and stymie the boy king in his power grab. With the future of the country at stake, splitting off the progressive wing of the Dems spells disaster for our chances to stop them, reduces to zero our chances for impeachment of the traitorous administration, and leaves us wandering in the wilderness until 08 when the Repugs will field another right-winger disguised as a "moderate", like McCain, or, God help us, Condi.
I have said everything you stated in your article, but I can't make the jump to supporting Greens for national office because of the handicaps we work under with the stacked two-party system. A national campaign for Instand Runoff Voting should be undertaken first, so that progressives don't neuter themselves by committing to a third party candidate.
I totally agree that the disgusting timidity of the Democrats makes such a move tempting, but it spells disaster under current election procedures. I don't expect great things from them even if they win a majority, but at least they will slow the two-handed looting of our treasury and the aggressive foreign policy that has brought us nothing but shame and disrepute. And they might summon up the nerve to take the emperor on in an impeachment trial.
by
Maturin42 (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments)
on Saturday, March 18, 2006 at 8:38:01 AM
I was very satisfied with Mr. Bobier's invitation to Democratic progressives to go Green. It is refreshing and I think constructive to see someone from the Greens make an honest pitch.
I call myself a Social Democrat and consider myself a political heir of the Stevenson-Humphrey-RFK mold Democrat who wants to use this party not just to win elections, but to reshape this society.
So far, since '94 the GOP has been very successful in reshaping the society to fit their goals.
The GOP has emasculate the labor movement through political attacks and through the institution of employment at will.
The GOP has severely curtailed citizens' rights to redress from injury inflicted by industry through the curtailment of torts in state courts.
The GOP has limited creativity in children and is fostering in-the-box thinking with the No Child Left Behind pressurised testing program.
The GOP said the government was overcharging for services and has shifted the tax burden from its constituency to the poor and to future generations in the guise of tax cuts.
Worst of all the GOP has begun and continues to prosecute a futile, bloody and costly war that is decimating a people who had no capacity to harm us.
In the face of all this where have the Democrats been? Have they consistently and unamimously opposed these measures?
Have they formulated a comprehensive and detailed counter agenda that voters could compare to the GOP initiatives and choose?
Have they used their leverage to shut down the government and force the GOP majority to its knees?
The answer to all three of these is clearly no, no and no. Because of the ubiquity of no as the answer for these questions the frustration on the left with the Democrats is palpable and growing.
So how can any self-respecting leftie stay with the Democrats and call upon others to stick as well.
Because of the nature of American government.
Our system is a Republic that makes elections and office holding into something resembling a zero sum game. That is to say, you win or you lose. If the left divides itself from the moderates who like us we will always lose.
The GOP has been successful because they have united the disparate elements of the right and attracted enough moderates to get elected and hence to get to use the institutional powers of the government to enact their agenda.
The Democrats have been unsuccessful because the left remains disunited and is umwilling to take measures to attract and hold moderate support.
Voting Green may feel good, but it only assures that the GOP will come away with the biggest chunk of votes and ALL OF THE PIE.
We can only win by creating a coalition between all the elements of the left and left-leaning moderates.
We outnumber the right, but the right is better organized, more cohesive and have built in instittutional advantages, like the electoral college and the Senate that we must overcome to govern.
If the disparate elements of the left were working the hustings, registering voters, solicting funds,recruiting candidates and trying to attract and hold moderate support in the manner of the their right wing counterparts in the GOP, they would look like, oh Chuck Schumer, Hilary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein and Harry Reid.
Try it, get off the blog, go to a meeting and get out into people's homes. You will find the political climate much more to your liking than you would expect. The public's relies on government much more than one would know from the media. The public wants the government involved in their lives. Bushite big government conservatism shows that.
The left's first mission is to undo the damage that the GOP has done, the second mission is to establish a viable and robust center-left governing coaltion, then, if we want, we can get into defining a cohesive idealogy from the programtic initiatives we will have passed in governing America.
People want to talk about government and they want change. We need to get out into our neighborhoods and offer them that change. Democrats are there and doing it.
I would love to say that it doesn't matter if if Greens or Democrats, that there is plenty of room for us all, but over and over and over again, the disunity of the left has contributed disproportionately to the GOP electoral juggernaut.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, New York
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Saturday, March 18, 2006 at 3:42:18 PM
It is time for Charlie Brown to have Snoopy hold the ball, or to have Charlie Brown change his kicking target from the ball to kicking Lucy in the rear-end.
Why should Democrats jump to another party, when it needs to get rid of the Democrat traitors who give into Republican control? Feinstein is a perfect example, along with Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry who became a War Monger at the wrong time, at the wrong place.
Democrats wanted an anti war candidate, and John let everyone down. He was a lie.
Just because Democrats have been getting the shaft these past few rounds is no indication that the party should disband. On the contrary, we have learned from the happenings. We have recognized the problems, and who is causing those troubles to the core of the Democrat party.
We will organize and give the boot to those who have handed Bush his agenda of murder and crime, and making we the people his bankroll.
If anything my idea is that Greens should leave and join the Democrats. How does it look, that a Democrat should leave the party to join the Greens, to have the Greens run a candidate that use to be a Democrat?
Oh! Well heck he is nothing but a Democrat. Hey everybody the Greens are not Greens, they are really Democrats. They just changed their names.
But when a Green becomes a Democrat, there is no such association. By bringing Greens into the Democrat Party, we have more of a fighting chance, than Democrats becoming Greens.
Frankly Democrats will never leave their party if they have ambitions of running for office, or even working in the party.
The Green light is for Democrats not Democrats for the Green light.
For once I'd like to beat a dead elephant.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Sunday, March 19, 2006 at 5:38:07 AM
