It could have been different. When the Democrats swept into power, they had a mandate for bold progressive change. They could have enacted, with broad Center-to-Left popular support, a Green New Deal to address the interrelated crises of energy, climate, and economic depression. Instead of bailing out the big banks and automakers, they could have nationalized them on the cheap when they were insolvent. Public banks could have then restructured millions of mortgages on affordable, long-term, fixed-rate terms for homeowners facing foreclosure. The automakers could have been retrofitted to produce electric cars, mass transit, wind turbines, and solar panels just as the federal government had them make tanks, trucks, and airplanes for World War II. With investments from public banks and federal infrastructure spending guaranteeing a market for a green reconstruction of the nation's energy and transportation systems, US manufacturing, jobs, and the whole economy could have been renewed on a sustainable basis.
It could have been different. But what to do now?
Some progressives are rallying to the defense of the Democrats, defending the indefensible as the lesser evil to Republican reaction. They want to "save the Obama Presidency" no matter what he does. This approach will only discredit the Left and demoralize its voters, who will sit out the 2010 elections in large numbers. It will also lose much of the independent Center, which will swing back to the Republicans if only in disgust and protest.
Other progressives say it's time to challenge conservative Democrats in the primaries. But it was the progressive Democrats in office who never planted their flag or refused to compromise any further while Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress made one concession after another to Republicans and Blue Dogs on the stimulus bill, health care, labor law reform, global warming, and the wars. Progressive Democratic politicians went along with the concessions because they know, as well as conservative Democrats know, that the Left has nowhere else to go with their votes.
Another school of progressives says it is time to build protest movements that can make the Democrats live up to their reform promises, citing how the labor movement pushed through New Deal reforms in the 1930s. These progressives forget that the impact of the labor movement was multiplied tremendously by the election of many third party progressives as Representatives, Senators, and Governors. By early 1935, Floyd Olson, the Farmer-Labor Governor of Minnesota, Robert La Follette, Jr., the Progressive Governor of Wisconsin, and Huey Long, the "Share Our Wealth" Democratic Senator from Louisiana, were all potentially powerful populist third party presidential candidates. Democratic National Committee polling found such an electoral challenge might cost Franklin Roosevelt the election in 1936. This third party electoral threat played a major role in instigating the more progressive Second New Deal of 1935. As the Works Progress Administration, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act were enacted that year, the third party movement subsided.
No doubt social movements and protest demonstrations are needed. But without an independent progressive electoral alternative, the Democrats know they can take the votes of progressive social movements for granted. Witness the failure of the massive anti Iraq war demonstrations in early 2003 to move the Democrats to take an antiwar stand. The Democrats voted funding for Bush's war throughout three national election cycles because they knew the peace movement would support them anyway.
What is missing is the political independence of progressives. Progressives need to build independent social movements, not movements dependent on electing and lobbying Democrats. And the independent social movements need their own party to exercise their own independent power. With a powerful party on the Left, the Democrats will no longer be able to take progressive movements and votes for granted. The Left will be able to speak directly to the people with its own voice, for its own program, on its own power, without having their progressive demands mistranslated and watered down by Democratic politicians who appeal to their Right while they count on their captive voters on the Left.
A strong Left party would also win over many independents in the Center, the largest bloc of voters. Polling shows these independents would prefer a Green New Deal of public jobs, health care, and enterprise to the Democrats' tribute payments to big business and the Republicans' domestic spending cutbacks that will devastate public services and worsen the interrelated crises of energy, climate, and economy.
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