Yet still many Democratic voters fear a takeover by the Republicans. The best defense against that, they seem to think, is to give their full support to the Democratic Party with no questions asked, no demands made. Democrats in Congress and state legislatures no doubt love this cushy situation. It's easy to run for public office when you're the lesser of two evils for so many people. A Democratic candidate doesn't have to do very much to get registered Democrats to vote for him. All he has to do is point at the Republican and mutter, "Hey! This guy is even more evil than I am!"
The Democratic and Republican parties are the problem. A new, independent political party is the solution.
This is not only the right thing to do--I'm convinced it's the only thing that's going to work. One progressive candidate is not enough. We need a party--a small army of independent, progressive candidates for lots of different offices at all levels of government, running on pretty much the same bundle of proposals.
We need a party because electoral campaigns are so much work that they require the contributions of many, many people. We need the organization, the efficiency--the simple, rational division of labor--that this collective will provide. Above all, we need a party to hold candidates accountable to us. We need to know that our candidates are not lying to us, that they have not promised anything to those rich, greedy old white men who own the two major parties and who have come close to destroying American democracy.
Bernie Sanders was once a kind of socialist and nominally independent of the two major parties. Now he's just another Democrat. By deciding to run in the Democratic Party primaries, Sanders is marching off in the wrong direction. He should be leading us out of bondage, not back to it. If he wants to join up with Pharaoh's army, that's his prerogative. But we don't have to follow him. We can break free--and we can start doing it right now.
But we can't let anybody do it for us. We have to do it ourselves.
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