Has Bill Curry been reading the posts in our group or what? In his recent article, the (former?) Democrat argues that progressives must vacate the Democratic Party and build political institutions of their own. Bernie Sanders could be the catalyst for this on a mass scale, if he wants to be. Or, he can join the Democrats and lose to Hillary Clinton in the primary and accomplish nothing. Excerpt: The vital task for progressives isn’t reelecting Democrats but rebuilding a strong, independent progressive movement. Our history makes clear that without one, social progress in America is next to impossible. For 100 years progressive social change movements transformed relations between labor and capital, buyers and sellers, blacks and whites, men and women, our species and our planet. But in the 1970s progressives began to be co-opted and progress ceased. Their virtual disappearance into the Democratic Party led to political stultification and a rollback of many of their greatest achievements. Much is written of the rise of the right, but very little of the fall of the left. We’re apt to see the left’s decline, if we do see it, as a consequence of the right’s superior funding, organizing and messaging, of the corporate dominance of all politics, and of white backlash against government, liberalism or modernity itself. It’s a bad analysis. The left’s fall is as much a cause as an effect of what ails us. Middle-class anger isn’t about race, taxes, social services or social change. It’s mainly about middle-class decline and public corruption. Democrats talk a lot about both problems — but if they were really trying to solve either one, we’d all know it. The prevailing analysis fosters passivity. Whenever people speak of forces rather than choices it’s a sure sign they aren’t about to do anything. Progressives who blame their losses on globalization, white backlash or money in politics are less apt to focus on the one thing they alone control: their own choices. It also fosters denial. We know there can’t be a strong middle class absent a strong government to help create and sustain it. Social Security, Medicare, civil rights and labor laws, public education and market regulation are middle-class foundations. In the late ’70s they buckled and the middle class buckled with them. alternet.org/time-abandon-democrats?akid=12621.100013.AsyIxI&rd=1&src=newsletter1029378&t=6&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 03:32:33 +0000
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