Our own T-party?
by Tom Sullivan
Bill Curry, two-time Democratic nominee for governor in Connecticut and a former Clinton White House advisor, explores how progressives might reinvigorate the "corrupt and empty husk" of the Democratic Party. Somehow the four groups he believes make up the Democratic voting block must learn to play nice together:
The first likes the Democratic Party and is, as it says, ready for Hillary. The second works with Democrats but puts Hillary somewhere in a line that runs from ‘flawed candidate’ to ‘spawn of Satan.’ The third thinks Democrats hopelessly corrupt and backs independents or third parties. The fourth has given up on politics. If the last isn’t the largest group it’s the fastest growing. If we don’t get it back, we don’t win.
Count me in the second group, I guess. But it's the Monday after the Super Bowl and the weekly work commute beckons, so I'll just leave you with this:
Two points mean even more than all of that. The first is that Democrats can’t count on a flood tide of presidential turnout. As with our economy, the crisis of our democracy is structural, not cyclical. In 2014 millions of voters stayed home not out of laziness but as a conscious choice born of profound civic alienation. It won’t do just to scold them. We must persuade them that what we have on offer is genuine reform. The Democratic establishment is ill equipped to make that case.
The second point is that far from being a threat, a free and open debate progressive debate may be the Democrats’ salvation. Democrats are supposed to be the party of change but life in the bubble taught them to resist change. For nearly a century progressives made the policies that Democrats made into laws. As they became domesticated to Washington and the Democrats, they stopped challenging their keepers with new ideas and reminders of old values. A once vital symbiosis turned morbidly parasitical. It’s time to get things back the way they were.
Building an independent progressive movement will take groups with the ability to push Democrats from outside party structures, groups like MoveOn.org or Working Families Party or 350.org, Curry believes. This is the stuff of endless listserv discussion, but it's a discussion worth having.
It's "Heigh-Ho" time.