The difference between parties and movements is simple: Parties are loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda; movements are loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions it. This is one of the few enduring political axioms, and it explains why the organizations purporting to lead an American progressive "movement" have yet to build a real movement, much less a successful one.
Though the 2006 and 2008 elections were billed as progressive movement successes, the story behind them highlights a longer-term failure.
During those contests, most of Washington's major labor, environmental, antiwar and anti-poverty groups spent millions of dollars on a party objective -- specifically, on electing a Democratic president and Congress. In the process, many groups subverted their own movement agendas in pursuit of electoral unity.
The effort involved a sleight of hand. These groups begged their grassroots members -- janitors, soccer moms, veterans and other "regular folks" -- to cough up small-dollar contributions in return for the promise of progressive movement pressure on both parties' politicians. Simultaneously, these groups went to dot-com and Wall Street millionaires, asking them to chip in big checks in exchange for advocacy that did not undermine those fat cats' Democratic Party friends (or those millionaires' economic privilege).
This wasn't totally dishonest. Many groups sincerely believed that Democratic Party promotion was key to achieving progressive movement causes. Additionally, during the Bush era, pushing progressive causes and helping Democrats was often one and the same, because those causes primarily indicted Republican obstructionists.
But after the 2008 election, the strategy's bankruptcy is undeniable.
As we now see, union dues underwrote Democratic lawmakers who today block serious labor law reform and ignore past promises to fix NAFTA. Green groups' resources elected a government that pretends sham "cap and trade" bills represent environmental progress. Health care groups, promising to push a single-payer system, got a president not only dropping his own single-payer promises, but also backing off a "public option" to compete with private insurance. And anti-war funding delivered a Congress that refuses to stop financing the Iraq mess and an administration preparing to escalate the Afghanistan conflict.
Of course, frustrated progressives might be able to forgive the groups who promised different results, had these post-election failures prompted course corrections.
For example, had the left's preeminent institutions responded to Democrats' health care capitulation by immediately announcing campaigns against these Democrats, progressives could feel confident that these groups were back to prioritizing a movement agenda. Likewise, had the big anti-war organizations reacted to Obama's Afghanistan escalation plans with promises of electoral retribution, we would know those organizations were steadfastly loyal to their anti-war brand.
But that hasn't happened. Despite Democrats' health care retreat, many major progressive groups spent the summer cheering them on, afraid to lose access and, thus, Beltway status. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that MoveOn.org has "yet to take a clear position on Afghanistan" while VoteVets' leader all but genuflected to President Barack Obama, saying, "People (read: professional political operatives) do not want to take on the administration."
In this vacuum, movement building has been left to underfunded (but stunningly successful) projects like Firedoglake.com, Democracy for America, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and local organizations. And that's the lesson: True grassroots movements that deliver concrete legislative results are not steered by marble-columned monoliths, wealthy benefactors or celebrity politicians -- and they are rarely ever headquartered in Washington. They are almost always far-flung efforts by those focused on real-world results, not partisan vanity -- those who don't care about congressional cocktail parties or White House soirees they were never invited to in the first place.
Only when enough progressives realize this truism, will any movement -- and any significant change -- finally commence.
Dean and Kucinich are real people's candidates, which is why the MSM and DLC DINO's block them at every turn.
Kucinich/Dean 2012!
-Dennis Kucinich
Best speech given at 08 Dem Convention
Our party will never be strong unless we bring them in line. The only thing that gets their attention besides money is votes. I threatened my blue dog with loss of votes if he doesn’t back his party this time.
If the party (Dean, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid threaten them by saying they will not support them with money and will back their challengers in the primaries if they do not fall in line it will get their attention. It’s called twisting their arms.
After 8 years of the conservative democrats voting with and enabling bush policies, if they continue to vote against their own party what good are they?
We are just living in a dream world that anything has changed from when bush was in power if the same people (conservative dems and republicans) control our government no matter who is in power.
President Obama has NO movement left. He's shown he was either a fraud in his campaign last year or a coward this year. Instead of standing up for the people who spent hours and precious dollars supporting him, he immediately turned his back on them and began shilling for corporations.
When he backstabbed the gay community by endorsing the vile and unnecessary legal brief to uphold DOMA everyone should have been asking themselves, "Wait... if he can backstab his supporters so easily, what does that portend for the future?" Well now we see with health care that we cannot trust him because he either didn't believe his campaign speeches or he wasn't willing to stand up and fight for what he said he believed in.
The Democrats should see President Obama as a waste of time and energy -- the real third term of Bill Clinton.
His "movement" is a shell of its formal self because HE turned his back on it..
Let us know when the Kool Aid wear off.
Moral of the story: support policies, not politicians, not even parties.
Thank you. That was valuable.
And I agree. Far from not being patient enough the real progressives and liberals the left gave Obama too MUCH room. There should have been a general uprising when he named his financial team of wall street enablers and cronies. Then by the time he started covering up war crimes we would have had the proper mind frame to make a difference.
True enough, BUT Progressives are tied to Democrats and must abjure Republicans.
It is always the case that if a Demo is elected, Progressives will claim that said person
is one of US. How else could said person have been elected? That happens to be
nonsense, but it pleases the faithful to believe it whole-heartedly. The fringes
nominate, the center elects!
If TheBushYears taught us nothing else, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid & relentless in your sales pitch & tactics. It's not that Bush&R0ve were geniuses & knew something that nobody else knew; Bush&R0ve were just more ruthless (clumsy & careless many political graybeards would say) in doing what politicians & the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans.
Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine & the oldest, most experienced politicians in our nation's history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush&Cheney off the table & have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches&pitchforks?
Obama&Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.
The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but that they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them in spite of their failure to deliver on any of our alleged shared objectives.
This is not a fluke, not a mistake, not unintentional. I've talked about this since the DLC seized control of the Democratic Party in the late 1980s.
Their intention is to move the Democratic Party to the right by alienating, marginalizing, breaking up the different interest groups within the liberal base of the Democratic party (civil libertarians, anti-war, pro-choice, etc.), drive them out of the party and bring moderate Republicans (both politicians who can't deal with the Republican Party's base, the evangelical Christians, who are controlling their party and moderate Republican voters, like Susan Eisenhower) into the Democratic Party. To have a centrist party which would govern for 100+ years.
This was the Clintons' plan (and why I think Bill Clinton was so angry with Obama) because Obama stole the plan with a minor change -- Obama is going for a couple of special interest groups within the Republican Party in a bigger way (defense industry hawks) and one of which Clinton could never hope to bring over (Christian Republicans).
Some hard choices lie ahead for the American Left ... do we cross our fingers and hope that the Democratic Party allows us a seat at the table, or do we go our own way?
Policy is always more important than party.
To abandon the Democratic Party to the DINOs means decades more (if not forever) of corporate rule.
I was wildly enthusiastic about Obama, and still believe he'll do good things, but I'm thoroughly disappointed in the agenda so far, from failure to get serious financial regulation to a terribly crippled health reform effort, to the escalating war in Afghanistan and a scarcely diminished one in Iraq.
Go to YouTube and rewatch his speeches throughout the campaign, with what you know now. He talked precisely, deliberately, like a lawyer being deposed, watching every word he said, not wanting to get caught later. When his dissatisfied supporters would say, "But that's not what you promised during the campaign!", he could say, "Yes it was -- You mistakenly inferred a meaning that I didn't intend. Your bad, not mine"
http://bit.ly/fxv3G
(satire)