We're Just Not Trying Hard Enough

It’s laughably easy to imagine a majority party that staunchly backs a woman’s right to choose, supports gay marriage, appeals to African Americans and Hispanics with a carefully selected set of valence issues—and quietly cooperates in dismantling the social safety net under the guise of “reforming” it.

  Billmon

Dear Billmon: We don't have to imagine.

It’s easy to imagine such a party because we already have one.

Oh. Okay.

But I can think of two specific reasons to think a more progressive Democratic Party might be possible to build:

The Democrats (or at least the Obama machine) has re-learned how to organize, and taken it high tech. If those tools could be applied successfully at the local level, and/or by allied forces (unions, nonprofits, etc.) maybe the party itself could develop the grassroots muscle the unions once provided—which in turn could be used to advance an economic agenda, not just win elections.

Yeah. Like “Occupy Wall Street” you mean? Well, they're still amongst us at least,if not very visible, I guess. Oh, wait. The key word there is “successfully” eh? It's kind of difficult when the FBI is in cahoots with the opposition, though.

(And as for unions?  I think we can see by our history that all good things must come to an end once someone sees the personal benefit of corrupting greed and politics.)

Call me pessimistic, but I don't think there'll be much of a progressive party until things get much, much worse here. And maybe not even then, but if Congress and the Executive can't get the howler monkeys in their midst under control, things just might get that bad.  Allowing the single-minded righteous right so much power in order to garner votes may in the end be their downfall. We shall see. Or maybe the next generation shall see.

On the other hand, once we have had enough generations get used to and accept the government's control over them (out of fear of the terrorists, or each other), it could be centuries before an equivalent to the recent "Arab Spring" happens in this country.

The white-collar professionals and paraprofessionals who have defected to the Democrats on cultural grounds are also now in danger of being proletarianized. Technology is rendering their skills (e.g. medical diagnostics, legal research, engineering design, etc.) obsolete. This might make them amenable to a more progressive economic approach.

No. That's wishful thinking. Do those people even exist? Surely not in any meaningful numbers. And what will more likely happen is they'll be fighting each other and the extant proletariat over scarce jobs. And furthermore, once you become proletarianized, you become politically powerless in today's American culture.

We all know the obstacles: A sluggish, corporate-controlled media that likes the status quo just fine, thanks; billionaire donors with money to burn (almost literally, in Sheldon Adelson’s case); a largely de-unionized white working class that clings to the GOP even more tenaciously than it does to its guns and religion.

And thanks for making my point.

Modern technology notwithstanding, there are no magic wands, just updated versions of the same old democratic (small d) tools: organize, agitate, contribute, vote. But it might not hurt to remember that the original progressives, the people who built the unions and fought for the New Deal, did what they did with those same tools.

Pardon me again for being pessimistic, but that was before the corporatization of America took on such monstrous proportions; before the CEO to laborer wealth was so vastly out of proportion; before the media were just another arm of the government; and before the US was a police state and citizens had no real rights and can be spied on, targeted, and even killed by their government with no recourse. It's a much, much different world now.

In any case, we have to try.

Perhaps.

Sometimes, I still think that way.  But I'm never sure the reasons for it are any more valid than trying to fly without some external apparatus given our present physical configuration.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.