But due to the size of the country, due to regulations that heavily favor the two party system, and due to fragmentation of political culture in the US, building a third party from the ground up is also nothing more than a long shot, even with a partially collapsed economy! To say that real democracy is feeble in the US would be an understatement.
So, what has to happen is that the existing progressive representatives (about 60 of them) need to break off and become a new party. From that real life base of real, actual seats, that new party would almost automatically grow rapidly, and would more so and more so put a lot of pressure on both of the existing right wing parties.
Dennis Kucinich and so forth absolutely need to do this, if not now, at least in a few years from now if the economy fails to recover to any extent. (I mean the real economy: jobs, number of new small businesses, etc., not the rich man's economy: the stock market, executive salaries, etc.).
A more creative but possibly pie in the sky plan would be to beg for assistance from the Canadian NDP party to form a "US Division". The idea would be that the US NDP could develop with start-up assistance from the Canada NDP.
After awhile, a synergistic feedback loop from the US NDP back to Canada would improve the prospects of the Canadian NDP. The potential benefits for the Canadian NDP are very large; remember that the US has roughly ten times as many people (and what, seven times as much potential "political money"?) as does Canada. The main point is, both countries' NDP would be strengthened from combining resources.
If goods and services can be transacted across international boundaries, why not political organizations? Political parties have developed and been maintained partly with international assistance throughout history, though never to any big extent to date in what has been an insular political culture in the US.
For the most rapid improvement in the dismal US situation, combine the two ideas I have outlined together. At least some of the US progressives in the House (and Bernie Sanders in the Senate) would nicely fit in with the Canadian NDP.
A RESPONSE:
Mark Dalessio August 28th, 2009 4:27 pm
Those 60 or so, mostly long-sitting House progressives aren't all that bravely 'progressive' much of the time, which is partly why their formation of a new progressive party, from among their ranks (including 1 or 2 progressives from the Senate), has never happened and, to date, remains a kind of semi-Catch-22 possibility.
But it is still a solid idea and, I think, a viable possibility -- a Catch-11 if you will, especially as national policy keeps steadily glued to the right, under the Duopoly.
Perhaps one thing that could help a national progressive party form in Congress without unduly risking members' seats, and begin to draw voter allegiance, is how its initial Congress members insisted on defining themselves its (the new party's) orientation a more accurate political spectrum.
No terminological concession should be made to it being called a 'far left' party, since US progressives are NOT far left by any other western democracy's center line, but in fact decidedly centrist.
This more realistic naming of spectrum orientation would immediately become a challenge to the MSM, sure, but from the outset, if fought back against fiercely, it could begin to instruct US voters that what they've been told to see and believe in, as right and left, is a lie -- a misplaced center line that bears no relation to any other western democracy's reality.
US voters at present only dimly perceive this fact, if at all. If more voters became clearer about it, the US right's ability to call domestic progressive's policies extremist would not only be crucially undercut, it would also begin to boomerang back against the far deeper extremism of the US right itself.
An obvious point, maybe, but I think a important one for the viability of any future progressive party in the US.
That is why I said this new party could grow rapidly: because it would actually be a centrist party in a country that has two right wing parties. I mean, there are numerous political operatives in other countries who would give their first born for that kind of high potential political opportunity.
The fact is, if the jobs never come back, if health insurance doubles in cost (again) and so now 100 million don't have any coverage, etc. etc., the progressives will HAVE to break off and form a new party, or the demise of the country will be partly their fault. All politicians must take appropriate actions (ones they would not normally take) in historical emergencies and collapses. If they don't do anything, they are partly to blame for the disastrous results of their inaction.
[All of the above was in response to this article.]
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