Unlike Right Wingers, Progressives Don't Seem Very Good at Unity: That Absolutely Must Change

How can Kucinich, Jim McDermott, Maxine Walters, Bernie Sanders, John Kerry etc., etc. be forced to move out of the right of center party they are in and into unification with the Greens and Nader and so on? How do you get all of the above unified with all the other centrist and progressive parties? How do you organize strikes, sit-downs, and boycotts (and just the threat of those) that in some European countries are just as important to the day to day prosperity for the commoners as are the non right-wing parties? Many Europeans would simply start striking and boycotting, and would wait for the government to change, if they were ever stuck in the extreme right wing environment currently existing in the US.

These are the questions that really matter. In politics I might be good at the questions, but probably not so good at the specific answers. I don't "do nuts and bolts politics," simply because I know I'm not naturally all that good at it. So I have an excuse for not doing much in this regard. It would be at least partly and probably mostly a waste of time for me to shut down my economics work to try to "do the politics."

My recent idea for a New Democratic Party in the USA (NDP-US) is probably unfortunately just an example of how my ideas might be nice in theory, but not very practical. In Texas and Florida, Canada might as well be on another planet, so now that I think about it I doubt that even progressives would get all that enthusiastic about a NDP-US party down there. (Then again, you could start it on the Border States and work your way down. You see, I never give up... http://www.ndp.ca/ )

Unfortunately, right wingers much more commonly seem to excel at the nuts and bolts of politics that are necessary for unity than do progressives. By contrast, US progressives don't seem to understand the importance of unity. Either that or they have cynically concluded in advance that unity is impossible.

I can't really say a whole lot more on what to me is a mystery, precisely because I am not a "qualified expert" in this kind of thing. Other economics types, including Paul Krugman, are not really qualified to "do the politics" at the micro level either. If you read Krugman, you can see that he does explain political developments in great detail, but he doesn't tell you exactly how and why this political development happened or how and why this other, alternative possible political development did not happen.

To economists, every political development is just a fait accompli, laugh out

[The above was in response to this article.]