Valuable Practical Politics Instruction

I freely admit that I am not an experienced or skilled political organizer. I'm an economist first and foremost and as far as politics goes, I'm good at theory but don't know much about real world political activities. The writer of this guest comment clearly does know quite a bit about real world political activities:

GUEST COMMENT
Time has come today for a national progressive leadership summit. And I don’t mean one open to Democrats or their dedicated support groups. Once progressives are sufficiently organized, then they can start to reach out to alienated Democrats and their support groups who have realized that the DLC has utterly betrayed and abandoned them. This summit should accomplish at least seven primary objectives:

(1) To select a name for a new national umbrella Party that unites all authentic progressives. I suggest something whose acronym is either difficult to make fun of or too cute to successfully make fun of like Progressive Unity Party (PUP)—something that avoids “PP” in the acronym. I think we need a new umbrella Party that does not carry with it the baggage of older progressive party feuds, such as the notorious arguments between hill and yon over whether Nader cost the Dems the 2000 elections, and within the Green Party over whether or not Ralph Nader is a “real” Green. A truly unified progressive movement in America must eventually be able to reach out to alienated former Democrats and many of them revile the Green Party because they never heard about the falsified felon voter list in Florida in ’02 or the NAACP vs. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris lawsuit.

(2) To compile a list of potential Party platform planks to refer to the members of the various organizations for them to vote on the top five planks that they feel are the most important for the country to achieve (said list to be voted on nationally at a second national leadership summit to select five national Party platform planks).

(3) To delegate a committee to study and prepare media strategy for the new Party. The central problem confronting progressives besides lack of unity is lack of access to mass media to get out a progressive message. One strategy to achieve large media market penetration is to help organize non-profit progressive organizations across the country to obtain low power FM radio stations. If enough of these stations blanket a medium or large-sized city with contiguous broadcast radii, then they can (periodically) simultaneously focus on key progressive issues in a timely manner and mirror the market penetration of corporate “mainstream” media in those areas. The rest of the time they can be as diversely progressive in their formats and station fundraising as they want to be. This year there is a chance that access to low power FM will finally be opened up. Progressives should jump on this opportunity because if they don’t, then the religious or far-Right will. The nature of the media message of the new Party should be simultaneously political and educational. This requires broadcasters and candidates who can relate difficult or complex subjects in ways average Americans can either relate to in their own lives or readily grasp in a way that would make sense to an average twelve year old.

(4) To delegate a committee responsible for fundraising. I’m not the first to recognize that with the current level of wealth concentration and income disparity it’s time for wealthy progressives to put their money where their mouths are if they want to achieve real reform on a timeframe that isn’t frozen in corporatist stasis. The fundraising committee should have its best people eventually meet with progressive-leaning affluent liberals to gauge whether or not they are sufficiently disgusted with the DLC status quo to fight the good fight with an energized, united, more focused and authentic national progressive Party. But the new Party has to be built to a sufficient size for that appeal to work. Meanwhile, it will have to rely on membership contributions and appeals to known affluent progressives who do not support the DLC establishment. The committee should solicit lists of people who fit this criterion from the membership. The more progressives we unite, the broader our appeal will be.

(5) To lay out a process for State and local Party leaders to begin selecting and grooming candidates for office at all levels of government.

(6) To create a committee responsible for internal Party issue education and the online dissemination of Party media material for members to both learn from themselves and distribute to others interested in learning about contemporary issues from a progressive perspective. I envision that this committee would rely on many volunteer researchers from within the Party’s membership as well as outside reference sources. I think the nature of this material should be variable-- some of it purely informational and some of it entertaining as well as informative, including music, plays, games, printable posters and other creative media.

(7) To create a voluntary legal staff to help the Party and its membership negotiate the various legal challenges that will come our way. This committee will be responsible for soliciting a national protest “bailout and fine” fund for members to use when they are arrested and fined for public protests on behalf of progressive causes. With increasingly dangerous and illegal police technologies, crooked cops and crooked mayors routinely abusing citizens merely for daring to participate in public protests these days I feel that such a fund is vital.

It would be best to organize and help create a nation-wide network of progressive low power FM stations BEFORE we start voting on Party planks or selecting candidates because it would be much easier with our own media already in place to support us when we start running candidates.

In some States the temptation would be to run as a Democrat or Republican to be able to run in the Democratic or Republican primary. I would rather candidates for the new Party avoid that by conducting numerous educational/political town-hall meetings and other public speaking and radio interview events letting people know they are running in the general election as Third Party and/or write-in candidates. In other words, they would have to "campaign" unofficially in the primaries and officially in the general elections. But to get on the ballots in many States there would have to be large scale petition drives and large numbers on the petitions. This depends on the persuasiveness of our speakers & the size, discipline and persuasiveness of our petition drive volunteers. The big problem will be fundraising as I previously detailed.

We will not have the numbers to get on the ballot in some States, yet.

I personally feel that for informed progressives, progressive-leaning liberals increasingly alienated from the Democratic Party, and the poor & minorities who are part of the 80 million eligible voters who do not vote--to whom we want to make our strongest appeal--the name "Democratic Party" is more off-putting than "Progressive" and we need to reclaim and reassert the proud history of early 20th century progressivism as part of our educational rhetoric. We should never duplicate the Democratic Party failure to proudly stand up for and defend our progressive policies and the progressive principles upon which they are based. Democrats have been in constant ideological retreat for 30 years because of this spinelessness--even when the voters temporarily thrust them back into office out of periodic disgust with the Republicans.

UNITY-PROGRESS RESPONSE
Great plan, I really like your plan. If all of this happened it would be possible to get on most of the state ballots, wouldn't it? Whereas you probably wouldn't get on many ballots without such a big preparation.

Researching how new parties get on the ballot is on my mile long to do list; I'll get to it within a month.

Please call the new party the "New Democratic Party". This name is marketable, not one issue (like Greens) not subject to negative propaganda, and has a familiar, American feel to it. If the name was struck down in courts as too close to the old Democratic Party, you could call it "American Democratic Party" as a plan B. Or "New American Party". You can't put "socialist" or even "progressive" in the name, because those words are trashed in America and would never succeed.

The above was in response to this article.