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.

War is Peace and Barack Obama is George Orwell's Second Coming

The Nobel Prize has been cheapened to the point that I for one will never look at it again in the same way. Every once in a while Europeans, with their minds lost completely in a fictional la la land, will do something very loopy and goofy and this is a textbook example of that. It's incidents such as this that give a little bit of support for the American conservative notion that left of center Europeans are not well grounded in the real world. But actually, regardless of these ocassional loopy incidents, the European left has figured out the real world very, very well.

And when you think about it, the real winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize is George Orwell, because Obama is simply following the script laid out for him by Mr. Orwell. Seriously, Orwell's publisher needs to add some of Obama's speeches on to the back of Orwell's books as appendices.

As for the Obama speeches: tune them out! Seriously, I just saw the headline, scrolled past the speech, and read the comments. The best advice is to stop reading or listening to this very disturbing combination of Orwell and Slick Willy 2: Ultra Slick Pimpin, and wait for the 2012 Obama concession speech. That is the speech that will be the one to listen to while congratulating yourself for knowing Obama was going to lose and for knowing that the difference between Obama and Romney or Pawlenty is so small that it isn't worth worrying about.

The above was in response to this article.

Poetry Corner: "The Loot Purloined"

GUEST COMMENT
An extrapolation of Obama's logic, in the form of a poem:

Let us scorch the earth,
that the grain may grow.

Let us wreck the homes,
that we may build them anew,
and profit mightily.

Let us destroy the past,
that our time may become all time.

Let us rape the girls,
that their milk may feed
the spawn of our seed.

Let kill the fathers,
let us kill the sons,
that peace may reign
in the land of the dead.

UNITY-PROGRESS RESPONSE
"The Loot Purloined"

Let us give all the gold
To the bankers and the rich
Then form barricades on the road
From the unemployed fifth

Let the loot thus purloined
Be the value enjoyed
So that both rich and poor shall be idle
And all dissent shall be only libel

The above exchange of poems was in response to this article.

Few new Jobs Means Obama Loses in 2012

In the real world electoral trenches Obama is defeated in 2012 due to the lack of jobs, as long as the Republicans don't dominate a total nut case like Palin or a southern Redneck like Huckabee. Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Virginia etc. were all states that elected Obama for one reason: to create jobs. None of these states will vote for Obama in 2012 if there are no new jobs to speak of, as long as the Republicans nominate someone who sounds sensible to desperate job-seekers, like Pawlenty from Minnesota or Romney from Massachusetts, as seems likely. Obama is toast as long as the Republicans don't nominate a complete looney bird.

And I am sorry, but regardless of how much money Obama rakes in after he loses in 2012, he still goes down in history as a one-term President, which is politically a failure regardless of anything else.

Jimmy Carter lost his re-election for basic economics reasons also; for him it was at least as much due to inflation as it was due to unemployment.

Unlike Carter who was swept away by forces beyond his control, with Obama being defeated in 2012 serves him right, because he alone decided that the banksters and the rich people in general were far more important than the tens of millions needing decent incomes from jobs.

It was disturbing when Obama started blaming black poverty on black people not able to maintain families and so forth. It became devastating when Obama started blaming white poverty on white people deciding they need a job because they can't make their own nicely profitable business out of thin air. It seems that in Obama's twisted, right-wing mind, you don't absolutely have to have a job, because you should be able to automatically generate enough income from your own business for you and your family to live on. It's your fault and your problem if you can't.

But as anyone knows who knows anything about business, and/or anything about the current state of the economy, Obama's real views (which he dares not spell out in full in public) are totally unrealistic and are utter garbage. So good riddance to Obama in advance; I'm tuning him out until his 2012 concession speech.

I don't have a clue why the author was taken in by the theatrics of the 1-day mini "summit"; why he states that Obama is open to real jobs programs. There were several reports coming from "well-placed Obama insiders" last week indicating that in January Obama plans to announce deficit reduction will, beginning in 2010, be far more important than any jobs programs. In Obama World, there are going to be a lot of dead people instead of employed people. Obama is literally killing off some of his own would-be voters.

As for progressives, if they don't realize they need to unite behind a new party now, I suppose they never will, so the US will be permanently a very right wing country. As with all permanent right wing countries of history, this means nothing but misery, death and destruction for increasing millions.

The above was in response to this article.

Many Democrats and Many "Liberals" are Foolish Wimps on the Take

It’s a dilemma because as Hedges says most "liberals" are foolish wimps who vote Democratic and regret it later. They are too smug, lazy, on the take, or just plain dumb to support a new party that could win votes, the way they did in Canada during the depression and during World War 2 when the New Democratic Party was formed. (This is the party that brought economical health care to Canada. Were it not for the New Democratic Party, the US might not be the only important country without health care, as Canada might be still without it too.)

Now is obviously the time (it's probably the last chance, actually, have you checked the true poverty, homelessness, and unemployment numbers lately?) for liberals to abandon the Democrats and start a new party, one that is not thought of as one issue like the Greens by the way. But as we know the liberals are foolish wimps, who in a hard world deserve every bad thing that happens to them while they live in a relentlessly right wing society.

By contrast, anyone who has moved on past all of that stuff in the slow lane: the Democrats, the foolish liberals, and everything associated with them, we deserve awards, medals, real freedom, and prosperity. But obviously, we are not likely to get those things regardless of what we do in a failed society with a collapsed ecnonomy.

So it is mandatory, we need that New Democratic Party (or the equivalent) as Canadians, who are neither foolish nor wimpy, demonstrated many decades ago.

The above was in response to this article.

Wait for the 2012 Concession Speech and Tune out the Others

There is no need to listen to speeches by Bush III (Revenge of George, starring Barack Obama) anymore unless you want to be depressed. Just wait for his 2012 concession speech and listen to that one.

What is the difference between Obama and Romney or Pawlenty? Almost nothing in terms of policy and the real situation in the country. But at least with Romney or Pawlenty, many will have their guard up against being totally played by right wing contracts and policies. Whereas with Obama, you have all of these pathetic fooled people who think, for example, that the health deform will be a net plus.

For every internet article on why the Afghanistan policy or the health deform will fail, there are what, half a million? people who think these proposals are "necessary" and "not so bad". You know, its really disturbing to live in a country loaded with people so easily fooled by the likes of Obama.

The above was in response to this article. about how Obama's Afghanistan policy is foolish posturing that is doomed to failure.