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Many progressives and liberals have been coming to the same conclusion: someone has to challenge President Obama from the left. One of the main reasons for this move is that people are starting to realize that Obama has pushed through an agenda that only a conservative can love. While Republicans have tried for thirty years to destroy the welfare state and to push more wealth to the richest Americans, only Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been able to achieve these goals. . . .
If it is true that Democrats are the most effective representatives of the conservative agenda, then it is clear that we need to promote a candidate who is not tied to either party. . . .
The main criticisms of this push for an independent campaign is the fear that a challenge on the left will undermine Obama and help elect a crazy on the right. Yet, this desire to go with the lesser of two evils means that we are still only hoping for an evil, and as argued above, it is only the lesser evil that can enact the policies of the greater evil.
The Lesser Evil is the Greater Evil
More liberals and progressives appear to be waking up to the fact that they are not represented by the Democratic party. In the Huffington Post, Bob Samuels, the president of the University Council for the American Federation of Teachers, makes the case for a third party challenge to Obama from the left. Excerpt:
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The first step toward serious third-party building will be a realization that the "lesser evil" is actually no more tolerable than the greater. In a sense, what progressives need to develop, contrary to their liberal instincts, is a healthy intolerance to counter the intolerance that brews Teapartyism. With Andrew Cuomo lurking in the wings with a plan to garnish draconian austerity with a figleaf of social liberalism, progressives had better be ready to take the fight to Democrats one way or the other before the decade is out.
I sure hope they do this. Would just push more moderates into being independents, since the most likely effect would be the dem party moving farther to the left, much like the Tea Party pressure has pushed the GOP towards the right extreme.
It's pretty amusing when these wingnuts say Obama is pushing a conservative agenda. The level of ideological intoxication it would take to see Obama's agenda as conservative is staggering. When the dems had control they pushed a liberal agenda, and since the GOP took some control back, they've just kicked Obama's ass. Doesn't make him a conservative to compromise with conservatives, any mroe than it would make me a liberal or conservative if I compromised with one or the other on some things.
The two party system freezes out alternative liberal and conservative views, just as much as it freezes out moderate views. Basically, you either choose one of the platforms that have been selected for you, or you don't participate. That is why I think we can bring conservative and liberals on board when it comes to structural reform.
Regarding Solomon's point, what if the Democrats didn't move, or moved to pick up moderate Independents rather than chase the liberals and progressives?
Then they'd have majorities as far as the eye can see. If they were controlled by strategic thinkers, this is what they'd do. But lets not pretend the dems aren't controlled by ideologues, much like the GOP, but not as extreme yet.
@Samuel
"With Andrew Cuomo lurking in the wings with a plan to garnish draconian austerity with a figleaf of social liberalism"
I was thinking just that when he began going strong on gay marriage. It seemed odd to me a Democrat would go so brazenly (outside the municipal level in very liberal cities like SF or St. Paul) for such a reform given how timid they usually are, but then I read his economic platform and was like "Well that makes sense". Sadly enough, I think we'll only see much legislative progress on issues like Gay Marriage when Democrats can use it to their advantage to distract their base while they pursue further deep cuts to social spending whist further tax cuts for their wealthy patrons. It's why "Progressives" need to escape from partisan thinking.
"Regarding Solomon's point, what if the Democrats didn't move, or moved to pick up moderate Independents rather than chase the liberals and progressives?"
It would benefit them. In the "old days" parties would "triangulate". They would move to the center just enough to get a working majority of the country.
These days, the "base" of each party won't stand for it. Now those weren't necessarily the "good old days" because the reason the base didn't demand more ideological purity was that the system was semi-corrupt and politicians did what got them more power. In any case, we aren't going back.
This is one reason why I think the two party system has run its course. It has lost its ability to moderate and effect compromise.
Everything about that equation has gotten worse but the fact that we know more about it now. They're more corrupt, and represent an increasingly narrow segment of the population.
Maybe the real evil here is that folks are damned clueless about how important the electoral system is...?
Obama has arrested the longstanding slide of the US into utter kleptocracy. I believe his intent was to go to the right to get a permanent majority for his party so that they could then start to tilt things to the left. That seems like the sort of thinking a pragmatist or niebuhrean realist would have...
dlw
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