Most of what I hear today from Democrats feels off the mark, and eventually deadly to the progressive cause and America in general if we continue to lose elections. Debates by Democrats on the tactical advantages of special issues, of merely being "pro" this or "anti" are useless because it plays to the strength of our adversaries, viz., the overwhelming advantage of the Right's organizational strength in the corporate boardrooms and at the local, grass roots level throughout the nation.
We must not merely consider a change in battle tactics, but in how we wage the entire war for the hearts and souls of America. Anything falling short of a wholesale reconsideration and realignment of our basic strategy and we and our progressive ideas will continue to be defeated.
In the 1980's there appeared a noticeable movement by the Right Wing and Religious Right to gain control of local political organizations. Their purpose was manifold, first to organize a political party (within a party, the GOP), second to use this party to spearhead their agendas. They were smarter than the progressives who thought that cultural and political changes could be forced from the top down, and it is to our everlasting shame that we progressives thought that all we had to do was win a SCOTUS case to end racism, poverty, hunger, and intolerance. We progressives got soft and thought we had won the battle of the hearts and minds of the American people by judicial fiat.
The Right knew better, set to work and organized. They knew that all politics was local, that US Senators were bred from US Congressmen, that Congressmen came from state government legislatures and these came from local political organizations. So they took to building their base at the lowest levels of collective actions. Whether it was the local school board, the county health board, the local zoning board, county district attorneys, county commissioners, and mayors, etc. All of these became the battlegrounds and spoils for the religious and secular Right.
They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and now what stands before us is a cadre of Right Wing conservatives who are placed all through the breadth and width of the political landscape and exert influence at each choke point for progressive paths.
The Progressive movement on the other hand still marches and preaches, but few in office listen, because we have not seen fit to do the real hard and dirty work of political action: action that is not a once a month protest vigil, or email/fax/letters to editors or politicians. It is the door-to-door commitment, the dirty, inglorious, thankless, tiring tasks at the local level to engage in the problems of schools, zoning issues, health issues and other communitarian concerns which carry the preponderance of local support for people. Progressives have fought on the wrong battlefield for so long and still many of us wonder why we get our butts kicked at higher levels of government.
I noticed in the Spring of 2000 at local Green Party meetings I attended that there was virtually no commitment from the party to actively participate and run its members for any of the aforementioned local elected seats, and further and even more importantly, to spend party member energy, read: "time" to getting Greens into the position to win these local elections. Such victories would take time, involvement, and long-term commitment on the part of those who would run for office.
It is at the local level, where people know each other and those who seek elective office all participate in the community and its life in some way, either as a soccer coach, volunteer fireman, dog catcher, serve on voluntary boards of communitarian affairs, or civic clubs where they begin to be noticed at large, and start to have some influence over the affairs of the community.
Generally, progressives are independent minded individuals, and we (I am, certainly) are in large part, intellectual prima donnas who bristle at having to do the mud slogging that comes with these things and nationwide one rarely finds many progressives in the ranks of these local decision makers. Instead, these things are left to people who have either a fiduciary interest (real estate folks, bankers, insurance agents, lawyers, etc) in the decisions made locally, or religious fanatics who are pushing an agenda of their faith.
It is clear that of the massive problems facing the Progressive movement one of the most profound is our own egos and an inability to recognize that while the fight is long, and that we personally might never see our side win, yet nevertheless we must position ourselves and our ideas at the lowest levels in the communities we reside and build up from there. For if a functioning democracy is what we want, without this, we will lose elections regularly.
But wiser men than myself have addressed this:
As spoken by JFK, we are called "to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
So, I encourage and will actively participate in the formation of a coalition of like minded people who can support progressives, who want to engage in the political process at local levels by funding, by helping provide the detailed information necessary to get our points across, and even by walking the streets to hand out literature to folks at their doorsteps. This is what a real political party and its members do. If we fail to see this, and fail to do these things, we might as well just give up and not bitch about losing elections.
What happens to people is what happens to them locally, although the reasons may be globally based. They have little to no influence over what happens nationally and globally unless they have representation at that level. And the question is "how is such representation achieved?"
If, from the pool of candidates there is no one who represents your view, we must question why has this occurred? Largely, it is because none who share your views have decided to use the system to promote these views.
There is no getting a round the 10 ton elephant in the road which we describe as elective democracy (or what's left of it) in America. However, there is no other manner to affect substantial and sustained change other than the ballot box. Talk of marches is fine for it does galvanize the masses, temporarily, but like that Madonna song, "satin sheets are very romantic, but what happens when you're not in bed?" what happens AFTER you march?
It is only through the sustained pressure on and the manipulation of the political system and the power of it that is transmuted into public policies.
Elected governments do not usually address immediately the issues of grave concern to people. There is, as in any system, a degree of inertia that must be overcome before action is forthcoming from government, and it is only when individuals man such a system that are sympathetic to a set of ideals and causes that action occurs.
I see no reason why progressives cannot do with the Democratic Party what the Right Wing and Religious Right have done with the GOP. It will take a concerted effort to run progressives for local political offices and such candidates will necessarily be those who are active communitarians beforehand and are known locally in the community as volunteers and "good people" who serve their community.
Such backgrounds for individuals running on progressive ideals help insulate them from accusations of being a "socialist" or "commie bastard." And it is only these people who can get elected and affect change. Until those with progressive credentials running for local offices work and volunteer locally to improve their communities then their opponents will always accuse them of being outsiders and troublemakers.
It is wise to consider the enemy's strategies if they are successful, and we progressives might want to re-read Sinclair Lewis' "Babbitt" to see that active participation in community social organizations like the Rotary Club, the Shriners, the local Chamber of Commerce, and others leads to local political power. I recognize that most progressives are by nature independent and usually are not "joiners," but I believe that such a methodical positioning of progressives in these places of public influence is the most rational and effective long term way to move our agendas to the forefront of public discussion.
I recall vividly the answer Barry Goldwater gave to a question election night in 1984 when asked if the Reagan landslide that day proved the power of conservatives. He replied that one often finds the seed of his victory in a prior defeat, and conversely that one can find the seeds of his future defeat in the blossom of a current victory.
The far Right and religious Right have taught us how to obtain profound influence over public policy. We must not dismiss this lesson. We must, as Goldwater mentioned, use the example of the success of the Right in these situations as the seeds for their own defeat by following their course of local participation for our own progressive ends.
I see no other way to succeed, even with the massive amounts of money aligned against us.
It will be a Long March. Success will not occur overnight. We will lose national elections again. But we can build a national organism of progressive culture that reaches into the every neighborhood, hamlet, town, and city in America. And we will have to do it ourselves, because neither a messiah nor a heroic man on a white horse will bring about sustained change.
Howard Dean gets it, and his 50-State strategy is the first big step we have seen in a generation from the Democratic Party to take control at the local level.
Thanks for listening, spread the word, and reconsider laughing at George Herbert Walker Bush's rhetoric of "a thousand points of light," because it has lit up the Republican Party for a decade or more.