The discussion with Charles Schumer yesterday made it clear that the Democratic Party within the legislative branch is not ready to make progressive choices. The differing experience of the Labour party in the United Kingdom and in Australia indicate choices available to US progressives in these circumstances.
In the UK, Labour lost office in 1979 to Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party, who then held office for 18 long and miserable years. Thatcher fought a stupid war (in the Falklands or Malvinas in the South Atlantic), presided over the destruction of the manufacturing economy, enforced what she called 'Victorian values'....and won election after election by dividing the opposition. After a bitter loss in 1992, followed by the unexpected death of John Smith, Labour opted for Tony Blair, a young leader who seemed above all else electable. His slogan 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' was held to take away a major talking point from the right. But this triangulation, modeled on Clinton 1, has ended with Labour supporting the war in Iraq over the heads of its own supporters and taking positions on immigration and detention without trial that are well to the right of the current Conservative party, leaving progressives no practical place to go.
Australia's Labor Party went through a similarly bleak stretch, losing election after election to the toxic John Howard. Howard gained strength by opposing migrants and asylum seekers residence in Australia and became one of Bush's top allies in the war in Iraq. Since the election of Kevin Rudd earlier this year, Labour has marked a substantive difference with a signing of the Kyoto Protocols on the infamous Day One. This week the recognition of the disastrous policies towards the indigenous population, or Aboriginals, has led to some remarkable scenes of public reconciliation. Even Murdoch papers like the Sydney Morning Herald seem swept up in the excitement. Rudd has created a 'war cabinet' with the Liberal (ie Conservative) party on indigenous issues, to defuse the potential for partisan debates--and to prevent them reversing the change if they win the next election.
So the message seems to be: one, don't rely on the leader/Prime Minister/President to make change happen but two, symbolic change is really significant and is in itself change. And, as much as the reactionary parties are detestable, a strategy has to be found to counter their power as the representatives of capital, or the once progressive leader will simply become the new conservative.