A couple of days ago, Kos wrote two diaries dismissing Ralph Nader as an irrelevant egomaniac in the election process.
Yesterday, the Democratic party indicated it may be selling out on its promise of a change in Bush's "war on terror" policies by keeping its most hawkish committee chair - one who campaigned for Republicans this election cycle.
What do these two events have to do with each other? Let's talk about it after the break.
Like many of you, I came of political age in the 1990s. The first protests I attended were against Gulf War I, and then I protested Bill Clinton's foreign policy, his pushing of a corporate trade agenda, and his ridiculous stance on healthcare towards the end of his administration. (I can't find a link on this last one, but essentially the Democrats wanted more for the HMOs and pharmaceutical companies than even those companies wanted.)
For me, the Democratic party - or at least the Democratic party of the 1990s - is a pro-corporate, anti-people party of the rich. It represented different constituents than the Republican party - it had closer ties to big pharma than to big oil, for example - but neither of those constituencies had anything in common with the majority of the American public.
A lot has changed in eight years. Howard Dean's 2003 speech where he called a lot of Democrats out on their "Republican-lite" attitude was a big part of that change. Paul Wellstone's legacy - and for me Wellstone voted against the Democrats so much that he was effectively an independent in the 1990s - also contributed much to that change. And all of you good folks at Daily Kos and other "netroots" sites also had a lot to do with driving the Democratic party to the left.
But the Democratic party still has at its core a mixed heritage. It cannot claim to be the party of the working class, the party of small farmers, the party of immigrants, the party of African Americans and of Native Americans - it can only claim to be a party less hostile to those groups than the only alternative.
And that's where third parties come into the picture.
I came to U.S. politics through the 2000 Green Party campaign. Were it not for that campaign, I would still be a fairly bemused spectator in the political process because no party represented my interests. The issues of that campaign raised by Nader - particularly the globalization and environment issues - led me to the ballot box for the first time though I had been able to vote since 1994. I would not under any circumstances have voted for Gore in that election, and I think that most of the 2.4% who did vote for him are in the same boat.
I suspect that one of the long-term effects of that electoral defeat in 2000 was to get folks within the Democratic party to ask why a certain segment of their base was abandoning them. Perhaps the space for speeches like Howard Dean's of 2003, the space for leadership coming from the liberal wing of the party for the first time in my lifetime, was in part due to a desire to get those third party voters back in the Democratic fold. In other words, maybe Nader has something to do with how we got to Obama.
Whether or not that is the case, we need progressive leadership both from inside and outside the Democratic party. The Democrats are not always going to do the right thing and the overwhelming decision to keep Lieberman in his post is only the latest indication of that. How are Democrats going to demand accountability for the disasters of the last eight years when they can't even hold one of their own accountable for his mistakes? Movements outside the Democratic party can take the lead on that until the party grows enough of a backbone to take up the case.
This goes beyond third parties. The grassroots movements in this country, the immigrants rights movements, workers rights movements, farmworker's movements and so on, are not tied to a political party though they do work with Democrats to craft legislation from time to time. Their independence from the Democratic party line allows them to do the right thing even when it's not politically expedient. Many of the big labor unions, which in my view are too close to the Democratic party, compromise and don't do the right thing (even when they know it's right) in the name of being politically realistic.
So hats off to those of you who are working inside the Democratic party to make them accountable to their base and ultimately make this country a better place to live for us all. Please don't dismiss the work of those of us who are working outside that framework for the same thing.
For a similar point of view, check out Danny Glover's and Bill Fletcher's take on the 2004 election.
In 2004 the winner-take-all system of US electoral politics again proved an obstacle to genuine democracy. While progressives found little to get excited about in the John Kerry campaign, there were no viable third-party candidates, leaving them without a fully satisfying choice at the ballot box, even if most of us ended up voting for Kerry as a statement against Bush. More important, there was no candidate whose campaign offered progressives the opportunity to develop a real political/electoral base that could move us closer to building power and influence.
If we want to avoid another 2004, building up third parties - perhaps as part of a strategy for pushing the Democratic party to the left - is important.