Finally, some real energy! Gotta love that bungler Gibbs, he woke up the sleeping giant in this party, its base.
We can shoot each other until we're all dead. We can ignore the political reality that a very large portion of this party's base has no intention of showing up to the next election. We can continue the present course and hope the teabaggers sabotage their campaigns with stupidity. We can split between Obamaistas and disenfranchised voters. We can piss and moan on the internet until Verizon, Google or the National (in)Security Complex shuts it down. We can pathetically wait for our party leaders to rediscover what party they belong to.
Or we can go to Washington and make some demands.
Please read on.............
My Daddy always said, "Politicians do their best work when there's a mob outside their door and they brought rope."
Like all eloquent Irishmen, he was, of course, speaking semi-metaphorically. I just say this, lest the pathologically literal-minded among us misunderstand my point.
We all know the old saying, 'power concedes nothing without a demand'. But the necessary corollary of that adage is the 'power gives up nothing without a viable threat to its ability to rule'.
Republicans don't need us. They'd rather we stayed home. Democrats will live or die depending on whether we come to the polls to vote. As has been more than apparent for close to a year, their base has been sliding from disappointment to despair to furious anger. A large section of the base - myself included - has no intention of voting for this neoliberal, pro-war, corporate welfare bullshit any more.
Gibb's stupid comment was just the match that lit the storage shed where all the Democratic Party weapons were kept (us).
Now we could just lay down sniper fire for the rest of the season until we've defeated ourselves. And to be honest, if nobody does anything to stop these bastards, I'll continue hammering away at this sellout bullshit until neoliberalism has been repudiated by every craven politician who bought that broken car. Or they have been driven from power.
But we can't replace more than 33 Senators in any year and most of them are completely corrupt. It’s too late to beat them in the primaries and the party elites want only candidates who raise buckets of cash and will 'fit in' with the culture of graft that constitutes our system of campaign finance.
So like it or not, most of these bastards will still be in power past November. But lots of them are scared about this election and they know exactly why we're so pissed. Those in the House are especially scared and need us desperately to win. That gives us leverage.
But we only have that leverage so long as there is a Democratic Party majority in Washington. So, if we're going to do anything we'd better do it now.
We need to go to Washington and show the political class where the real numbers in this electorate are found. Doing it BEFORE the next election is crucial, because Republicans don't care what we want and they are poised for a return to power if we do nothing. Replacing one craven politician with another clearly isn't working, so we'd best put our political power on the streets and start making demands, backed up by real political force.
We need US Labor movement to step up right now and put the money they've been wasting on candidates and their infrastructure to work getting people on the streets this October. Students will be back in session in a few weeks, and progressive groups have a great track record for getting them out. One look at their student bill or their loan tally will be enough to get them angry and ready to go. As we've seen repeatedly in the past two or three years, Latino activists know how to make a protest rock, in numbers and in style. And gay rights groups set the standard for what a few people can accomplish. Every single progressive group and constituency that this administration has betrayed, stalled or ignored needs to put as many people on the street at one time, BEFORE THE NEXT ELECTION. (That needs repeating).
It will be empowering for us and it will read the riot act to our sellout politicians.
It will also put paid to the idea that the only opposition to this bullshit are teabaggers. What's the highest number of people our teabagging opponents could put on the street? 5,000? 500? 20?
What's our best potential? 50,000? Labor alone could do that all by itself. 100,000? Heck, throw a popular rock group in there and students could do that by texting each other. 500,000? I think pro-immigration reform activists did that quite recently. A million people? Black folks set that record over a decade ago and this party has utterly ignored their communities and social/economic concerns for generations. Heck, DC residents could put a 100,000 Black folks on the street by themselves.
Our potential for a game-changing action is well within our grasp. Marching on Washington with an integrated and inclusive set of demands is the only thing that will save us from sellout politicians or political defeat in the fall.
And only then, if our so-called leaders embrace that protest and use it as a platform to save their selfish skins.
But to do it quickly, our civilian progressive leadership – labor, student groups, etc. - need to put their asses on the line and dedicate their resources and infrastructure toward this action.
Waiting for the Democrats is like waiting for Godot. We cannot afford to wait for them. The stakes are too high. We have to force their hand, because they are, either, too stupid, too arrogant or too corrupt - or all of the above - to do it on their own.