There is no Left in America. There is Party-Identity Politics. Party-identity politics is focused primarily on winning based on party-identity unity rather than policy unity (the later of which may come because one agrees already or one is convinced through policy debate or one wins the debate through politics). If there were a Left, we would see the parties as servicing the goals of the Leftist movement rather than the Leftist movement understood as servicing the interests of the party to stay in power. There is an old saying: You can't serve two masters. The cycle of greater reactionary conservatism in the GOP should not, in that sense, be seen as an aberration, but a natural result of triangulation by both parties reacting to the Conservative Free-market movement, which has no Leftist counterpart.
It is inaccurate to speak of a "Left," when describing barely leaning "Liberal." There is a bad habit of conflation that's a real problem in terms of it having any valuable discussion on policy and how to get them enacted. Even here, most aren't Left movement activists (to name one example). When push comes to shove, most are Democratic Party loyalists first rather than people dedicated to a movement.
I should point out an important problem with this. The problem is one of short term electoral concerns always trumping long term movement concerns. 2012, 2014, 2016, there will always be some elections that trumps the goals of a movement. A true Left would see each election as a single move on a greater chess board just as the existing Reactionary movement has understood it since the 60s.
The issue of conflation can be seen as follows (which is not about the personalities involved, but instead a lesson in political and system dynamics) and is meant to inform you about how the process works:
Read here
http://www.salon.com/...
and here
http://www.salon.com/...
Because you are not a movement it means you have less power. Because you aren't a movement with a clear message it means that all that energy be funneled into things you don't believe in.
There is no Left in America when it comes to blogs, including this one, which is a Democratic, and not even a better Democrats one. That one went out the window with "how do we achieve obtaining better Democrats" and the response has been to focus once again on short term electoral cycles rather than long term movement building. Why aren't there mechanisms being built to support things like single payer, such as is being advocated right now by the governor of MT?
Here's some articles on the history and situation. First, up, is a discussion of the blogs:
There are many myths within the political blogosphere, but none is so deeply troubling or so highly treasured by mainstream political bloggers than this: that the political blogosphere contains within it the whole range of respectable political opinion, and that once an issue has been thoroughly debated therein, it has had a full and fair hearing. The truth is that almost anything resembling an actual left wing has been systematically written out of the conversation within the political blogosphere, both intentionally and not, while those writing within it congratulate themselves for having answered all left-wing criticism.
That the blogosphere is a flagrantly anti-leftist space should be clear to anyone who has paid a remote amount of attention. Who, exactly, represents the left extreme in the establishment blogosphere? You’d likely hear names like Jane Hamsher or Glenn Greenwald. But these examples are instructive. Is Hamsher a socialist? A revolutionary anti-capitalist? In any historical or international context– in the context of a country that once had a robust socialist left, and in a world where there are straightforwardly socialist parties in almost every other democracy– is Hamsher particularly left-wing? Not at all. It’s only because her rhetoric is rather inflamed that she is seen as particularly far to the left. This is what makes this whole discourse/extremism conversation such a failure; there is a meticulous sorting of far right-wing rhetoric from far right-wing politics, but no similar sorting on the left.."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
The truth is, at best, what we see in America is a dying Liberal class that was meant to be an accommodation to true Leftist views. A class that is mostly, unfortunately, worried about civility.
I have a friend- he says that there is no true fear of the Right in America. If you were truly afraid, you would use any means necessary to prevent the Right wing policies from being enacted. This is the danger of civility: Rules where you are the only player following them is just a defeat waiting to happen. So, Liberals are faced with the realities of the failures of markets once again- this is the lesson of 2008. That our system is both corrupt and that markets are unstable and tend towards failure. This was clear from a historical sense if one had followed economic history, which prior to the Great Depression regularly saw major economic upheavals on a regular basis.
So, we do have a decision to make:
“We have a choice,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges. “You can either be complicit in your own enslavement or you can lead a life that has some kind of integrity and meaning.” Hedges argues for moral responsibility in a world bankrupt of it, and discusses the downfall of what he refers to as the liberal class in his newest book. From World War I to the present, he traces the rise and fall of liberal values, and paints a grim portrait of the future.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
For the record, the Democratic response of FDR was to stop the Left from gaining roots in the U.S. after the near collapse of capitalism in the Great Depression. Liberals are in fact just a way for the establishment to keep a tight control.
I am not even a socialist, but I can see the tactical and strategic advantage of having a fake left to control the range of discourse so that it only reflect the views of the Democratic leadership, which is not leftist or liberal, but neoliberal in focus at this point (Which I mark as 1988 with the rise of the Clintonites and the DLC--- recounted here:
In power, the Republicans restructured their national political committees and the Congress into giant ATMs capable of financing broad national campaigns to protect and extend their newly won position in Congress. The Republican success left the Democrats facing the same dilemma they had in the late seventies, as the Golden Horde first formed up behind Ronald Reagan: they could respond by mobilizing their older mass constituencies or emulate the Republicans. That battle had been settled in favor of so called “New Democrats” (Ferguson and Rogers, 1986). Dependent for many years on campaign money from leading sectors of big business where regulation kept recreating divisions – notably finance and telecommunications (Ferguson, 1995b) – the Democrats reconfirmed their earlier decision to go for the gold. They followed the Republicans and transformed both the national party committees and their Congressional delegations into cash machines, with the leaders in each chamber, but especially the House, wielding substantially more power than at any time since the famous revolt that overthrew Speaker Cannon in 1910-11. As the Republicans moved further and further to the right, the Democrats did, too, constrained only by the need to preserve something of their mass base.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
So you shouldn't be surprised at this:
"Some of this anti-protest posturing is just the all-too-familiar New-Republic-ish eagerness to prove one’s own Seriousness by castigating anyone to the left of, say, Dianne Feinstein or John Kerry; for such individuals, multi-term, pro-Iraq-War Democratic Senator-plutocrats define the outermost left-wing limit of respectability. Also at play is the jingoistic notion that street protests are valid in Those Bad Countries but not in free, democratic America.
A siginificant aspect of this progressive disdain is grounded in the belief that the only valid form of political activism is support for Democratic Party candidates, and a corresponding desire to undermine anything that distracts from that goal. Indeed, the loyalists of both parties have an interest in marginalizing anything that might serve as a vehicle for activism outside of fealty to one of the two parties (Fox News‘ firing of Glenn Beck was almost certainly motivated by his frequent deviation from the GOP party-line orthodoxy which Fox exists to foster)."
http://politics.salon.com/...
The reality is that it is a part of the systemic strategy to drown out dissent from the Left, and has been since FDR, when the Left last scared the elite in America.
I consider myself an FDR Democrat. I believe in the accommodation as way to deal with the best aspects of socialism and the best aspects of the market. I am also a believer in positive liberties, in communities and in the public good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
To understand the value of a social democracy, however, one must understand the strengths and weaknesses of all variables, including Leftist arguments to the discourse. The center is only produced by having two strong ends with one of them being Leftists. However, the system has been set up to block out that debate, which means we can not even nationalize banks when they needed to be nationalized or have a public option even if the public wanted a public option in health care despite the irrationality of our present health care system (nothing has been done to stop the spiraling cost of health care).
The key element here is that you are individuals are on the left rather than a collective Left movement. To be a movement Left, you must be for something more than the Democratic Party. You must use the party for servicing policies that you believe will yield the best results, which in a vital democracy, would include truly Leftist views, rather than seeing your identity as the party.
The value of protesting is that it can be the start of a movement. If it is not eventually focused as a movement , it is co-opted by the parties and personalities that will seek to use it. This has happened in the past, and will happen again. Emotions are necessary, but not sufficient. One can start with the emotions, but must build from there.
For it to obtain real systemic value, a movement requires understanding that the Left must act collectively as a political movement, just as the right does.
There is this great article on that subject:
My counter-proposal, which is boring, goes like this. If you want to move US public policy to the left, what you have to do is to identify incumbent holders of political office and then defeat them on Election Day with alternative candidates who are more left-wing. I think this works pretty reliable. To my mind, the evidence is pretty clear that even the election of fairly conservative pushes policy outcomes to the left as long as the guy they’re replacing was more conservative. And if your specific concern is that the Democratic Party isn’t as left-wing as you’d like it to be, then what you need to do is identify incumbent holders of political office and then defeat them in primaries with alternative candidates who are more left-wing."
http://thinkprogress.org/...
To the extent that people are not punishing Democratic representatives who do not follow the ideological line when required is the extent to which you can differentiate party loyalists from people who are truly interested in a movement to the Left, and are pragmatically interested in changing the center to be left of center. The question that any one who disputes this must answer is the following: If you want to move the country to the left of center in policies- how do you get there?
Pointing out that things are the way they are isn't a strategy for changing. Continuing strategies, which over 30 years have made things worse, isn't an effective strategy? The point here is to see a movement Left as a strategy rather than just a place to vent how you feel.
We have points of comparison. We can see the effect of the strategy described above on the Right. We know it works. It is simply never considered because of the loyalties and fears and needs for things such as civility, with the later having little, if anything, to do with political outcomes. Again, the lesson of actual policy battles should be your guide rather than your own emotions about what tactics or strategies are effective.
There is no Left in America. But whether you are a believer in the center or the Left, you should understand- there needs to be one.