America and the left are at a turning point. Progressives had our hopes dashed in the presidency of Barack Obama, who was supposed to be on our side but has proved to be too much of a centrist, a corporatist and a compromiser. I will not run through the list of disappointments and betrayals by the Obama administration, but suffice it to say that no politician who proposes and signs into law massive cuts to the government, as Obama did (the sequester), can be considered meaningfully left of center according to the traditional meaning of terms.
The dilemma we face is a serious one, both morally and practically. America now has two major political parties whose highest leaders favor cutting earned benefits such as Social Security and a wide array of public services and investments, but no major political party that rejects austerity, the primacy of Wall Street and the military industrial-complex, and stands for expanding what the government does to help ordinary people. A huge percentage of Americans thus have no choice on the ballot to vote for the values and policies they believe in. In a democracy, this is a moral outrage -- it cannot be allowed to continue.
Practically speaking, there is the question of how to rectify the situation. What would be the most effective way to advance progressive politics in America today?
I believe there are four possibilities, some better than others. Let's consider them all.
Option 1. A "party within a party"
The first option on my list is the one I believe should be tried first. It is based on an optimistic view of America's future and a realistic assessment of how party politics works and what motivates politicians.
This option is to form a grassroots-led progressive caucus within the Democratic Party, which would function for all intents and purposes as a "party within a party." It would have a specific list of beliefs and policy proposals, would run candidates in Democratic primaries for any seat where there is not already a progressive Democrat running, and would demand that its candidates and elected officials adhere to its agenda or else face removal from the caucus and a guaranteed primary opponent.
The key to this strategy is the willingness of progressive Democrats to withhold our votes from any Democratic Party candidate or elected official who does not support the progressive Democratic caucus as here described. The idea is to take over the Democratic Party by showing Democrats that they cannot win if they don't stand for a progressive Democratic platform.
Yes, this would mean that at first, some centrist Democrats might have to be allowed to lose to Republicans. But I don't think it would take very many such losses before most Democratic politicians would realize that the only way to win as a Democrat is to be more progressive, and adapt accordingly. Politicians can be surprisingly adaptable when they are faced with the threat of losing their seats. The result of this kind of hardball pressure would be a Democratic Party more true to its principles and more popular with voters, who want politicians to show leadership to solve problems rather than caving in to corporate lobbyists.
Option 2. A progressive third party
The second option is to abandon the Democratic Party as unreformable and start or join a progressive third party. I do not favor this option. It is extremely difficult for third parties to gain traction in America, because of steep hurdles to ballot access and media coverage. Furthermore, America is structurally a two-party system (that is what tends to emerge naturally) because of the first-past-the-post, winner-take-all districts and lack of proportional representation.
Also, I think the failure of the Green Party to attract more than a tiny sliver of the population and elect candidates to national office shows that the third party route is unlikely to work as a significant way to advance the progressive cause.
Option 3. Protest movements
Moving on to even more pessimistic options, some progressives argue that America has passed beyond the point where electoral politics could work at all as a way to advance a liberal agenda -- whether through the Democratic Party or any other party -- and it is time to take to the streets.
I am skeptical of this option. I think we have to be realistic about the fact that most governments today -- including in America -- generally either ignore protest movements or do not tolerate them if they grow large enough to be impossible to ignore. Police have been militarized, and the NSA could use the domestic spying programs that we now know exist to track and disrupt any protest movements demanding political change outside the electoral process. And now that a new category of crime has been created, "terrorism," with a vague and potentially overbroad definition and no Constitutional protections for those accused of it, hard-core protesters should consider that they might someday be labeled as "terrorists" and treated as such.
I'm not saying that protest rallies have no place in our democracy. As long as they are peaceful, they can play a role as a means of freedom of speech. But protests in the absence of an electoral movement are unlikely to be a significant cause of political change anymore in America, because if one got big enough and disruptive enough, it would be crushed by the government, which would say "vote us out of office if you don't like our policies." We need to accept that challenge and stop romanticizing the idea of a "revolution" on the streets. America still has the ballot box, and we should use it to the best of our ability until, heaven forbid, we no longer have it at all.
Option 4. State and local focus
The fourth and final option on my list that I want to discuss is the most cynical one, but one that we have to face and begin considering in this era of deepening political divisions and gridlocked federal government. It is the option to simply give up on many of the states of this Union, and put all of our energy into electing progressive Democrats to office in states and localities that already lean in the direction of liberal values and a realistic potential for good government.
This is basically the liberal version of the philosophy of states' rights. We would concede that America is pulling apart at the seams, no longer "one nation" sharing common values and beliefs about the appropriate role of government, and make peace with the idea that very little of consequence will get done at the federal level anymore. Instead, we would seek to elect strongly progressive governments in certain states and cities, and make those places the best they can be -- while letting the conservative parts of this Union sadly decline along their chosen path of fundamentalist religious backwardness and corporatist, Ayn Randian plutocracy and neo-feudalism.
In this scenario, we would basically be preparing for a likely eventual dissolution of the United States -- de facto at first, and maybe eventually even de jure -- in which the states or perhaps regions of states would become the new power centers. Some of these could become great places to live with highly functioning governments that serve the needs of the people, while others would slide into third-world status.
I certainly hope this grim scenario doesn't come to pass, and therefore I don't think we should take this path of a narrow state and local focus until Option #1 above has been sincerely tried and failed. It is our responsibility at this time to try to create a positive future for all of America, by taking bold and courageous actions to attempt to transform the Democratic Party into a progressive party that will provide a real choice for American voters.