Of the many obstacles preventing democracy from breaking out in the land, progressives contribute themselves in several ways.
Foremost in this is that many continue to vote for Democrats like President Obama, who received more campaign financing from Wall Street than any candidate for any office in history, and upon taking office, provided them with billions in bailouts, while leaving their victims to lose homes and jobs.
The top Democrats receive millions in campaign funding from banksters, polluters, and the Nuclear Mafia, among a wide range of criminals, just like the Republicans, in their reciprocal betrayal.
The Democrats do have better rhetoric, necessary to fool the liberals, but they have shown year after year that they do not deliver on their promises. The major promises of Obama have been shredded, while he covered up for the many crimes of the preceding Bush regime, the worst criminal activity of the 21st century, including horrible human rights violations and war crimes resulting in the deaths of at least hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Peace movement people voted for Obama only to watch the war expanded and defense spending increased. Environmentalists who voted for Obama watched as he pushed for expanded oil drilling and dangerous subsidized nuclear power plants on behalf of his backers.
Many of us are tired of watching Greens fight each other and tear the party apart, socialists split into a dozen ineffective political parties, good progressive candidates running against each other, and labor unions flushing their hard-earned money down the toilet of the Democratic Party, only to watch as their members are sold out, time and time again.
I’ve had emails from people recommending a “don’t vote” strategy. They tell me the ruling powers that be would really be taught a lesson. What supporters of this “strategy” miss is that in many elections across the nation, the majority do not show up at the polls, so this is hardly innovative.
The only thing that moves the ruling Forces of Greed is competition.
Republicans have already had straw polls and are working out candidates for next year, and the Democrats are raising millions for their campaign chests.
Progressives haven’t moved a finger. The only chance for a public interest candidate to compete is to start early. Progressives don’t have the financing, the mass media coverage, or the rules and laws in their favor to start late in the game.
We know before they take place that the candidate debates will not allow progressives to participate. We know the corporate media will not cover public interest candidates. We know it is pulling teeth just to get on the ballot in most of the 50 states, where it’s made easy for the Democrats and Republicans.
The only shot the people have is to start early. That’s why so many progressives have supported Dennis Kucinich in the past when he has run in Democratic primaries. He was the only one getting out the progressive agenda, and otherwise the masses were being convinced to support either the corporate Democrat or the Republican as the lesser evil.
It wasn’t generally until Kucinich dropped out that other choices have been made available, such as the Green Party candidate, for example, but by then there was no time to gather support for the candidate.
Congressman Kucinich and Senator Bernie Sanders have both said a progressive challenger would be welcome next year, although neither has said they will be running themselves.
I would encourage the Greens to start early this time, and gather support from labor, social justice advocates, peace movement members, environmentalists, socialists, human rights activists and other progressives to unite.
Give us a candidate by no later than March 2012, so that we can spread the word over the Internet, the last semblance of democracy left (as Egyptians recently showed).
We must go around the corporate media and start early. We are the majority, and revolution is not only possible, but probable to work, with enough solidarity.
As the old chant of progressive protests so wonderfully puts it, “the people, united, will never be defeated.”
Jack Balkwill does the web site Liberty Underground of Virginia and has written for publications as varied as the little-read English Honor Society’s Rectangle to the millions of readers USA Today. He can be reached at libertyuv@hotmail.com.
Challenging Progressive candidates does at least insert into the dialog things that neither of the parties want heard – I agree, that’s a start. I’ve also made 2 other suggestions, as I believe the two parties we have cannot be relied upon to make any changes at all. The first is for the leadership of all the identifiable progressive parties, from the Greens to the Marijuana Reform Party (and, yes, including some from the Dems, even if we don’t much care for them at the moment) to get in a single sand box and duke it out. Not to agree on issues and priorities (that is what has splintered them), but to hammer out a set of core principles on which all can agree. The basis for a new party that puts aside, for the moment, matters of specific goals and methods and drafts a solid set of principles along with the mechanisms that will make it enforceable on every candidate running for office, on every official who wins a seat for an office. To craft a party which all of us can say, “ok, I can agree to that.” Second, I’ve suggested that that we the people begin the process of creating those documents now, by discussing and drafting our recommended principles, on our blogs, our websites, and networks and in the streets. That will require mechanisms that can receive our voices, combine them and pass them upward until they arrive at the sandbox to assert the people’s voice and will in the matter. That needs to also be started early, and is up to you and others in the middle ground to see that we have the tools to make it so in some orderly and coherent fashion. That’s my 2-cents.