Why Won't the Progressives Get Their Acts Together?

| Ernest Partridge |

It seems sometimes that the wealthy progressives don't really want to win or, at the very least, don't care to learn how to win.

Case in point: Air America Radio.

As most of you have surely heard, two weeks ago Air America Radio filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Not, as the right-wing commentariat would have us believe, because of poor ratings or lack of listener support. To be sure, poor management was largely responsible for AAR's troubles. But the crucial difficulty, I suspect, was a lack of long-term capitalization, which is to say, investment by deep-pocketed liberal supporters.

Air America Radio is a business, as is FOX News, the Washington Times, and other right-wing media enterprises. Like most businesses, AAR is expected to turn a profit, if not at the outset, then at least eventually, after some "settling in." Absent a reasonable expectation of profit and return on investment, a business fails.

But Rev. Moon's Washington Times and Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, to name just two right-wing media enterprises, are not "like most businesses." Their primary objective is not profit, it is propaganda. And so, year after year, even though these "businesses" routinely lose millions of dollars with no prospect of profits in sight, there is no reason to expect that they will declare bankruptcy. As long as they accomplish their primary objective of befuddling a sizeable portion of the American public, they will stay in business. Moon, Murdoch, et al, can absorb the losses without breaking a sweat.

Moon, Murdoch, and other right-wing fat-cats keep their red-ink media operations going for the same reason that Scaife, Coors, Ahmanson, and numerous corporations fund such so-called "think tanks" as The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Competitive Enterprise Institute, etc. They do so to promote their agenda, and they have been spectacularly successful in doing so.

The benefactors of these media and think-tanks do not expect direct compensation for these "investments." But their indirect returns have been enormous. For this massive propaganda effort has been instrumental in putting the regressive Bush administration and the rubber-stamp Republican Congress in power, from which has issued tax cuts, deregulation, no-bid contracts, while at the same time crippling labor unions and endangering the middle class.

Meanwhile, Air America Radio is on its own, as it scrounges for corporate (!) sponsors.

Super-rich progressives, such as George Soros, Warren Buffet, and those fabled "Hollywood liberals" have, qua rich, made out like bandits with the Bush tax cuts, even while they have steadfastly opposed Bushism.

So why can't they put some of that windfall into a progressive (and permanently cash-bleeding) media? Soros, for example, has commendably donated billions to "promote democracy" in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. How about a few million of a billionaire's pocket change to defend - better, restore - democracy in the U.S. of A?

Moreover, the "Hollywood Liberals" have not only the funds to support a progressive media. They also have an abundance of promotional and performing talent.

When Richard Nixon put himself above the law in his grab for extraordinary power, he was done in by a free press and an independent judiciary. The regressive right, taking careful note of this, has consolidated and muffled the mainstream media (with a few honorable and courageous exceptions), and the GOP presidents since Nixon have packed the courts with like-minded judges. Now, all that is left of a free and unconstrained media is the internet - for the moment, at least. Don't count on its survival.

And yet, despite the regressive right's high-powered media propaganda machine, and the absence of an effective countering progressive media, scarcely a third of the population supports Bush or his war, and even less approve of Bush's economic and social policies. Approval of the GOP Congress is down to twenty points. Likely voters in the coming election prefer a Democratic to a Republican Congress by almost twenty percentage points. In an honest election, Democratic control of the House would be a near certainty, and of the Senate, very likely.

However, as I noted last week, my guess is that we will not have that Democratic Congress, due to the "privatization" of the elections and the consequent electronic vote fraud, combined with massive GOP efforts to disqualify Democratic voters. What we will have is a very angry and energized public.

But who or what will give voice to this anger and dissent?

The regressive right has shown us how a determined, wealthy and privileged minority can gain political power and maintain it. They planned for a long haul, building institutions and media, and the last six years have been payoff time.

The progressive (and in the authentic sense, the "conservative") majority has talent and resources. So where is the action? Where is the rebuttal to what David Brock calls "the Republican noise machine"? Why has Air America Radio been allowed to wither on the vine?

On a related note: Is it time to give up on the Democratic Party? Apparently a lot of progressives seem to think so, judging from what I have recently heard and read. Many of these have said that they will either sit out this election or vote for a third party candidate.

I share this exasperation. The Congressional Democrats have, for the most part, been very wimpy, and there is little reason to expect a forceful opposition if, by some miracle, the Dems take either house of Congress. Even so, it's nose-clip time. The only available way for a disapproving public to halt this headlong rush into Fascism is to vote for the Democrats. A massive turnout and protest vote against Bushism can make this next stolen election very costly to the GOP. And who knows, it is just possible that a flood of protest votes might overwhelm the fraud.

But win or lose, the progressive majority must take a lesson from their opponents: they must take over a major party. For decades, the regressives thrashed about uselessly, complaining about the moderate GOP and voting for various minority parties. Then they got smart and took aim at the Republican party.

Similarly, it would be much easier to overthrow the DLC "republicrats" within the Democratic party than to build a viable national party from the ground up. And if successful, the insurgent progressives would inherit an established and well-funded party organization. In the meantime, we should target the Quislings in the primaries; namely, the Democrats who have supported the Iraq war, and those who voted for the Patriot Act and, last month, the "enabling" Military Commissions Act.

Yes, the established Democratic Party stinks. But let's not abandon the Party. Instead, let's fumigate it and then reconstruct it.

-- EP

but it's not designed to make money. It's purely a neocon propaganda vehicle - the bottom line doesn't matter.

While Soros may be "liberal", he is a very neo-liberal liberal. Most of his investments are ultimately made to advance the neo-liberal agenda of free international trade, open markets, etc... Not a whole lot of concern there for the poor, except to ensure they are comfortable and complacent enough to allow 1%'ers like himself to get and remain fabulously wealthy off the labors of these masses.

When he and Warren Buffett (who I've never seen as "liberal", really) rub elbows with the other billionaires at the Bohemian Grove, the extent of their criticism of the current state of the class war probably boils down to, "Careful! If you don't keep the Great Unwashed Masses at least little bit happy, they'll revolt and become a real pain in the ass! And it could even impact profits!"

So I'm never too surprised when super-wealthy 'liberals' only ever seem to contribute a bare minimum of time and money to the real struggles. After all, they don't really want to change the world -- they just want to smooth it's operations out a bit to ensure the safety of their investments.

Have you ever stopped for a moment and wondered why Democratic Underground is so very popular? Why it seems so very central to grass-roots progressive Democratic activism? Have you noticed how often the truly active, vital liberal movements and causes have to pass a hat around and beg for money when they are fighting for things that seem so critically important to our future?

If you want an answer and a slap in the face at the same time, just try to get a job on the inside of the party or at a mainstream Democratic organization.

Are you a renowned writer? I don’t care, sweep the floor.
Are you a talented photographer? Too bad, work the phones.
Do you shoot film and write music? That’s nice, go and get us lunch.
Are you a ballsy young journalist with a sharp eye for news? Interesting. Go and make these copies.

Yes, it really is that bad and they expect you to work for free even though we raise more money than the GOP does these days.

When the conservative movement sees an outspoken, effective messenger in their midst, they’re embraced immediately. In many cases they don’t even have to ask they are approached and made an offer. A place is made for them. They are given a chance to use their abilities for the benefit of the GOP’s goals and, this is most critical, they are rewarded with a comfortable salary and plenty of options. Those who do well are given an immediate career path upward. Not surprisingly, it’s become quite popular, even for moderates, to take that route. Why? Because it’s a viable one. It’s not a lifestyle hit, it’s an upgrade. There is an unending line of effective communicators all of whom are pro GOP in some way or another.

Now where exactly, is the liberal progressive counterpart to this?

Why does William Pitt eat Spaghetti-O’s?

Simply put, every talented liberal with skills to contribute to the Democratic message should have a comfortable, secure job from a party-related source if they desire one. It should be profitable to be a liberal, not a sacrifice. We shouldn’t have to go lone-wolf or beg for money, it’s a stinging humiliation that we have to do so when so many of us are tremendously wealthy. It hurts the party very badly.

Conservatives pump money into their causes like they are paying tithes, and it shows. Our funding tends to go upward. Can you image what loyalty it would inspire among the rank-in-file if outspoken, talented communicators could put their kids through college making our message? It would transform the party, and maybe that’s the problem. We are shut out. Donna Brazile gets the check, and uses it to go have dinner with Karl Rove. They don’t eat pasta out of can.

---

Note:
Originally posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2671434#2672333 back in '04 in a thread about this situation when it was still brewing. Seems we haven't learned our lesson yet.

Commerce. The "wild-eyed" conservative is unlikely to say or do anything that will offend that constituency. The only issues a grossroots con might stray off the reservation on are immigration and trade agreements, but so long as they limit their activism to organizing lynch mobs at the border and other largely empty gestures, they don't upset the folks in the head office.

The money that Democrats seem to care about comes from the same place, so if a wild-eyed activist with a sharp wit and pen shows up, they will be afraid the new kid might offend potential corporate donors. One current case in point is the reluctance of most Democrats to directly address the oil motive for the Iraq War. If I was that wild eyed kid they gave a job to, I'd be yelling about that with the biggest megaphone they'd give me, not mumbling about it obliquely in the middle of a speech. Similarly most Democrats seem reluctant to say that the problem with health insurance is insurers gouging us on premiums then bending over backwards to try to deny us service, or that big pharma makes us pay through the nose for drugs they developed with taxpayer dollars. Even the Dems who are good on that issue might clear their throat and tell a neophyte "It's not quite a good time to bring that up."


The Democrats want activists who are housebroken.

His path to fame and notoriety was paved for him with oil party $$ and connections when it was discovered he could string two, generally coherent, sentences together. Anything he wrote, as long as it was negative toward the Democrats and their allies, was a guaranteed advance and would be published, complete with assured sales, even when those sales were going straight to the recycling bin. He had a career as a best-selling author handed to him for making up such tripe as "The Real Anita Hill".

Or Rosie O'Donnell when, immediately after 9/11 she picked up the phone and started calling on all of her Hollywood entertainment industry friends to start a relief fund for the victims of the attack, she kicked in the first million herself. She learned first-hand that, though they have millions and millions they aren't willing to part with any of it. They would "lend their names" to her cause, attend or perform at a fund raiser, perhaps make a commercial, but give money? Was she crazy? That is not how they do things.

Just a line: while it's true it's been payoff time, it's also true that they've done it at the expense of an awful lot of poorer people...

I'm not so sure true progressive-minded people would be so deviously willing to adopt the

profit-from-the-lower-classes-grandchildren-labor

plan the criminal right-wingers have successfully put in place in order to enrich themselves and their priviledged one-percenters since three-decades.

There's got to be "another way" and in fact, there is one. It just hasn't been "fairly" tried yet.

Danny Goldberg for starters.

The trending of society as been toward democracy and more and more freedoms. This has scared the shit out of entrenched wealth, much of it going back over a century, some hundreds of years.

The problem is class divisions arising from wealth and the concept of "property" taken to such as extremes as it is today, does not go hand in hand with liberalism. Our society has embraced Capitalism and its core concept of "property rights" while having it simultaneously shoved down our throats. Capitalism is not the most liberal system for sharing the fruits of a society. In fact, it’s one of the worst! Try to bring these points up and you’re labeled a socialist or even a communist!! “La-la-la-la –can’t hear you!” Whatever.

We really have to be educated to ask: do we want a society where we all can learn and grow as individuals and live our lives, not just survive them? Or, do we want masters and slaves.

So far, it’s been the later and I think a good deal of lack of education, and sabotaging education, goes to that as well as the American myth that you can be or do anything. Puh-lease!!! If we are not educated, we easily revert to animals; perhaps cunning ones, but still animals. Too many animals, wolves in sheep’s clothing, running the world today.

Still, we are all animals, to some extent. It will be very difficult to convince people to give up a certain amount of materialism to achieve a better world. It really hasn’t worked so far except in societies with harsh conditions for survival or in small groups. How to translate that upward to today’s mega-societies? Is it even possible, or do we need another world cataclysm to “rally the people” to a cause. The causes being laid before us today by our “fearless leaders” are very selfish, very divisive, and very feudal. Is that the ultimate plan of the current bunch of crooks?