Is It Not Time For Liberals To Form A New Progressive Party?

Would it not be appropriate, is it not the time, for the left to start to lay the foundation of a new political party in this country? Do We The People not need a vigorous new progressive party? Perhaps we could call it the Progressive party?

Something - anything - that can try to lift us out from under the long shadow of the modern day war-fueled duocratic corporatist crypto-fascist establishment that has consigned us to the lowly station of having to choose between one of its two respective sots every second, fourth and sixth year to lord over us, send our kids off to die in far away lands, ship our jobs off, sell off our ports, destroy our healthcare, posion the environment, this, that and always something else would be a bit refreshing. No? I've been a die hard Dem all my life, but what I see today is a party that seems to have lost its way. Any ideas out there? Any hope left? 1992 proved it could be done. Could it not be done again on our side?

conservative factions within the party, and help progressive DEMOCRATS get elected.

...as long as we can keep those bloody liberals out.

It's not us that need a new party. It's the Eisenhower and Rockefeller style Republicans who need a new party. I hope they take the DLC with them too.

Because if they do, the GOP house of cards will crash around the repugs ears.

Good luck on your 3rd party though. :shrug:

frustration.

All around me I see that the conservative right-wing holier-than-thou hate-mongering fake patriot anti-environment bigoted intolerant bible thumping republicans are either dying off or just being looked as as foolish. I am an older person who associates with a lot of young people 16-40 (I'm pushing 70 and I firmly believe it is a matter of time- not a lot of time either. We just have to get these people to VOTE (sorry for the shout, everyone but this is an important point for me).

Not that either is easy, but 3rd parties will never get far in the U.S.

With his work as a consumer advocate

Thus ensuring another 5-10 years of Conservative rule. GREAT IDEA!

entity, very similar to Howard Dean's 50-state plan.

I say at local, state level start building large progressive networks and organizations that can start ruling at that level. In the meantime stage a progressive takeover of the democrats

A lot say don't support independent progressives -- let me ask you, what better way to get Dems to become more progressive themselves? If they have no competition from the Left, they can be as Right as they want!

because third parties should be formed only as a last resort.

We already have DFA and Dr. Dean's help building grassroots organizations nation wide. That is how the party has always changed, from the bottom up, usually forced to by a large and noisy faction within it that either threatens to split or does split. The main party is then forced to co opt enough of the platform to make the party palatable to them once again.

Progressive splinter parties are already out there: Socialists, Socialist Worker's Party, Greens, Labor, and The New Party. Only a coalition among them all would make them worth while, although the potential is there for any progressive who is sufficiently disgusted with DINO representation to cast a protest vote.

I would strongly suggest using DFA as the means of organizing a progressive bloc within the party as the major strategy. It's the one with the greatest chance of success.

to stay that way.

It's time for progressives to come together as a organized faction within the party. A reliable and predictable parter that consistently rewards cooperation and punishes defection by the leadership. Earlier posts mention PDA and DFA as vehicles for this. I agree.

If we defect it will just push the Democratic party to the right in search of votes.

But we can't be suckers either. This situation in CT is a perfect example. If the Schumer and the party leadership backs Leiberman as an Independent we have to strike back in some significant way. But we have to do it in a way that leaves the door open for future cooperation with people we agree with 80% of the time. In other words, defect for an instance to punish, but don't leave the party altogether.

As long as I remain in the party as a progressive I place myself at risk of being taken for a sucker by the Democratic leadership, but at the end of the day, I'd rather risk being a sucker while acting strategically to limit that kind of exploitation within a cooperative framework. I'd rather risk being an occasional sucker than turn into some self-fellating third party poseur who helps the Republicans win. No thanks.

The way we see it, the Republicans are moving farther to the right, the Democrats more to the center, seems to us it's possible that a new progressive party (the Greens) could step up and fill in the gap on the left. But that probably won't happen. There are far too many people who aren't willing to vote for a 3rd party because "nobody else will".
Hopefully we can just elect some new Dems that are actually progressive and not so centrist and put the Democratic party back to the left where it should be.

We need Democratic victories in the House and the Senate. After we get them, we tweak what what've got.

They are SERVANTS of the PEOPLE, our elected leadership, and we simply have to let them know that in clear and convincing fashion.

I've been a registered Democrat since 1965. Worn out my nose voting for the "not as bad" wing of the Capitalist/Nationalist Party.

Politicians and Parties need two things: Money and votes. Withhold them and they will come to you.

:eyes:

Marcy Winograd, an extremely progressive candidate, ran against Jane harman, a war supporting (and other things) Democrat. All of the progressive organizations were tired of Harman. Very much like having a republican in the house. Harman won the primary, I'm sad to say, but she had to change her positions to win. And she moved to the left. She clearly got the message that if she does not start to represent us, she is out. I would be happier with marcy as our congresswoman, but the result has been positive, no matter how you look at it.
DFA did not endorse Marcy, unfortunately, because they felt that they did not want to use their energy to unseat any democrat, and preferred to only work against repubs. That, imho, is a mistake. I do understand why some people take that position, but I think we can shift our dems to the left by loudly letting them know what we, their citizens, think.

If you want to split the progressive vote on some kind of third-party pipe dream, feel free to do so on someone else's website.