What’s at stake in Yglesias’ article on the failures of the Democratic Party is that the world’s leading economy and dominant military power will not be addressing our most serious predicament, the global climate crisis, for many years to come.
Matthew Yglesias (in his VOX article “Democrats are in Denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble.” 10-19-2015) suggests that the Democratic Party is taking up more left leaning positions recently, positions to help those of us struggling to survive in this very unequal economy. The implication is that this is coming at a time when these positions, with no hope of implementation, will further isolate the Democrats from power.
The destruction of labor unions and the degradation of our educational systems has lead to the rise in popularity of conservative causes. (VOX, “America may be in a reinforcing feedback loop of growing inequality and Republican rule”, Lee Drutman, November 4, 2015).
Howard Dean suggested on MSNBC last night (11-5) that the reason the Democrats have done so poorly lately is that the party had turned into a re-elect the President committee. He was bemoaning the Party’s abandonment of the 50 state strategy he implemented when leading the DNC that resulted in the victories of 2006 and 2008. The 50 State Strategy was an attempt to create a party organized mass movement.
I believe that the problem resides in the fact that Democrats, who engage in strong debates over principles and issues, abandon their principles when there is a chance of implementing them and consequently attack politicians who will fight for those principles. I am discouraged by the Party’s organized duplicity. It is not hard for me to hold my beliefs in what science is trying to tell us, that civilization is at risk of disappearing under the weight of our own doings. The news presents daily the disintegrating conditions of our climate crisis.
It takes a lot of people to create this extraordinary culture that we benefit from, our modern global culture. Our civilization’s advances in education, medicine, communication, energy production, transportation and much more are at risk by the economic dynamics that created them. We are dependent on the stable climate of the last 10 millennium. Our ability to both feed ourselves and have the leisure to create this culture is what is a stake.
Bernie Sanders is correct that we need a political revolution, a mass movement, to take our democracy back from the ‘millionaire and billionaire class’ that controls both parties, our democracy, at the highest levels. Mass movements can support electoral parties and parties can support mass movements. There is a lot of overlap. But they are not the same type of institutions. They have different goals. Parties are about gaining state power and governing and movements are about influencing that governance. Mass movements plead, demand, and at best force governments to address their concerns. Howard Dean’s mass movement, his 50 State Strategy, was compromised because it facilitated the very people that wanted to destroy it.
“Liberals accustomed to chuckling over the ideological rigor of the House GOP caucus won't want to hear this, but one of the foundations of the GOP's broad national success is a reasonable degree of ideological flexibility.” [Yglesias sic] This is a polite way of saying that the Republican Party was forced to embrace and rode the TEA Party’s far right agenda to their electoral success.
The Democratic Party by contrast is doing everything in its power to suppress its stated, and left leaning agenda, that has broad mass appeal. The importance of this is that in so doing the Democratic leadership is preventing the implementation of policies needed to address the global climate crisis, policies that of necessity embrace and promote peace, environmental sustainability, and economic equality.
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