dreamnightwind
dreamnightwind's JournalGreat
I'm very aware of Sawant and am a big fan. I would suggest her for a possible Bernie VP but I don't know if she's ready for such a national role.
I saw a post of yours elsewhere that openly advocated for the Green Party, to the end of the Democratic Party. I get where you're coming from, but a post like that will get you banned from here and can be pretty easily avoided, assuming you value membership here.
Many of us are thinking about the long-term viability of the Democratic Party as a vehicle to serve the people. It is much worse than even I realized, as this election season has revealed. The mask is off and it ain't pretty.
I'm not all that radical, really, but the corporatist takeover of this party, and its use of superdelegates in the primary, are not giving me much hope for anything other than climate disaster, endless wars, and substandard living conditions for all but the extremely wealthy.
There is a Group here on DU called Populist Reform of the Democratic Party, you might want to check it out.
I'm still, for now at least, working to win control of it from the corporations. I would like to see the Progressive Caucus formalize into an entity that forbids SuperPAC or any corporate campaign contributions, and provides members with a crowd-sourced campaign funding mechanism so long as they meet certain progressive values. I think that would go a long way towards getting control back.
If the party is too resistant to reform, as it seems to be so far, an alternative solution will need to be found, probably something new rather than the U.S. Green Party, IMO. That is a very steep hill to climb, but so is reclaiming the Democratic Party. This is now being very actively talked about in various places, here's one such article:
Time to Transform Bernies’s Campaign Into a Permanent Organization
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/time-to-transform-bernies_b_9547060.html
Such discussion is probably outside of the scope of DU, although it might be more acceptable in the Populist Reform Group here.
Regards.
I'll take a shot at explaining
The name of the site was chosen when W was "selected" in 2000, Skinner et al thought the Democratic Party would sort of unite under an underground moniker while the neocon fires ravaged the world, regrouping to retake power. My opinion is the Underground term is horribly misleading, it is more accurately DLC Support. Skinner was even the website designer for the old DLC and PPI websites.
Basically, this site is a party operation. It isn't quite official, as far as I know. I do know (or think I know) that Skinner's wife is or was on the payroll of the Clinton campaign. I think there are other formal connections to the party but I don't know precisely what they are. All of this should be openly disclosed by the admins but I don't think it is.
So basically, and sadly, IMHO, this site is not about moving things to the left, it's setup to do exactly what this thread is attempting to do, support and coerce support for Democratic politicians, regardless of policy or where they fall on the political spectrum. It's about supporting a label, a team, little more, fighting Republicans regardless of how much inner Republican any Democratic candidate may be hiding.
People like you (and me, so far at leasst) are allowed to post here so long as we follow the terms of service. If you're willing to bite your tongue once in awhile when you feel like giving them hell, it's not that hard to keep an active account in good standing here. We can do some good here, learn some things, teach some things, and it's sometimes worthwhile to dialogue with people who differ from your perspective.
Hartmann is an odd duck. I love him, but he tries to keep a foot in mainstream Democratic society, while his heart is on the left side of that. It makes for some contradictory situations if you ask me. Regardless, we're lucky to have him.
I was a member of the Green Party for a long time after I got tired of seeing Democrats who said what I wanted to hear and did what the big money people wanted behind my back. That was from the mid 80's until I reregistered Democrat to vote for Obama in the '08 primary. I was instantly re-disgusted with what the party actually does.
That said, the U.S. version of the Green Party is one of the more disfunctional organizations I've ever run across. Impossibly bad at organizing, and it tends to be filled with people pulling for their niche affinity groups rather than working towards a common goal. Their platform is and always has been amazing, it's a shame they never got it together but I see them as pretty hopeless. YMMV.
So personally I made the choice to fight to win back the Democratic Party for the people rather than for the corporations. There are many similar people here, though plenty of us have been banned from DU.
There are other places on the web where people like you are more welcome, like Reddit or JackpineRadicals (a new site setup by banned and/or disaffected DU members, some of our best posters). You would do well to hang out in those places a lot.
But I hope you'll stick around here if you can stand it, there is a battle going on and the populist side of the party needs to represent, with courage and wisdom. Engaging here is a way to do that. Best to you whatever you choose. I can tell your heart is in the right place.
The world burners are the donors who fund both parties
This is literally true. More and more, people are figuring this out.
Our party needs to stop being the smiley face of oiligarchy, and get behind people who run on public money who will no longer use the U.S. as the military arm of the global capitalists who prefer massive profits over a sustainable inhabitable and peaceful planet.
We actually have a viable candidate who is running on this exact premise, who walks the walk and has done so his whole life.
All the rest is just bullying by the establishment to get us to accept more of the same destructive policies.
I'm in a very pro-Bernie CA district with a HRC superdelegate
My corporacrat Rep. Jared Huffman has stated he will vote for Hillary. This is probably one of the most progressive and pro-Bernie districts in the nation (CA 2nd district, along the coast from Marin to Humboldt), and the well-funded more corporate Huffman defeated uber-progressive Norman Solomon, I think that was in the 2012 election.
There is absolutely no way a representative from this district should be committed to Hillary, it's extremely pro-Bernie here. Huffman would be a great person to lobby for changing his vote, and his job should depend on his vote reflecting the views of his voters.
I sent him an email using the link below urging him to vote how his constituents vote, and I hope others in his district will join me. It's a little weird, the contact form only gives you certain choices for the contact's subject. I chose "voter's rights", not at all an exact match but the closest I could find. I have no idea how the subject choice impacts who sees the email.
http://huffman.house.gov/contact
Thanks for the OP, I think it's an excellent action. Please, all Bernie supporters, do your part.
No need to
I was suggesting it is a tool for leverage that Bernie has in the superdelegate situation.
But, since you asked, how would such a 3rd party run impact the campaign? It's not entirely predictable. Trump and Hillary are unusually positioned, issues-wise, compared to the usual Democratic-Republican postions. Trump would hit hard and often at Hillary for dishonesty and indebtedness to corporate donors. Trump is immune to the donor issue, well I'm no expert on his funding, he may have more corporate money behind him than I realize, nowhere near what Hillary takes in though, and he'd make a big deal about it.
Bernie would trump them both on integrity and authenticity. He'd have to overcome the red-baiting from both of them, and a ton of trash the donor class woud throw at him. So far he seems pretty resilient, I believe the authenticity protects him from a lot of it.
Hillary would be the most corporate candidate of the three, hard to say how that spins out in this climate. She has tremendous brand recognition, which is both good and bad for her. There are a lot of people who, given two equal choices, would love to vote for a woman (I am such a person), but most seem to decide primarily on other issues, such as who they think will fight for their interests.
I love the Greens and their platform, always have. I have never found them to be good at large-scale campaigns and mobilization, they tend to splinter off into niche politics. Bernie's a unique candidate, so that could change.
Anyway, I wouldn't assume a green run from Bernie would disproportionately hurt Hillary, he'd take a lot from Trump, there's a lot of no-more-business-as-usual commonality between those camps, even if they differ in their response to that sentiment.
But what I really don't see, is the superdelegates behaving towards Bernie in a way similar to how they switched to Obama. Obama was much more of an acceptable establishment candidate to such people. So, if Bernie closes the elected delegate gap, I think he'll need something over the heads of the party to get any kind of fair treatment.
Do you have any better suggestions as to how he could get the superdelegates to respect the popular vote? There may well be a better way.
He's doing very well
against long odds, and without selling out to corporate money, no matter how you spin it.
I don't know to what extent he plans to implement it but I have heard Bernie speak positively about worker-owned businesses, and it's a great idea, the kind of movement that would make a difference, leading to better conditions for labor, less dependence on wall st., and bringing with it the workers' intrinsic interest in caring for their land and their planet, making decisions based on providing good products and sustainable jobs rather than rapidly extracting maximum profits. I'd be surprised to see the auto industry move to this model, but I can see other industries doing so.
The more people learn, the more people like about such ideas. It isn't the mainstream of U.S. political thought, but the mainstream of U.S. political thought has exactly no answers for staggering inequality, and is little more than the propaganda of a capitalist system that, having largely captured its government regulatory system, is bringing obscene profits to a very few people, foreign interventions and blowback terrorism, squeezing petro-profits from our aquifers, and leaving us with a hopelessly uninhabitable planet in the near future.
We're doing quite well in this campaign, thank you, people are responding to the truth. We may not win this primary, but it's the best fight from the left I can remember in some time, and long overdue. It's a wave that, IMHO, will not be stopped by the nomination of Hillary, it's bigger than that, and amplified by the horrors of growing inequality and impending ecological disaster.
We aren't the crazy ones or the nuts, you are, you who ignore the urgency of the situation and the vector we're currently on. It was time for a huge change in world view in 2008, and it's even more urgent now. The old corporate-funded centrist way supports profits, not solutions.
Could be used as leverage against superdelegates not respecting the popular vote
The Green Party will be on the ballot in most if not all states, correct?
If I were Bernie and I was going to win the elected delegate count for the primary, and the party was considering allowing superdelegates to overturn the vote of the electorate, I would use a possible 3rd party run on the Green ticket as leverage to prevent the superdelegates from giving the election to Hillary.
The Greens, with Bernie on board, could indeed keep Hillary out of the white house.
I don't want to see us go down this road, but superdelegates are inherently undemocratic, the people should be the ones who decide. If the party feels otherwise, they need a very strong incentive to do the right thing. A credible third party threat is about the only such incentive that would have enough leverage to prevent a superdelegate coup.
Interesting development.
My state (CA) was safely blue in 2012, and I was beyond disgusted with how Obama campaigned as a change candidate and governed as Republican lite, so I voted for Stein in 2012. That's a luxury of living in a very blue state, I suppose. I would never want to tip an election to a Republican. But I would want to do everything possible to force the Democratic Party to live up to its name.
If the party establishment wants our support...
it should pony up with something we can get behind, such as a substantive, detailed plan to wean the party from corporate money, or to remove health insurers from our health care system and rein in big pharma.
Until that happens (especially getting large corporate donors out of the puppeteering role for Democratic politicians), it's just the kinder face in big money's good cop - bad cop game. We've been played too long, only to see "our" representatives sell us out to suit the whims of the large donors.
Two tools of the same forces
The other elephant in the room is that Citizens' United is only the latest layer of a thoroughly corrupt campaign finance system. If we succeedd in overturning Citizens' United (and we must), we will still have a dysfunctional campaign finance system that serves the interests of the wealthy, just like we had before the Citizens' United decision.
One thing I love about Bernie is that he actually gets this, and talks about it. Most politicians are throwing up flags for people to rally behind, such as "repeal Citizens' United", or "reinstate the assault weapons ban", and are not invested in actually solving the problems these flags are symptomatic of.
Bernie, on the other hand, says that, in addition to repealing Citizens' United, we need 100% public financing of elections.
He also said. in one of the earlier debates, that his dream job would be to be president of CNN, because it would cover the news far differently if he was running it. I'd love to see that!
Yes, I and many others are in the same place you are
Still working, thanks to Bernie's campaign, to do this within the party, against all odds and against every bit of the party establishment.
But us Sanders supporters are serious. The party has to represent us, not corporations, or we'll be forced to make a new party. The better outcome would be for us to succeed in retaking the Democratic Party.
They sure aren't making it easy, they'll fight us every inch of the way, with billions of dollars and an entrenched media establishment on their side. We have the truth on our side, amplified by the urgency of war, poverty and climate change.
I can't wait to see what comes after the Sanders campaign, this movement will morph, either as an empowered new wing of the party or as a competing external entity.
I keep pushing for the Progressive Caucus (which Bernie co-founded) to change its rules, allowing no candidates in their caucus who accept corporate money. They could. with our help, and maybe that of some of the large progressive NGO's (MoveOn, PDA. etc), provide an alternative people-funded campaign financing infrastructure to allow progressives to actually govern as progressives by making sure they owe no favors to corporate America.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleCurrent location: northern California
Member since: Fri Jan 26, 2007, 08:20 PM
Number of posts: 4,775
