Salon: A left-wing Tea Party may be closer than you think [View all]

[pampango]

Last edited Sun Jun 29, 2014, 09:04 AM - Edit history (1)

Not every Tea Party opponent was so dismissive, though. Calling “the daily vicissitudes” of the battle between the Tea Party and the GOP establishment “beside the point,” the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent wrote that McDaniel’s defeat obscured a more significant truth: “(O)n many key issues, the business community is getting nothing for its investment in the GOP establishment’s picks.” He went on to cite immigration reform, the Export-Import Bank, and federal spending on infrastructure as just three obvious examples. The obvious conclusion to be drawn? Maybe what Kibbe said wasn’t quite so silly after all.

At the very least, those on the American left hoping to push the Democratic Party away from the centrist, neoliberal policies it’s embraced since at least Bill Clinton (and arguably earlier, beginning with Jimmy Carter) and more toward a more populist, redistributionist approach should be lucky to be so silly. Indeed, members of what little there is of an American far left have long admired the Tea Party’s effectiveness, if not its goals. When, during last October’s Tea Party-inspired government shutdown, Jacobin’s Bhaskar Sunkara wrote that “Tea Party-like success … would be a tremendous advance for those looking not just to protect, but to expand, the welfare state,” he wasn’t playing contrarian but rather echoing a sentiment I’ve heard many times from leftist friends over the past four years. (For those unaware, here’s a good rundown as to why Occupy Wall Street, for all its virtues, doesn’t count.)

More than anything else, it’s the tension evident in McCray and Dimitrijevic’s differing estimations of the Democratic Party that poses the biggest threat to a nascent Tea Party left. To be fair, this is certainly a reflection of Maryland and Wisconsin’s different circumstances and different political histories; but the underlying question of whether it’s better to work within “the system” or push it from without has been confronted by all of these candidates, and will no doubt plague future ones as well. If there’s to be a left-wing Tea Party, it would have to be held together by a somewhat paradoxical consensus — that the Democratic Party as it currently existed is fraudulent and corrupt, and that it was at the same time the only realistic vehicle for those looking to move American politics decidedly to the left. (Yes, Tea Partyers make occasional threats to break from the GOP and create a party of their own, but these warnings are not only infrequent but thoroughly hollow.)

At this point, however — after more than five years of Tea Party disruption and rapid success — we should know at least this much: If the left is going to have a Tea Party of its own, it’ll have to do it by making its peace with the Democratic Party and supporting grass-roots candidates willing to change it from within. So, by all means, get excited for Sanders or Warren 2016; but just remember, a dissident underdog’s run for the White House cannot be seen as the end-result of so much left-wing agitation. It can only be the start.

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/28/a_left_wing_tea_party_may_be_closer_than_you_think/

I hate linking the terms 'tea party' to 'left wing'. The author used "populist, redistributionist" in the article. That suits me much better.

He does raise the issue of changing the Democratic Party from within - even with threats of leaving the party (as the tea party does to the republican party) rather than abandoning it.