The Left's New Majority

[Thom Little]

Something vital, exciting and underreported is happening across the United States: marginalised groups in the poorest communities are joining forces to improve their condition and win local electoral victories. This is the America of Latinos, African-Americans, religious progressives, union members, young people, and single women. Combined, these mostly progressive groups of the left constitute an actual and significant national majority. If the Democratic Party taps into this energy, it could help create the next social and political momentum in the United States and even win presidential elections. But typically, Democratic leadership does not work closely with these groups, their natural constituencies. This relationship has yet to become a reality.

Since the 2004 presidential election, the fashion on the American left has been to look at what the right did and try to do the same, as though the right have won a major victory in American consciousness. Even the second wave of progressive critics, who complain we obsess too much over Republican strategy, end up using the right's supposed victory over hearts and minds as an axis from which to build their arguments. But George W Bush never won a public mandate. The plurality he earned was largely a result of the withdrawal of Democratic campaigns from most states, in a flawed strategy to focus on "swing states".

My intention is not to deny the power of the Republican Party as an electoral machine, but to emphasise that that is all it is. Poll after poll has found American citizens largely in support of progressive solutions to public problems, even as Democratic Party support for these ideas has dwindled.

.......

Meanwhile the Democratic Party fixates on chasing the centre and the so-called "swing voter" in its electoral strategies. In chasing the right for ideas, it has forgotten what power it could gain from building a forceful position on behalf of Americans (potentially the vast majority) who are not represented by the priorities of the current Republican administration. Only by organising at the frontline in communities across America, will they establish a core political force for uncertain voters to swing to. Organising at the swing only dispirits the base.


http://www.alternet.org/story/29467/