The Icebergs Cometh: Retaking USA Titanic Before the 2012 Elections

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/12-12

In the wake of a super-nova of exploded hope in President Obama, a power vacuum is now spinning in our political universe. A desperate need to fill the void (lest it someday be filled with a babbling Bachmann or weeping Boehner) has led to a frenzy of organizing among Democrats and Progressives.

Some, like the Van Jones/Move On “Rebuilding the Dream” coalition, are attempting to rekindle that Obama flame by pointing the blame finger at “evil corporations,” without drawing a direct line from corporate headquarters (like those of Goldman Sachs, GE, and Monsanto) to the White House. Others, like the New Progressive Alliance (NPA), led by activists such as Cindy Sheehan and Cornel West, are taking a more radical position, calling out the Democratic Party leadership as sold-out corporate shills, unworthy of further support. So the power vacuum of the Left has a deeper split within — a black hole that threatens to pull all of us into oblivion between now and November, 2012.

Free-floating in the void are Americans who lost all hope after what they perceive as Obama’s Great Betrayal, followed by the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, unleashing an unfettered free market for the rich to buy our candidates. We may now envision them as a far less cool version of NASCAR drivers, slathered with the logos of their corporate sponsors.

The NPA and organizations such as RootsAction and Progressive Democrats of America have been hard at work on new Progressive platforms. All well and good, but where are inspiring candidates to rally around? The lesson learned from Obama is that pretty words do not action make — and the Establishment Democrats and their Wall Street backers tell us what we want to hear in order to keep power. We also know that our two-party system is walled like a fortress against a third party uprising.

More at the link --

[Larkspur]

1. "We also know that our two-party system is walled like a fortress against a third party uprising."

It's been that way since the US Constitution was passed. James Madison realized that our winner-take-all system makes third party challenges ineffective. The best they can hope for is be a spoiler.