The Third Way has become, as most of us know all too well, a strategy of limping along with the Democrats we can elect into the system we have, relying on that to produce the change we need. Unfortunately, most of these Democrats can't or won't represent us in D.C. And the system is corrupt, hostage to the plutocrats. In terms of the Class War, for going on four decades, we take one step forward, two steps back. Get an egg, lose a steak and an orange. Sometimes the exchange isn't even that good. Call it change, but it's rarely recognizable as progress. Especially on the one measure that matters most if you like your change with progress, and that's political influence. Every day, we have less of it. Because every day, the policies in D.C. make the uber-rich even uber-richier, which makes their political influence even more disproportionate, and ours even more meaningless than it already is.
In addition, the third way always leads back to Republicans anyway, because Democrats who act like Republicans just don't satisfy anyone.
Nevertheless, this is the way we and our representatives know. Ironically, it's as if we expect change in D.C. but are unwilling to change our strategies and tactics in order to get it. We will most likely engage in all manner of denial in order to take this path again in 2012, because it is the familiar path of least resistance. It's what I expect most Democrats and progressives will choose to do once more with resentment, er, reservations. In many cases, by default, as if we weren't really making a choice, as if we didn't have one.
The two paths to actual progress left to us in the advanced state of the Class War are ball busters.
The first path is like the WI program on steroids, nationalized. I call it the Powell Doctrine for the Class War. In taking this path, WE would take responsibility for the "outcome" of the class war. That's right, WE wouldn't take no for an answer. WE would make an all-out effort to rapidly cobble together the largest coalition of grassroots organizations--united and with one, unequivocal voice--and confront our "representatives" in D.C. with an offer they can't refuse. They couldn't refuse our offer because there would just be too damn many of us and WE wouldn't leave without results. (Individually, people would come and go, but the humongous, inescapable protest presence would remain.)
This approach is based on the hypothesis that some very large, increasingly well-organized number of people demonstrating in D.C. for some long, indefinite period of time would ultimately achieve substantial change.
[I have and will shortly again describe both the Powell Doctrine for the Class War (the overwhelming, irresistible progressive force in D.C.) and "substantial change" in more detail in other diaries.]
On this, first path, it is possible that we would approach our own Party leaders first with a preliminary ultimatum to either 1) embrace our populist polices and become lightning rods for fighting the class war in support of the 99% in exchange for our enthusiatic support in 2012, or 2) face a much larger, more organized, less flattering, less supportive, open-ended confrontation in D.C. throughout the election cycle and beyond as necessary.
It needs to be explored more fully, but perhaps at least the threat of an Article V Constitutional Convention would be useful.
Now, some people have and will question why we need to nationalize WI with The Powell Doctrine for the Class War. The answer is that we will be divided and conquered by the Plutocrats in a local-only game, since we will be fighting on too many fronts, most of them not blue. To me, reliance on local efforts without a massive national effort is a Progressive "Devil Take the Hindmost Strategy". Many, many locales will simply be left for dead in the carnage.
Unfortunately, at the moment, I believe much more strongly that this path would work than that we would ever agree and organize to do it.
The second path is daunting in a different way. Call it "doubling down on 'W'". On this path we would turn down the bait of "the lesser of two destructive evils" in 2012, allow REAL Republicans to REALLY take power and REALLY scare the shit out of people again. Presumably we could then leverage that into some future landslide election cycle for real progressives.
I know, sounds crazy.
This path scares the shit out of me just thinking about it. Of course that's the whole point. We can rest assured that Republicans would play consummate villains. But I do worry about depending on the viability of the electoral system to deliver a landslide to Progressives under any circumstances in the future, subject, as it has become, to thorough corporate/plutocrat corruption. And I have a hard time believing that our replacement progressives would do better. I'm skeptical that anyone will do better before The Powell Doctrine is used on The Class War. Without institutionalized populist changes brought about by the first path, it's hard to imagine government becoming more representative of the people.
The one difference would be, I think, that many of us would be less gullible, and perhaps by then WE will have developed better ways of keeping our representatives on track.
As I have said elsewhere, I do not support an armed revolt on either moral or practical grounds.
I have purposely not hidden my bias with a phony "fair and balanced" analysis.
I think the third way, the current strategy, has been and will continue to be hopelessness personified, which is ironic since both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ran on hope. It's a slow death march into bondage, with bouts of water-boarding.
I think the second path, "Doubling Down on W", in addition to being scary, is at the very least incredibly risky. I personally would still choose it over the "third way", because I know it would drive people back to Democrats in droves, and at least it has some long odds of actually resulting in massive, boomerang progress in the end.
The first path, however, leveraging our strength in numbers in a way never seen before, is the only assured way of getting substantive results that I can think of. I recognize it is a tough, tough sell, even in the progressive culture, where ideas of enduring sacrifice for long-term gain are least given a hearing. Yes, we're far more open-minded to sacrifice than the rest, but we have a limited track record for actually enduring broad sacrifice for extended periods of time, at least not when we have a choice to avoid it or ignore it. We love convenience and creature comforts as much as the next person, and we generally hate being pinned down to anything "organized" even more than the next person. And there are an infinite number of ways to deny it needs doing.
"Americans can always be counted upon to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities." - Churchill
Who says Democrats and progressives are un-American?
The choice we have is simple but brutal. But watching the plutocracy double its income, wealth and influence once again over the next 30 years to something approaching 100% won't be easy either. Just sayin.
WE have a choice.
Whatever we wind up doing, that will have been it. OUR choice.