Chris Bowers announced his resignation from MyDD today. After having spent 3 years to help build that site into the premier place to discuss national social democratic politics, he feels it's time to spread his wings and pursue deeper and more fundamental change.
In doing so, he explains something that's been nagging at my mind for the last several months, as the Democratic Congress unfolded. The liberal blogosphere needs to change, dramatically, its aims and orientation. While focusing on electing any old Democrat may have made sense in the face of a brutal Republican onslaught, the first 6 months of the Democratic majority prove that it is not enough to just elect Dems. It is now time for us to move to the second, more important phase of our political work: rebuilding the Democratic Party itself.
Those of us old-timers here at dKos remember the heady days of 2003 and early 2004. Despite our differences on the primary candidates, we all agreed that the Democrats had failed, almost completely, in reacting to Bushism, from the 2000 election to the 2003 Iraq War, and that radical changes were needed.
We wanted a root and branch revolution within the party, and Dean was the person many of us hoped would lead it. As we well remember, by Iowa things had changed. Kerry and Gephardt stabbed Dean in the back and from there it was Kerry's nomination to lose. When it became clear he would win that nomination most folks closed ranks around him in the hopes that he would end our national nightmare.
By the summer of 2004 the site's tone had shifted. The Kerry campaign and Fahrenheit 9/11 had made it acceptable to publicly voice dissent again, and as a result thousands flocked to dKos. Their goal was singular - get rid of Bush. This dovetailed with rising expectations among many at this site, that we might be able to take a shortcut. Instead of undertaking a thorough reform of the party, we could ride the Dems to victory in 2004 and be rid of the Bush menace.
This did not work out in 2004, but the basic concept had proved popular, and by 2006, when the majority of America finally recognized what we'd known all along - that Bush and the Republicans were dangerous lunatics and had to go - the "Yay Democrats!" approach seemed to be bearing its richest fruit. The Democratic victory in 2006 appeared to be a dawning of a new, post-Republican era, in which we'd not only stop the bleeding, but finally work on some core problems.
Not everyone saw the situation in such rosy terms. People such as myself remained deeply critical of Democrats, when they raised the white flag on the Supreme Court, or habeas corpus. But I also agreed that as a precondition of progress, we needed to get the Republicans out of power.
Now that we've done that, however, it has become quite clear that we're right back where we started from. The Democratic majority has been in power for 6 months, and it's not been a pretty sight. The surrender on Iraq a few weeks back was perhaps the most obvious sign that the Democratic majority still didn't get it, still wasn't willing to fight for us, still wasn't willing to stand up to Bush and his mendacity. Since then we've also had to witness Democrats attempting to promote global warming and block efforts to solve the problem. Massive backsliding from the Dems, on a wide range of issues, stares us in the face.
Looking at this situation, Chris Bowers yesterday argued that it was time to "expand beyond just partisanship." In that post, he argues that the time has come to move beyond a focus on electing any old Democrat, and instead toward finally starting to build the progressive majority that is 40 years in coming:
Now that the Democratic Party has a share of governing power in Washington, D.C., and also in the vast majority of states around the country, the progressive movement has reached a point where ideological concerns need to play a larger role in our activism than they have over the past five years.... We need to end the longstanding Democratic practice of trying to chase after the center, and instead engage in the war of ideas and persuade the center to move to our side. Even beyond electoral politics and ideological dialogue, we need to organize within the major national institutions that produce our ideology, and seek to build a progressive country not just in governance, but also in the way we live. If we are going to have a governing, and potentially long-lasting, progressive majority in America, we need not only a progressive Democratic Party, but also a progressive culture and a progressive nation....It is impossible to build a progressive party, government, culture or nation if ideology is always de-emphasized.
Look at the diary list on dKos at this very moment. There are a few about elections and candidates. But the overwhelming majority are about progressive issues and ideas, just as has been the case for well over a year. Most Kossacks already are thinking in terms not of electing more Democrats, but in terms of addressing the deep crisis we as a nation find ourselves in.
If we are to end this war, to address the climate crisis and peak oil, pass card check, stop mountaintop removal, provide universal health care, or deal with any of the other issues that the Democratic majority has shown zero interest in tackling, we must shift our focus entirely. It is time we stopped focusing just on elections, stopped seeing them as the end goal of our work.
It is time to build a progressive majority.
To do that we must begin work to build infrastructure, organizations, and ideas that will recast this party as a party not just of Democrats, but of social democrats. We must be willing to pick fights with Dems when they fail us, and above all else, we must be willing to primary bad Dems.
It is not always clear who is a good Dem and who is a bad Dem. Someone like Rick Boucher, who wants global warming to happen, is also a strong ally on net neutrality. The Congressional majority is full of such examples, ranging from the good folks who occasionally fuck up to the Bush Democrats (aka the Blue Dogs) who are our outright enemies. How we deal with them must be the subject of an open and honest debate amongst our movement. But we must never accept that there is nothing we can do about them.
American history is full of moments where the underlying political landscape underwent rapid, profound, and unexpected change. In 1928 Republicans dominated American politics. Four years later the New Deal majority was here to stay. In 1964 Republicanism seemed on the verge of extinction. Four years later Nixon had risen from the dead and the New Deal majority was smashed.
We must finally reject the idea that we cannot change American attitudes. Too often, so-called "realists" come along to tell us that this or that bad Dem is the best we can get from a district, that it's a "red district" so we have to put up with whatever we can get. This is not at all realistic politics. True realism understands that politics is an everchanging business, and that voters' minds are never cast in stone - otherwise Bush would still be at 90% approval ratings. We have not only witnessed, but we have played a significant role in one of the most stunning turnabouts in American public opinion - the mass rejection of George W. Bush. It came a wee bit late for the 2004 vote, but it DID happen.
As Howard Dean said last night, there is no such thing as a red district anymore. It is time for us to heed those words. Progressive politics are not just for Seattle and Berkeley and Austin and Boston. They are supported in Butte, and Springfield, and Roanoke, and Orlando, and Tupelo, and Chandler. Our ideas are sound not because a few of us in blue cities hold them, but because they are right.
It is now our task to bring those ideas to the masses. To walk through the open door that the public's rejection of Bush and anger at the present situation has provided to us. We now know that this Democratic majority will never do what we need them to do, even if they had veto-proof majorities with which to do it. We are at a place now where it is not merely about how many folks have a D after their name, but about what those with a D believe.
Finally, this requires us to become activists. It's been a tough couple decades for activism. Locked in an increasingly obsolete 1960s paradigm, progressive activism has not yet caught up with the reality of where most Americans are at. Happily we are best positioned to help provide those solutions. We must become organizers and activists again. We must reach beyond our comfort zones and our blog niches to engage others who are essential to our political movement. We must speak with the poor. With people of color. With those in rural areas and in inner cities and in suburbs. We must be willing to take our message to anyone who will listen.
It is time for us to move on, folks. Supporting any old Democrat and focusing strictly on elections worked in 2006, but we now see that it can only get us so far. If we truly want to save this country, if we want to in fact help save this world and the future of humanity upon it, we MUST change. We MUST become more overtly progressive. And we MUST commit ourselves to building a lasting social democratic movement. Then - and ONLY then - will we not only have beaten Republicans for good, but we will finally be able to tackle the massive problems that the current Democratic majority is unwilling or unable to grapple with. The future is ours. Will you embrace it?