Glenn Greenwald today makes it clear just why a viable third party or alternative, progressive political force is necessary. We can’t trust the Democrats to do what’s right — as if eight years of Bill Clinton and the party’s complicity in getting us mired in Iraq weren’t enough proof — when Democrats are willing to go to bat for corporatists like Blanche Lincoln (who repaid Barack Obama and Bill Clinton’s support during her primary fight by spitting in their face on climate change). This is an argument I’ve been making on and off for a long time.
And it was important that progressives not bow to the party hierarchy, that they band together to send a message to people like Lincoln (and Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieux and, if needed, Barack Obama).
The message was the point of the Bill Halter challenge, as he explains.
The point here, speaking just for myself, was not to put Bill Halter in the Senate. While I am convinced Halter would have at least been marginally better than Lincoln (he certainly couldn’t have been worse), I don’t know if he would have been substantially better. Nor was the point an ideological one — the real conflict in politics is not Left v. Right or liberal v. conservative, but rather, insider v. outsider. Lincoln’s sin isn’t an ideological one, but the fact that she’s a corporatist servant of the permanent factions that rule Washington. The purpose here was to remove Lincoln from the Senate, or, failing that, at least impose a meaningful cost on her for her past behavior. That goal was accomplished, and as a result, Democratic incumbents at least know there is a willing, formidable coalition that now exists which can and will make any primary challenge credible, expensive and potentially crippling — even if it doesn’t ultimately succeed. That makes it just a bit more difficult for Democratic incumbents to faithfully serve corporate interests at the expense of their constituents, or at least to do so with total impunity.
Beyond that benefit, the very significant divisions within the Party become a bit more crystallized as a result of this episode. In response to the White House’s complaint that unions did not spend their money to help Democratic incumbents, an AFL-CIO official angrily replied: “Labor isn’t an arm of the Democratic Party.” Of course, that’s exactly what much of labor has been up to this point, but the realization that the interests of the Party and these unions are wildly divergent will hopefully change that. There’s clearly a growing recognition among many progressives generally that devotion to the Democratic Party not only fails to promote, but actively undermines, their agenda (ACLU Executive Directory Anthony Romero yesterday began his speech to a progressive conference with this proclamation: “I’m going to start provocatively . . . I’m disgusted with this president”). Anything that helps foster that realization — and I believe this Lincoln/Halter primary did so — is beneficial.
That is really the key point: it should be apparent to any rational observer that confining oneself to the two-party system — meaning devoting oneself loyally to one of the two parties’ establishments without regard to what it does — is a ticket to inevitable irrelevance. The same factions rule Washington no matter which of the two parties control the various branches of government (see this excellent new article from Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson on the Obama administration’s role in the BP oil spill, and specifically how virtually nothing changed in the oil-industry-controlled Interior Department once Ken Salazar took over [as was quite predictable and predicted]; Interior employees even refer to it as “the third Bush term”). There is clearly a need for new strategies and approaches that involve things other than unconditional fealty to the Democratic Party, which weigh not only the short-term political fears that are exploited to keep Democrats blindly loyal (hey, look over there! It’s Sarah Palin!) but also longer-term considerations (the need to truly change the political process and the stranglehold the two parties exert). In sum, any Party whose leaders are this desperate to keep someone like Blanche Lincoln in the Senate is not one that merits any loyalty.
The deck, however, is stacked right now against third parties — which is something I think this country desperately needs. First-past-the-post elections, combined with the massive amount of corporate cash and the privileges accorded political parties, ensures that challenges from the left or right that come from outside the party structure are doomed to failure.
However, we have to get past this notion that by voting for the third-party challenger — or by voting for a challenger in a primary — we are weakening the least worst and ensuring a win by the worst. Least worst too often turns out to be bad enough.
The fact remains that corporations win regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in the White House or control Congress. The pro-corporate legislation that helped create the current financial crisis — and the S&L debacle before it — was decidedly bipartisan, as was the deregulation of the energy sector, the lowering of the top-tier income tax rate and flattening of its progressiveness (thanks Bill Bradley). A Democratic president gave us welfare reform, Nafta and GATT. And so it goes.
People who call themselves progressives or liberals or leftists make a huge mistake when they hitch their wagons to the Democrats come hell or high water. The American left, or what passes for it, must begin to recognize that there are good Democrats and bad Democrats and that the bad ones must be held accountable for the bad votes they’ve cast. The left is too often taken for granted by Democratic leaders who think progressives have nowhere else to go. It has to demonstrate that its votes matter.
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