serious, non-inflammatory concern about effective opposition

[wli]

In another post, I saw the following quote:

"If they can't mount some aggressive and vocal opposition with Bush's numbers at 36%, then it makes me believe they're all dipping from the same trough. I know that's harsh, but at this point, what else is a person to believe?"

It may be difficult to get rethugs to cross the aisle, but shouldn't someone at least be talking besides John Conyers and Cynthia McKinney and the usual very short list of known do-gooders?

This is deadly serious. If our party is so thoroughly neutralized and/or compromised it can't or won't speak out, we are in even deeper trouble than the apparent rethug majority. Or maybe we're in that much trouble anyway because of the rampant election fraud.

What's happening here? If it really is that bad, what can we actually do anymore? As usual, I'm spooked and scared and so on.

[KG]

1. the dem party is lead by morally corrupt politcal cowards,

careerists for whom defeat has no adverse consequences.

the dem party may or may not survive, but real change will not come from with in the party, never has actually. they will respond to grass root activism, or become irrelevant.

[wli]

3. I guess that explains toeing the rethug party line by many Dems.

Modulo anthraxing and Wellstoning threats, of course, but we'll never know those until the Dems have enough power back.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. I think it's a second-order problem

Lack of effective Democratic response is what happened after Rightist rhetoric took control of the media. As soon as the media controllers realize that Liberal rhetoric is no longer stigmatized, it will re-appear, energized and vital enough to ensure that the media can use it without problems.

The media are purely reactive sources of information. Once the Right Wing monopoly is broken, as I believe it happening now, voices from the Left will be given wider promotion.

What to do? Keep talking, keep writing, keep the pressure on the media and the Press corps. Wearing down the mountain works, and it is working now.

--p!

[newswolf56]

4. I don't mean to be sarcastic or cold when I say this, but...

this is precisely what I mean when I say that -- given the givens -- the only analysis adequate to explain our present-day circumstances is the Marxist analysis of class struggle. The Democratic Party has indeed been co-opted by the oligarchy, and your example of its inability to mount adequate opposition even with Bush at 36 percent is -- just as you so correctly imply -- the ultimate proof of its co-optation.

Understand what happened: the Russian Revolution of 1917 terrified the oligarchy into concessions, the New Deal in America, the welfare state in Europe. Now with the USSR dead there is nothing left to terrify the oligarchy into even the slightest pretense of humanity and the oligarchs are reverting to true capitalist form: maximum savagery toward all of us who have to work for a living, all who are disabled, all who are elderly. Hence the global campaign of take-backs (downsizing, reduced wages, abolished pensions, destruction of the social safety net) and the global concentration of wealth (skyrocketing prices, movement of capital by outsourcing). Whether sham or reality, the crisis of "Peak Oil" and all the rest of the economic dislocation is about the oligarchy's abandonment of the Western World's workforce: tantamount to a lockout on a world-wide scale. And without political intervention, it will only worsen: homelessness and starvation on a scale previously unimaginable.

Thus where we go from here I suspect depends as much on personal inclination as anything else. I happen to believe that the U.S. Constitution is as close to a genuinely sacred document as anything humanity has ever authored, and I believe it urges us toward the re-creation of a modern variant of the New Deal: recognition of the historical reality of class struggle but -- instead of violent revolution -- the intervention of government to protect the people from the malevolence of capitalism. The pivotal question of course is whether the oligarchy will allow us that alternative.

[wli]

5. can the oligarchy truly deny us that alternative? n/t

[newswolf56]

8. Indeed. In 1970, Nixon commissioned the Rand Corporation...

to prepare a rationale for suspending the 1972 elections. Another terrorist attack permitted by "intelligence blunders" two weeks before an election -- especially if the Democratic Party (or a new Leftist third party) has potentially victorious momentum -- and the administration has a perfect Reichstag Fire-type excuse. Would the oligarchy go that far? What do you think?

[wli]

9. there's little doubt in my mind they'd go even further

Including nuclear false flag, martial law, and the like.

[ikri]

6. Its a result of the 2 party system

It splits up leadership in an unusual way.

In any election years you have (after the primaries) two (or three if a presidential term is expiring) leadership spokesperson, the presidential candidates.

Once the election is complete however, you get 1 leader - the president. The losing party generally has no spokesperson until the next presidential election comes around.

This hasn't been much of a problem for republicans when they've been out of power in the past few decades since they've had their plan. But for democrats, lacking any 40 year road map to power, it is a real problem. It results in a number of different spokespersons appearing and diluting any message - what gets more media coverage, a 5 minute speech by * or 10 5 minute speeches by leading democrats?

The answer should be the DNC chair, Howard Dean, he is the obvious spokesperson for the party in opposition, but he's being neutered by attacks from within his own party. Until those attacks stop the party will appear toothless (or as appeasers to the * regime) to the public.

[wli]

7. serious reform needs to be undertaken...

Like proportional representation in the House of Representatives and eradication of the electoral college and citizen-initiatable recalls of elected representatives and Supreme Court Justices.