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My concern is that we have a US President of the "Left" who promotes liberal not social democratic policy. And that when the pot boils over, social democratic policies do come, but from a third party. And that you have this political "revolution" where the party system collapses like happened in Italy in 1994. But that was not a time of economic crisis, 2008 is.
As for primarying, I think that this may actually make things worse. Because I think that a lot of this movement has been directed (in money terms) by liberal, not social democrats, and that when faced with a conflict between social democracy and liberalism, many of the new Congresspersons and Senators have adopted a social democratic path.
And because the movement behind these primary challenges is fundamentally liberal, not social democratic, I think that the risk exists that social democrats will be the subject of challenges by liberals.
Pelosi? She's been a god damn joke, she's the uberliberal who's been at odds with social democratic tendencies from the new members. She blocked labor from meeting with the new members at the same time as she set up a meeting for Robert Rubin. After I created a stink about it on Daily Kos, her staff emailed me saying that there would be a later meeting with labor.
So far as I can tell, it never occurred.
Now who's the wunderkind behind the Obama campaign?
Rubin and his disciples.
They were successful in using the primary to make sure a liberal , not a "social democrat" was the nominee.
Do you see a theme here? And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
What has been happening has been in part due to the absence of an movement up to the task.
Indeed, it seems highly dubious proposition for a movement to be built in the process of trying to primary members of the millionaires club ... the focus has to be the House. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
What I'm saying is that you have liberal bankrolling candidates who are social democrats, and then the donors act shocked when their agents don't act as liberals advancing their liberal interests.
A point of clarification, I'm talking liberal in the economic, European, sense, here. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
And part of the conflict that you point to is intrinsic, because there are "liberals", in that double sense, who are insisting on achievement of policy objectives, for example regarding the environment and global warming, where achieving the objective is incompatible with their fundamentally liberal stance. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Another significant reason to enact campaign reform is that a significant portion of the current contributors are going down in the flames of the melt down underway. Reform would obviate that problem. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The formative enterprise for a progressive movement would be taking advantage of the gross gerrymandering of Congressional Districts to elect a solid Progressive-Populist caucus and using peer-to-peer small donation networks to ambush opposing members within the Democratic majority to spook them into going along with the Progressive-Populist caucus. On the back of that, real campaign finance reform might be attainable. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Were the food chain for our country contaminated from one end to the other by poisons, and people were dying in droves, adding a small portion of known good food to the supply would not solve the problem, even though that is probably what the Bush FDA would try to do. The only certain way I can see to provide reliable credit in a relatively short time span is to create new banks operating under new rules with their capital provided by the US Treasury and taxpayer. With a 3% reserve requirement $250 billion of the "bailout money" could capitalize new banks with a lending capability of over $8 trillion. These banks would be free of taint. They would also be strenuously opposed by the financial industry. Creating them would essentially be like releasing the real economy from being held hostage by the existing financial services industry.
The market to Bush and Paulson:
"Hands up! Your money or the economy!"
Bush and Paulson to the market:
"We're thinking, we're thinking!"
What they are thinking is that they would rather give the money to the existing financial services industry, even though there is no reason to think it will help. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
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