First, for all of his shortcomings, his failures, his capitulations and his non-intentions, Barack Obama has been an enormous disappointment even to someone who was somewhat skeptical of his candidacy in 2008. But, that being said, he has been far less bad and, in some cases, entirely better than McCain-Palin and Romney-Ryan would have been. So responsibility requires noting that real difference between them, the differences that has produced has made real and important differences in the lives of real people. Even the very compromised Affordable Care Act has provided timely treatment to people whose lives and health depend, absolutely, on treatment being timely. Those people could not wait for some dream candidate of the left to, in some unforeseeable future, to be elected and to push through single-payer or even the compromise position of a public option. Those people and their needs have a right to us taking their lives seriously and their needs in the context of their condition to be considered as important enough to vote for an imperfect candidate.
That being said, the anger and dissatisfaction with President Obama, Harry Reid and far too many members of the Democratic caucuses in the Congress is understandable and justified. They blew the greatest chance to make far more substantial change and to take back the government from the corporate oligarchs who the Supreme Court put in control.
I said the other day that Bernie Sanders was about the only secular leader who expresses the passion for justice, especially economic justice that religious figures regularly exhort. And, since he is a Senator instead of a minister, priest or other religious figure, Bernie Sanders has a platform that it is somewhat harder for the media to disappear in the sea of oligarchy pleasing blather that is almost the entire message of the free press in the absence of the Fairness Doctrine, public service requirements and the carte blanche that the courts have given them to tell the most blatant and harmful lies. That being the case, the position Bernie Sanders has is vitally important to what remains of the left, in exile, today.
There was a piece on ZNet, urging Bernie Sanders to make the kind of futile, symbolic, guaranteed loser of a presidential candidacy in 2016. The writers make some progress, noting that the Green Party is hardly any kind of a success, they overestimate by about a quarter how many offices Greens hold while noting that most of those offices were filled in non-partisan races where party was irrelevant to the results, a number of them appear to be appointed positions as well. As someone who has family members who have served on municipal boards and committees, getting appointed is often a question of any warm body will do as long as they will fill an empty position. The Green Party has been at it long enough with so little success that it would probably be better if they just admitted they are stuck in neutral and will never switch to drive. But trading one failed third party for yet another attempt to use a presidential candidacy as a catalyst for a short term "movement" is probably an even worse idea. If any kind of "movement" forms it will likely have the same effect as the Nader candidacy under the Greens did, putting another horrifically bad Republican in the office. You can name the movements in the past fifty years going back, Occupy, the Nader movement, the Barry Commoner candidacy, the Greens, the Dump Johnson effort, the serial Eugene McCarthy candidacies (I think Lana Turner had fewer husbands) ... how many times does that kind of thing have to blow up on the left for the left to learn the lesson of its most recent history even as the wounds and injuries of those are still felt?
If there is to be a movement that uses candidacies as an organizing mechanism, those should be limited to WINNABLE elections for legislative bodies on the local, state and, in a long shot, the national level. If a movement can't be roused to elect people to those far less challenging offices, it has no business wasting energy and credibility on a futile star-based presidential candidacy. It has no business causing more damage than doing nothing. In the ZNet article, Bill Fletcher and Ted Glick describe themselves, "We are writing as long-time progressive activists and organizers whose involvement with progressive electoral campaigns goes back over 30 years." If that is who they are then it is remarkable that they don't recall the disaster of the George W. Bush coronation and the devastation he, Cheney and their cast of crooks and criminals wreaked on the country and the world. For me, anyone who proposes something that so clearly will not work to do anything except repeat that disastrous expression of Ralph Nader's ego, enabling the most corrupt courts in out lifetimes to bestow the presidency on the losing candidate of their party, anyone who proposes doing that in 2014 has discredited themselves permanently. They should go find something less dangerous than actively organizing another catastrophe for the left. The left has not recovered from the first of those I listed, Allard Lowenstein's bird-brained Dump Johnson effort. I remember being surprised when William F. Buckley paid homage to Lowenstein after he died, but, in later years, considering what he did for Republicans, it's not surprising.
Democrats have the obligation to consider the reality of what can be done, which can produce good that the most idealistically framed impossibility can't. Democrats have the obligation to pursue electoral success and holding political office by politicians who we have the possibility of influencing, we have to responsibility to make REALISTIC requests of them, aware that they will have to balance the possibility of those being achieved with the cost of pursuing them will be to success in their next election.
Politicians who have done the hard work of winning an office - generally much harder for liberal Democrats than for their opponents - have an obligation to their supporters AND ALL OF THEIR CONSTITUENTES WHO DEPEND ON THEIR BEING IN OFFICE to hold the office. That obligation extends to trying to do the possible, it doesn't extend to idealists who demand what can't be done. Their demanding that will only have the effect of forcing the politician to ignore them. Those impossible demands has been the program of too much of the "left" which has relied on threats to "punish" politician who don't self-destruct for them. Any politician who destroys their political career by gratifying such absurd demands is irresponsible, any leftist who demands that have really insisted that they be ignored by any sensible politician or potential ally.
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