Oh, the Places Liberals Can Go

No, you don't have to spend the next 15 months with your back turned to the election season, sulking over the lack of liberals in national politics. There are liberal causes everywhere, liberal causes on the verge of victory.

Firedoglake:

In Chris Cillizza’s smug dismissal of liberal frustration, with the curt statement “liberals and progressives have nowhere else to go,” he overlooks the fact that liberals have plenty of places to go. More than ever, in fact. From a movement-building perspective, there are more opportunities than normal in an off year to really make a difference on progressive policy.

First off you have the Wisconsin recalls, where progressives are waging an explicitly class-based campaign to win back the state Senate. RNC Chair Reince Priebus, who happens to be a former chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, may not want to talk about the recalls, but they are crucially important to show that conservative extremism does not go unpunished. What’s more, it’s sparked a local movement out of an assault on worker rights, which was just unthinkable a year ago.

And there are even bigger fights in November. In the bellwether state of Ohio, voters will have to decide between two radically different initiatives. One would veto SB 5, the anti-union bill that strips most collective bargaining and the right to strike from public employees. The other is a largely symbolic effort to nullify the individual mandate at the state level. Both will bring out partisans on both sides. This is a true litmus test of progressive ideas like the right to organize.

Elsewhere in the country, there are liberal candidates worthy of your support, and you can find them at Blue America.

Down with Tyranny:

So let me go back to the Blue America statement penned for us by Alan Grayson:

We who sign this make the following pledge, to the voters of our districts and to all the American People:

We Are Against Any and Every Cut to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Not today, not tomorrow, and not ever. No way, no how. Not on your life, and not on mine, because both your life and my life may depend on it.

N-E-V-E-R.

Every Blue America candidate has either signed this letter or issued their own statement in their own words equally powerful. Blue America won't be endorsing any incumbents who voted for the Satan Sandwich and won't be endorsing any challengers who don't embrace this pledge to the American people. It's the bottom line. I still hope Mazie Hirono beats Ed Case in Hawaii, of course, but as of yesterday, Blue America ceased raising funds for her. Give your donations to Bernie Sanders instead. One of our Blue America-endorsed candidates, Nick Ruiz (D-FL), the first to sign the pledge, went on to explain what's gone wrong the day after the vote:

All of the American people can’t be wrong.

All of their needs can’t be wrong.

What is wrong is the turn down the Republican rabbit hole. Lost, we are. BHO abdicates executive responsibility by refusing to act to the point of inertia. Republican John Boehner (OH-8) and Company acted extremely. All Cuts are therefore “IN.” In accompaniment, HSBC announces they will shed 30,000 jobs in 2011-2012. This is the coming Age of Austerity. What a howler- cut New Deal programs at the very same time that practically every large corporation in America is cutting jobs and hording cash. ‘Satan sandwich’ anyone?

The American people could be celebrating a democratic victory, if there was one to recognize. Instead, we are faced with the nuts and bolts of the reality of being sold-out under the auspices of a short term ceiling hike and a long term hatchet committee with an appetite for New Deal destruction.

How to put it back together again, as they tear it apart? 2012.

The 2012 playbook is very simple: reject any and every candidate that stands in the way of progressive democracy. Reserve your support; however you give it, for those progressive Democratic candidates that would act in your interest.

You’ll have to be savvy-– because the all too corporate party machinery will be out to trick you with the ruse of mechanical candidates and party-line robots. But the power to represent us is yours to take or give. The power is in your vote. It’s in your contributions. It’s in the time you volunteer. It’s in your letters to the editors of newspapers and blogs.

Hope? Change? No, we haven’t. But I promise you-- we will.

Liberals never quit, liberals never give up, liberals never stop fighting for Liberal Prosperity.