Work the Issue First, and Elections Will Fall in Place

By all means support, work and vote for liberal candidates at all levels, but don't let elections distract you from the real work of winning the issue.

Steve M:

... it suggests that nothing can possibly happen in American politics except via elections, and so there's no point in doing anything politically except focus on pols. That's a fundamental mistake lefties are making right now.

I've said this before -- repeatedly, I think -- but I'll say it again: the most successful progressive movement of the last 60 years was the civil rights movement, and it didn't focus obsessively on elections. Get JFK elected and we'll be free! Primary JFK because he's not moving fast enough! That's not what the civil rights movement did. The civil rights movement focused on issues -- voting rights, desegregation of schools and lunch counters and buses and bus terminals, and on and on. Any interest in elections was in the service of the movement's goals; it wasn't the other way around, the way it always seems to be with lefties today. And there were great successes.

And the most successful progressive movement of the past thirty years is the gay rights movement -- which, again, focused primarily on issues (AIDS awareness and funding, equal access to military service, marriage equality) and only secondarily on electing or primarying pols.

We need to raise the issues. We need to make what we do about issues. We need to make the political political establishment sit up and take notice.

No better time to push liberal budget solutions than right now, when the public is overwhelmingly on the side of liberals on economic issues, and all that's missing is organization.

From The Nation:

For months, poll after poll has showed that rank-and-file Americans of all political persuasions believe that revenues (the nice way to say taxes) should be a part of any deal to resolve our debt crisis. Seventy-two percent of Americans polled between July 14 and July 17 said taxes should be raised on those making more than $250,000 per year, including 73 percent of independents and a stunning 54 percent of Republicans. Fifty-nine percent wanted taxes raised on oil and gas companies, including 60 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans. Yet Republicans refused to vote for a deal that included any revenues at all, and the Democratic leadership capitulated despite the fact that the position was exactly the opposite of what large majorities wanted.

Liberals don't get mad; liberals organize.