Voting to Support Liberalism

Wondering what to seek in potential candidates for local and state offices next year? Look at what succeeded last year.

From Steve M:

I sometimes wonder if these guys are right -- in this country, so many voters, especially swing voters, are so ill-informed that what may sway them is the sense that a candidate really stands for something. It doesn't matter what the hell it is. So these swing voters turn out as well as the base to vote for the zealot, especially if the zealot uses a lot of abstract nouns (like "freedom") to sell the ideology.

Maybe being more of an ideologue would work for Democrats, too. Hell, who was the last Democrat to win a genuine presidential landslide? The guy who'd just signed what must have seemed like a radical left-wing piece of legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a few months earlier.

I think it works on a local and state level too, but if your interest is in Congressional candidates, you'll find a list of the liberal, take-no-prisoners best at Blue America.

Down with Tyranny:

You can find Alan Grayson and other independent progressive candidates here. Check them out. Let's make sure regular folks even have a voice. And check out this note from Nick Ruiz to his donors.

"Republicrats," he warns, "continued to raise $millions this second fundraising quarter, in order to ensure the New Deal legacy goes down in flames. This is what they want. It’s what their paymasters want. It’s what they have been working toward since FDR. We are outgunned, but never outnumbered-– make those numbers count by volunteering your time and money to people that will work for you, and work to further human progress, rather than increase America’s suffering with their indifference to our shared human struggle... Will you help to put this progressive Democrat in Congress, so I can join Sanders et al. in order to stop them?"

Here, Florida congressional candidate Nick Ruiz explains the importance of voting to support liberalis:

It is with relief and even glee that the currently debased political establishment buried Ted Kennedy on August 25, 2009. The last long-standing icon of liberal politics was the nail in the coffin of an era.

Many thought that "Era Ends"-- like the painting by Ed Ruscha. In some sense, this is true.

I know-- Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is a liberal juggernaut-- and yet he alone cannot be expected to carry the weight of progressive Democratic politics as far as America needs it to go. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10), another progressive icon, also cannot be expected to shepherd the entire progressive agenda by himself, despite his unwavering resilience and liberal efforts. Alan Grayson, former congressperson from FL-8-- God love him-- lost in 2010, in the epic sweep of the radical right. And BHO, the liberal world knows, is in need of some serious help reorienting his legislative priorities.

SNIP

We should recognize that this first stage of FDR-inspired American liberalism, the kind of liberalism that holds ideas like Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, financial and credit market regulation, human rights and collective bargaining, equal opportunity and non-discrimination, unemployment insurance, federal guarantee for bank deposits, universal healthcare and so on, as first principles of a democratic commonwealth and legal fairness-- is now giving birth to a second stage. Let it not be stillborn. Our second stage of American liberalism must offer new protectors and philosophers of democratic liberty who are committed to the expansion of American progress and opportunity for new generations of Americans to come. The status quo is not enough.

If the status quo fails, like they currently are failing, they will go down in history as the last guard who stood against the second stage of another rising current: the global fascism of corporate wealth and privilege.

American democracy needs the support and confidence of the American citizen-voter if it is to succeed as our model of government. And America needs to realize that despite the self-styled antics of media celebrity crusaders and self-absorbed group opportunism that often passes for democratic progressivism and liberal politics, there is only one way to enact a progressive agenda: by the election of not one or two but a multitude of congresspersons to achieve any meaningful difference at the federal level. Of course, a few strong personalities go a long way, as with some of the people we mentioned earlier, but obviously it takes more than that to legislate New Deal politics. And a brave person can do great things-- as FDR has already proven.

But in the end we must understand that our political lives cannot be left to the discretion of party careerist tropes and wealth-seeking troubadours, "rising stars" and a coterie of yes-people and such. Theirs is an agenda of self-- such is the reality of the little lie of 21st-century corporate American politics.

What we truly need is an agenda of the many. And that is what I aim to enact.

SNIP

I do not envy your position as citizen-voter, any more than I sustain my own as citizen-candidate, but I know in my soul that you and I must make the difference here and into the future, or they will have won. There is much work to do, and few who are truly willing to do it, because it’s easier to go along with bad business and just get paid. You know what I mean-- and you see it all around you. You see the results of decades of such behavior corrupting your neighborhoods and institutions. You see America becoming something else.

I ask you, wherever you are to demand a democratic American difference rather than a meaningless "change." It is the only way forward from here.

Read the whole thing, then ask your potential candidates how they would enact an "agenda of the many."