Do You Support A Center-Right Party? You're A Conservative???

I lived in Holland for four years and it was a pretty progressive place, Amsterdam more than the country as a whole, but even the most conservative areas seemed more progressive than the U.S. When I was there, the political party that headed the government was the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy-- better known as the VVD. It's a classic center-right party and pretty much stands for everything the American Democratic Party stands for, not the FDR Democratic Party, but the floating garbage heap Bill Clinton turned the Democratic Party into... except the VVD is maybe slightly more progressive. If the classic center-right party is like the American Democrats, is there a Dutch political party like the GOP? Of course: the PVV (the Party for Freedom). It isn't as far right as the GOP but it's generally a neo-fascist party like what the Republicans have drifted into since Reagan became president. The Dutch also have a couple of left-of-center parties as part of their legislature-- the Socialist Party, the Green Party and the Labor Party-- but the U.S. doesn't have anything like that.

Early this week, AOC spoke at an event honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and she explained that there are "left members inside the Democratic Party," progressives, like herself, who are pushing the Democratic Party towards it's Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt roots. "She noted, reported Newsweek "that there are some 'true believers' within the Democratic Party who think capitalism can end poverty. 'If anything, that's probably the majority,' she said, adding that she disagrees. 'That's an area in which I agree with Dr. King, that that assessment is flawed,' Ocasio-Cortez said as the audience erupted into loud applause." She described the Democratic Party as a "center-conservative" party, not as a party of the left. Like King, she believes that capitalism has ingrained poverty into society.

It's why actual progressives argue for structural change in society... and for real change in a Democratic Party which is dominated by its own Republican wing-- New Dems, Blue Dogs, corporatists, corruptionists... AOC: "We don't have a left party in the United States. The Democratic Party is not a left party. The Democratic Party is a center, or a center-conservative, party." She noted that even with a large, robust Democratic majority-- led by a woman pretending to be vaguely progressive, "We can't even get a floor vote on Medicare for All, not even a floor vote that gets voted down. We can't even get a vote on it. So this is not a left party."

Newsweek brought up a King speech gave the year before he was assassinated: "And one day we must ask the question: Why are there 40 million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that, more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society." Sounds like Bernie, AOC and a tiny, tiny, tiny handful of today's post-Bill Clinton Democrats. Not like Joe Biden, that's for sure. In fact, AOC had noted in an interview that "In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America we are."

Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a democratic-socialist, as does Sanders and many other progressives within the Democratic Party. This block of lawmakers advocates for progressive policies such as universal health care, or Medicare for All; free college education; student loan forgiveness; a higher minimum wage; and a Green New Deal to address climate change.

Most Democrats-- most, think about that-- do not advocate for those things. It astounds me, that given a choice, Democratic primary voters-- for whatever reason-- often pick the neo-liberal establishment candidates rather than the progressive reformers... not always, but often. In the last few weeks some real progressives have beaten right-of-center Democrats in primaries-- Mike Siegel in Austin, Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones in New York and good and very clear examples. But far more progressive reformers didn't make it. I asked Mark Gamba, a thoughtful mayor in Oregon who I expect to see running again, what happened in his congressional race against very conservative Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. "Well the short answer," he told me this morning, "is that Schrader used all of that corporate cash to outspend me 10 to 1. Our campaign was really dependent on the grass roots, on door knocking and on events where folks could get to know me and ask questions. Covid killed most of those opportunities, and so it went back to being a race won on who could spend the most. The really funny thing was that when you read Schrader’s 6 mailers, he came off like a progressive. He talked about everyone getting health care and taking strong climate action, neither of which he will actually do. Until we have publicly funded campaigns, the candidate who is the most sold out to the corporations will be the one most likely to win. All the political labels aside, what Americans have to decide is: Do we want a society that benefits everyone, providing a dignified and decent life for every single American? Or, do we want a society designed to make a handful of people obscenely wealthy, while having millions living in desperate poverty? That is literally what we have now, and nothing about the status quo and the neo liberal posturing is going to change any of that."

I asked Alan Grayson, who lost his first race and two years later went on to be, arguably, Congress' most important and effective progressive champion, what he makes of this party split and why more progressives don't get elected. "Progressives," he told me yesterday, "operate at a disadvantage because right-wingers in the party corrode the ability of progressives to deliver on the promises that they make, which undermines the credibility of the party as a whole. When a RWNJ in a red state says 'I will ban abortion more than ten minutes after conception,' there’s no debate about whether he’ll be able to deliver on that promise. When a progressive says 'I will deliver affordable healthcare to everyone,' the widespread public response is 'uh-huh. Well, you haven’t done it so far.' In fact, it’s been more than a decade since anyone in a position of authority in the Democratic Party has promised anything to anyone, except perhaps to lobbyists. This tends to discredit the whole notion that you can make the world a better place-- progress-- which is the first eight letters of progressivism. Obviously, there are serious money issues, as well, without a doubt.  But money is not the mother’s milk of politics. The mother’s milk of politics is promises-- promises that you keep."





Florida produces so many really bad politicians but, ironically, the state is responsible for some really good ones as well. Adam Christensen, still in his 20's and a first time congressional candidate, is going to fall into the latter category. I think Grayson will see a young version of himself when he meets him. "At the end of the day," Christensen told me, "even those who say that they want change and they want progress, don’t ever want to feel extreme. They want to feel like they are at the center, the norm. What has happened is the one party actively fights to silence the radicals within it, and the other doesn’t. The republican party understands that if they allow a few choice individuals to push the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable, then they are able to push the conversation farther than they ever would’ve been able to before. The Democrats do not do that, they fight tooth and nail to silence the left side of their party because they don’t want to appear 'extreme.' When in reality, because they do this, they themselves are seen as the “extreme” left even though they are 'center-right' in any other country.

An entrepreneur and CEO himself, Christensen pointed out that "Every good negotiator knows that you always ask for more than you believe that you were going to get, and you should always have things you are willing to give up in order to get to where you wanted to be in the first place. The Tea Party effectively pushed Republicans to the right and made their moderate wing seem reasonable, despite the fact that they are extreme. Democrats need to do the same thing, they need people/activists pushing farther than anyone has pushed (ie. nationalized healthcare/defund the police) so that things like Medicare For All seem like the 'compromise position,' the 'safe position.' They need a truly left party, so that the semi-progressive ideas can be seen as the middle ground instead of the extreme left. We need a truly LEFT movement in the US to move us back to where we should be, where we were 60 years ago. It’s not 'extreme'-- it’s smart politics."

Hector Osceguera, a thoughtful young reformer in New Jersey who I expect to see running again, just ran his first race. It won't be his last. So what happened to make the voters in northeast Jersey go for an establishment boss-candidate instead Oseguera. "There is one very Jersey-specific reason for the outcomes of progressive challengers in the state," told me. "Our byzantine and anti-democratic ballot structure known colloquially as the 'County Line,' artificially props up incumbents and means that we were effectively running against two Presidential candidates in Joe Biden and Cory Booker. Lining up establishment candidates the way we do in this state creates a perception issue that always hurts challengers and gives an unearned benefit to incumbents."

While we realized how the COVID pandemic made us shift resources to the digital landscape, there was not enough attention on reaching those not on social media. The voting age population trends not to be as active on the web and we should have done a better job finding ways to reach our senior citizens during COVID.

The future lies in taking the lessons we learned this year and amplifying those efforts. Progressives still have a lot of work to do, and now that the primary season is over, we can go back to the drawing board and think like organizers again. Even if this race didn't have the outcome I wanted, I now hope to lay the foundation for the next progressive challenger.