Look up what happened to Eugene Debs
Bernie Sanders urges us to keep in mind that change never happens overnight.
I would ask people to take a look at history and to understand that change never, ever, ever comes about in a short period of time. To take a look at the struggles of the civil rights movement, of the women’s movement, of the union movement, of the gay movement, of the environmental movement, and to understand that all of those movements took years and years and are still in play today.
“It’s not gonna happen overnight. You gotta put your shoulder to the wheel and keep going.”
In the campaign, what we did is show the American people that the ideas the establishment had thought were fringe were really not fringe—that millions of people want to transform this country. It’s not gonna happen overnight. The fight has got to continue. And if you are serious about politics, then you gotta put your shoulder to the wheel and keep going. Sometimes the choices that are in front of you are not great choices, but you do the best you can. And the day after the election, you continue the effort.
Anyone who thinks that Hillary Clinton will not be more sympathetic, more open to the ideas we have advocated than Donald Trump obviously knows very little. So the day after the election, we begin the effort of making Clinton the most progressive president that she can become. And the way we do that is by rallying millions of people….
Look up what happened to Eugene Debs. He spent his life working to build a socialist movement, only to see it destroyed. Then ten years later, FDR picked up half of what Debs was talking about.
Mind you, FDR was able to do that only because there was a massive depression, and capitalism needed to be saved from itself.
I can’t say I’m confident that Clinton will listen to progressives more than to bankers – but I agree that we should give it our best shot.
Ophelia, those words are Bernie Sanders’. Rebecca was quoting him.
https://newrepublic.com/article/137103/bernie-looks-ahead
This is what’s been driving me up the wall about third-party progressives like the Greens. They want it quick, they want it now, they want it easy. They think that getting their candidate in the top slot will somehow transform the entire mess in one fell swoop. While I concede an actual Green victory would administer a major shock to the system, in the end that administration would be a fart in a thunderstorm, drowned out by the much larger and more entrenched bureaucracy around it.
And if they don’t want to look at their allies, they should at least learn from the victories of their enemies. The Tea Party didn’t spring forth from some unknown process. Sure, it coalesced into that form once Barack Obama took office. But it was already out there, in a looser format, and had been since the beginning of the Clinton administration. (Obviously, it draws on an even deeper root–the rampant nativism, racism and misogyny are clear echoes of John Birch–but the movement started as a movement during the nineties, with the decision to move to using spokesmen like Rush Limbaugh and his imitators to spread lies and half-truths, and the formation of the FOX mega-network, enabling the creation of a news bubble.)
It took over 15 years for the ravings of Limbaugh to form the basis of the Tea Party; it took nearly another decade for that group to finally get their very own Republican presidential candidate. But they did it through a lot of hard work (by the rubes) and money (from the Kochs and their ilk). The GOP is the Tea Party now, because they spent so much time building up control over local elections and district maps and primaries. Until the various factions of the progressive movement learn to think in terms of 2+ decades, we’re going to continue to suffer confounding setbacks.
Absolutely right Freemage. Watching this has been like going to the Pantomime and screaming “Behind You!” at the good guy as the bad guy stalks them.
Freemage, another thing the Greens need to do is think local. They focus way too much on the top election, and way too little in local elections. You have to build a movement, start from the ground up, and establish your cred first.
iknklast, I’ve been amenable to that argument in the past and am still sympathetic to it, but it’s been pointed out to me that the party duopoly at the sub-national level has also made building effective third-party infrastructures effectively impossible in many places, with things like ballot-signature requirements that are too high for any but the already-established duopoly to clear. I’m not sure I buy that entirely, but I think it might be a sort of strategy to run national campaigns to try and raise the party’s profile in enough localities nationwide to help overcome those barriers to entry. (I also am uncertain whether the Greens, for example, are pursuing national campaigns to that end. They do not appear to be, but then again, they don’t need to appear to be even if that is one of their ongoing strategies.)
Oops, thank you Stacy. I corrected it.
Work to be done, sure, and i remain cautiously optimistic that president Cinton can be persuaded to lead with a progressive bent. But whatever shall come to pass, as the outcome of nov elections becomes increasingly uncontestable, i look forward to reveling in the novel sensation of having 0.0 % concern that the leader of our country might be busted sending dick pics to an intern (or whatever the technological equvalent going back 200 years).
Seth, the Green Party has a problem getting signatures partially because of the way they operate. I dated a guy for a while who did signature gathering, and the Green party relied totally on volunteers, while the Libertarians paid for professionals to pass the petitions. It made a big different. The Libertarians made the ballot, the Greens didn’t, because the volunteers didn’t always know how to approach people, and they weren’t always reliable. In fact, I have tried very hard to find Green Party petitioners to sign because I believe people should have a right to run, and I was signing a petition to allow a Libertarian on the ticket. No Green Party signature collectors in sight.
So I don’t know that I buy that too much. If you can’t find them to sign the petitions, of course they aren’t collecting the signatures. It might not be the number of signatures, but the methods by which they work.
So, can the USAian’s explain for a poor foreigner what happens when you have a Democrat President, a Senate say 55/45 Democrat and the House solidly controlled by the Republican’s? Just how much can the House spoil the party and in what sort of ways? Just by delaying every measure, refusing to put Bills to the vote, Judicial and Government appointments, budgets? What?
Seth: That’s part of my point, actually–until we change the system overall to allow more third-party access, the options are the big two (and changing the system in that way will require a massive change in one of the Big Two anyway). The Tea Party didn’t run independent candidates (at least, beyond the most hyper-local level elections, like school boards where you can actually get away with that sort of thing). They ran, and won, in the primaries for commissions and school boards and other ‘boring’ down-ticket posts. When they couldn’t win a primary, they picked one of the other candidates and backed him, hard, while opposing anyone more moderate. And once they took those, they used that as leverage to work their way up. That’s what the Greens need to be doing. Stein, right now, is saying that this year’s run is a set-up for 2020. That’s all I need to know to know she’s still thinking short-term. This year’s elections should’ve been a build-up 2040.
In Illinois, the number of elections the Greens are running in down-ticket is pathetic (and the campaigns are beyond amateurish–the Cook County Greens, probably the most organized of the bunch, are still promising to put up a form ‘sometime soon’ for volunteers; right now you have to email). The guy running for Comptroller seems to think the office sets policy (it’s mostly an administrative position; it’d be a good place to target nepotism and patronage jobs, but not not where you want a guy who thinks he’ll be responsible for deciding to properly fund the pension program). And there’s nothing about any of the races they are not in, which means that there’s no help for folks that would like to see progressives advanced in the local elections.
Rob,
US legislation requires passage in both houses and signature by the President. So any legislation that passes will most likely be the bare minimum compromises needed to keep things running. Probably no significant new laws. Needed fixes to things like the ACA or infrastructure funding will be put off even longer.
The Senate has additional powers and responsibilities the House doesn’t, like approving the appointments of senior executive branch officials and federal judges, so a Democratic Senate would help a Democratic President get the administrators she needs, and to continue to improve the quality of the judiciary. There are still obstacles the Republican minority can create here, and they will, but a Democratic Senate majority will still make a big difference.