BostonJoe asked me whether there was anything we could do to make the Democratic Party into a winning party that was also a party worthy of progressive support.

Many people are flirting with the idea of joining third parties or abstaining from voting, or are just deeply disillusioned and want some kind of strategy for positive activism.

Meteor Blades, who I happen to agree with about 99% of the time, has an interesting debate going on about the merits of taking slim control of Congress. Would it be an improvement or a curse that would dim our prospects in 2008?

I have written about aspects of this issue before. And I can’t rehash everything here or this article will be way too long.

So, a brief recap:


Third parties are limited in what they can achieve. Third parties have been useful at several points in our nation’s history. But, aside from the emergence of the Republican Party in the Civil War era, third parties have served mainly two positive purposes. They have pushed an issue from the fringes of public debate into the forefront of debate, and they have caused the major party they are most ideologically aligned with to lose. In 1912 the Bull Moose Party took down a Republican government that had ruled since William McKinley became president in 1897. In 1912, the Republican party introduced primaries in many states and Teddy Roosevelt won the majority of them. Nevertheless, he was denied the nomination. Teddy split off from the Republicans and formed the Progressive Party (nickname: Bull Moose). He came in a strong second place and by splitting the Republican vote he ushered Woodrow Wilson into office.

The Progressive Party pretty much went out of business in 1916, as they reunited with the GOP to try to take down Wilson. Yet, through their efforts women’s suffrage, which had been supported by neither Wilson or Taft in 1912, became a major issue. It was finally constitutionally granted in 1920.

Eugene Debs’s Socialist Party was largely responsible for pushing policies that eventually became part of the New Deal.

And Ross H. Perot was successful in both throwing George H.W. Bush out of office and in bringing the issue of budget deficits to the forefront of public consciousness.

Third parties have their place. And there is a great need right now for a third party to emerge as a serious challenge to the policies of neo-conservatism that predominate in the Bush administration.

But, now is not the right time for a third party challenge from the left. Many people feel that the Democratic Party needs a progressive challenge because it has become too beholden to corporate donors and is increasingly pandering to the (seeming) rise in social conservatism. Yet, the Democratic Party is not in power. Of the two major parties, they are not the one that is derserving of public backlash for the policies of the Bush era. And it is impossible to form a progressive coalition that will not have the primary effect of punishing the Democrats more than it punishes the Republicans.

So, how can we move forward when we are caught in this trap?

It is too late to do much before the 2006 elections. But, there is plenty of time to mobilize for 2008. Here are my ideas.

Rather than start a new party or join an existing one, progressive Democrats should create a split within the Democratic Party. To do this, they need to create an alternate party platform. The platform should be based on a few core issues that have broad agreement among Progressives. It should not attempt to solve all the world’s problems. I envision something similar to but more sophisticated than Grover Norquist’s pledge.

I will toss out a few ideas as examples.

1. For passing a federal law making access to abortion a right of all American women.
2. For banning cruel and unusual punishment and abolishing the death penalty.
3. For comprehensive lobbying reform, including bans on moving from public office into a lobbying position for a period of years.
4. For publicly financed elections as part of a comprehensive campaign finance reform.
5. For repealing and rewriting the Patriot Act and curbing illegal domestic surveillance.
6. For universal single-payer health care.
7. For stem-cell research.
8. Accept evolution and global warming as valid theories and will act accordingly.

You can add or subtract from this list. The very fact that there is a list is the most important thing.

We would ask any Democrat running for office to commit to our platform. And, if they agree to sign on to our platform we will dub them Progressive Democrats. If they do not agree, we will run a primary contender against them.

We will use the power of the netroots to help finance our Progressive Democrats in their primary runs.

Many incumbents will be persuaded by this threat to sign our alternate platform. Those that will not will be better financed. To combat the money imbalance we will run a national campaign, where all the insurgent Progressive Democrats help publicize each other until everyone is asking “is she a Democrat or a Progressive Democrat?”

We are doing something similar to this in Philadelphia. You can read a little about it here. The Philly for Change group (basically leftover Deaniacs) has launched an insurgency in league with the non partisan Committee of Seventy to take over the vacant committeeperson positions. They, in turn, can vote out the Ward leaders, as Chris Bowers’ group just did.

I could go on and expand on this idea but I would rather just leave it as barebones and get your feedback on it.

Some potential problems that immediately come to mind are: whether a group as disparate and underfinanced as the left-wing blogosphere could ever agree to a platform. And, how would the Party respond? For example, would they ever allow us to put the term ‘Progressive Democrat’ on a primary ballot? Let me know whether you think anything productive could come of this idea.