The Progressive Party of America
The Democrats will soon select a new DNC chair who will guide the future of the party. Progressives need to reform the party or be ready to abandon it if the DNC is unwilling to end their corruption.
This is an era of revolutionary politics in America and the Democratic Party cannot continue offering more establishment centrism. There’s a false narrative that the Democrats have gone far left over the last few years costing them support. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that the party has gone far to the right over the last few years by abandoning their base while trying to appease billionaire donors and corporate lobbyists. To prove that point, let’s look at the last time Democrats ran a revolutionary leftwing campaign. In 2008 Democrats took both chambers of Congress and won the White House overwhelming by representing legitimate political reform that would be considered far-left today. Obama campaigned on;
Pulling out of Bush’s stupid wars
Creating Universal Healthcare
Banning the DNC from taking money from lobbyists
"We will not take a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs. We're going to change how Washington works. They will not fund my party. They will not run our White House. And they will not drown out the voice of the American people when I'm president of the United States of America."
-Barack Obama
& Raising the minimum wage so that full time workers would not be poor in America
He promised a progressive revolution and was rewarded immensely in the election, but he delivered establishment centrism instead. At the end of the Obama Administration America was still stuck in stupid wars, there was no universal healthcare system, corporate lobbyists and oligarchic billionaires controlled the DNC, and millions of full-time workers relied on welfare to make ends meet. Obama absolutely failed to deliver on his campaign promises and his vision for America. Back in 2008 I went to one of Obama’s campaign rallies and its still the most inspired I’ve ever been. I felt so betrayed while he was in office, but I don’t think Obama was lying. I think he was defeated by the corrupt D.C. establishment while in office. I think he took on the system from within but the system changed him before he changed the system. Obama lost, but even worse the positions he advocated for were pushed out of the American Overton Window with the Democrats rightward shift under his watch.
Obama helped move the party deep into GOP territory on the political spectrum by abandoning nearly everything he gained popularity representing. By the end of the Obama Administration in 2016, Bernie Sanders represented the values and policy positions Obama of 2008 represented. But the chosen Obama heir Hillary Clinton was even further to the right than Obama and that move cost Democrats the 2016 election. I have no doubt that if Obama delivered on his promises and held true to leftwing progressivism, the Trump years never would’ve happened. Then Biden 2020 moved back towards the Bernie left and won, then Kamala 2024 moved back to the right and lost. When the Democrats try to become the GOP-lite option, they lose. When Democrats offer their own revolutionary progressive vision, they win.
Unfortunately there is an insidious force in the Democratic Party that continues pulling the party further and further right. They prioritize decorum over action and maintaining the status quo over creating substantive change. That sect of the Democratic Party has recently shaped their entire identity in response to Donald Trump; he is the main character of his own story and theirs. Instead of caring about anything that really matters, they make all their judgements based on whether or not someone opposes or supports Trump. That Trump Derangement Syndrome enables establishment centrist Democrats to make hero’s out of Republicans like Liz Cheney. She opposed everything Obama 2008 stood for but had the qualification of not liking Donald Trump; because of that Kamala Harris made Liz Cheney her #1 campaigning partner for the 2024 election cycle.
Universal Healthcare? Dropped as a priority. Raising the minimum wage? Not if the unelected Senate Parliamentarian says it goes against institutional norms. Pulling out of stupid wars? Biden never fails to disgust the anti-war left and Kamala promised more of the same. Lobbyists and Oligarchs controlling the party? Biden and Kamala were almost entirely Billionaire backed with little to no genuine support among the voters which I explained in The Death of the Democratic Party. The establishment centrists in the Democratic Party have an oligarchy issue. Democratic leaders have repeatedly sold their voters progressivism only to get into office and fail to deliver by moving to the center. Billionaires and corporate lobbyists use the elected officials they’ve bought off to prevent popular progressive legislation from actually passing. The result is that what was once the most popular aspect of the Democratic platform have become the views of the Bernie left while the centrists are trying to oust Bernie’s agenda from the party. The DNC is still corrupted by lobbyists and oligarchs which is why that organization has repeatedly prevented Bernie from winning the DNC nomination for President. Instead of tackling systemic issues in our nation using broad-based solutions that all demographic groups could support, DNC elites went a different route. They naively thought that targeting specific demographics with policies hyper-tailored for them would win them the election. The Kamala Democrats lost the working-class and the youth vote which they never even tried to appeal to, really embodying Tom MacDonald’s critique;
“Focus on minorities, ignoring all the masses.”
Democrats need to go back to their 2008 agenda. Our government is still corrupted by corporate lobbyists, billionaires, and super PACs and we need to fix it. Our healthcare system is still broken with profit prioritized over health and we need to fix it. Our economy is still corrupted with the ultra-wealthy never having it so good at the expense of the working-class and we need to change that. Our military is still corrupt with the Pentagon failing 7 audits in a row unable to account for trillions of dollars and we keep increasing their budget every year. Unfortunately the Democratic Party has become the party of status quo protectionism while championing the most inadequate of incremental change. Democrats need to offer a vision of the future worth fighting for like Obama did in 2008. If they fail to do so it is time to burn the party to the ground to allow a genuine populist left movement to flourish in American electoral politics. The DNC is set to elect a new chair on February 1st after a series of 4 public forums and this will be the first test of whether the establishment centrists learned their lesson. This is not expected to be a democratic process at all with only DNC insiders allowed to vote;
“The only voters are the 448 active members of the DNC, which includes party insiders, elected officials and leaders of allied groups like unions from across the country, but the party says it is soliciting input from outsiders and the general public.
Details of the rules governing the contest will be fleshed out when the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meets Dec. 12, but current rules require candidates to secure signatures of support from at least 40 DNC members in order to be in contention and on the ballot.”
Politico has written a brief synopsis of the different candidates, but this DNC chair election is about so much more than a new figurehead. We need a future of the Democratic Party worth fighting for and a coherent economic & political philosophy. We need substantive change that the lobbyists and oligarchs of the party will not endorse. A fair economy would help almost everyone, except the billionaires and their lobbyists so they wont allow it. Universal Healthcare would help almost everyone, except for Healthcare corporations and their lobbyists so they wont allow it. Ending immoral, illegal, and stupid wars goes against the interests of the military industrial complex and their lobbyists so they wont allow it. As long as corrupting influences have the loudest voices in our party, we cannot expect genuine progressive legislation. So we must oust those oligarchs and those lobbyists from our party by instituting this ban on Super PAC money in Democratic primaries and total ban on corporate PAC money for the DNC as Ro Khanna suggested;
Actually what Bernie Sanders campaigned on the DNC now needs to adopt;
“We have seen what happens when corporations and billionaires control our system of government to protect their own profit and greed. The era of Wall Street billionaires controlling our government and elections must come to an end, and we must take back our democracy for the American people. Every American, regardless of income and race, must have the freedom to exercise their constitutional right to vote. To make sure every voter counts, we must:
Secure automatic voter registration for every American over 18.
Overturn Citizens United.
End racist voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering.
Make Election Day a national holiday.
Abolish super PACs.
Replace corporate funding and donations from millionaires and billionaires with public funding of elections that amplifies small-dollar donations.”
“Ban all corporate contributions to the Democratic Party Convention and all related committees, and…ban all corporate donations for inaugural events and cap individual donations at $500…
Passing a Constitutional Amendment that makes clear that money is not speech and corporations are not people.”
If the DNC is unwilling to break their addiction to billionaire and corporate money, then the progressive movement led by Bernie Sanders needs to challenge the party from the outside. The half measure approach would be to just fund a few independents to run against centrist Democrats. The full-throated approach would be to leave the Democrats altogether so the centrist wing of the party can no longer coast on unearned support. The important part is for progressives to gain ballot access before the next Presidential election in 2028. Ballot access for candidates is extremely restrictive with all 50 states imposing a variety of unreasonable goals so it is difficult to start from scratch. The Progressive caucus could overcome that obstacle slowly over the next few years by creating a new party or quickly by taking over an existing one. Bernie Sanders was offered the chance to run as the Green Party nominee in 2016 and he chose not to do so. That was a mistake. Even in a 3 way race, Bernie would’ve won by juxtaposing real economic populism with Trump’s pretend populism and Hillary’s Wall Street corruption. Now in 2024 the Jill Stein Green Party platform was significantly closer to Bernie’s agenda than what Kamala Harris and the Democrats represented.
If Democrats do not allow the chance to offer real leftwing populism within the party, progressives need to force a way to offer it from the outside. The first step is determining if the DNC is salvageable or if its rotten to the core. Progressives need to issue an ultimatum to the party; it’s us or the lobbyists & billionaires. By the time a new DNC chair is elected, the Progressive wing of the party either needs to get Democrats to swear off of billionaire & corporate money, or leave the party.
