What if there were radical liberals pushing a left-wing agenda, and willing to do whatever it takes to get it enacted? The current “double-barreled showdown” over the federal budget and raising the debt limit is a reminder that American politics is a contest between the right and the further right.
Tea Party Democrats
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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What needs to be done to get “The Progressive Party” established and recognized?
There is already the Green party. Pretty much, they are the same as a progressive party would be. The reason that they have never been able to gain traction is the same reason that the Libertarian party and every other third-party always fails: the two major parties collude to ensure that there isn’t ballot access or media access for third parties. Working within the system is doomed.
As a Green, I’d like to point out a flaw in Ted’s response. Not a big flaw. Just a little one. The Greens are lousy at guerrilla-style campaigning. The Greens are, cumulatively, simply too rational and reasonable.
When AIDS was still not talked about in the 1980s, one of the things the activists did was to show up at the post offices on Tax Day around midnight. Why? They knew the camera crews would be there. They also knew that the Tax Day story was something had been covered a million times already, so the crews would be interested in covering this thing.
When I go past Union Square in Manhattan, I see the Hare Krisna crowd playing their drums, I see Romanians complaining about cyanide mining (???), I see the Palestinian and the Israelis handing out pamphlets at cross-purposes, I see three people from Occupy Wall Street, etc. I never see a sustained or a regular Green presence, I never see a publicly presented plan with any sort of stated set of goals that can be achieved incrementally. Have you looked at the Green website for Manhattan? There are cobwebs on it. The latest posting? Nov. 5, 2011.
This is the one of the best cartoons I’ve ever seen.
Too bad there are no deep pockets in the plutonomy willing to support the substantial majority who still have functioning remnants of an ethic.
See “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” Ralph Nader’s novel about a fictional analog to the Democratic Tea Party.
From personal experience, the Greens aren’t helping their own case. I mentioned the invisibility of the Green party on the national stage to a Green party member and he exploded and blamed me for the problem. (I wasn’t a Green party member, so this was just a particularly insane kind of assholish behavior.) Anecdote, to be sure, but symptomatic of the “personal crusade” vibe I get from a lot of members. In contrast, when I attended a Working Families party member on the East Coast, on the other hand, there seemed to be an emphasis on external effects, rather than moral satisfaction.
It is a statement of fact that when it comes to engagement on both the local and national political scenes, the Green party is nowhere to be seen.
Even during elections, they are never actively engaged. You don’t see their signs. Nobody wears their buttons. They don’t engage in any kind of important public forum.
Of course, there’s no doubt that they are repeatedly blocked at every turn from participating in the duopoly.
But they would definitely be more effective if they were more militant and aggressive on a grassroots level.
While the duopoly uses its campaign funds to advertise their candidates before the public, third party candidates spend their campaign funds fighting the ballot access laws, out of view of the public, that the duopoly writes for the express purpose of keeping those who would “spoil’ their dominance in the media.
There ought to be a law against writing laws that benefit its authors. Self-dealing should be a crime, but what legislator would write a law that would disadvantage himself or subject himself to prosecution?
I submit that the term “Green” is a turn-off. The Grinch is green; money is “green”; the puke from “The Exorcist” is green. Perhaps a re-birth (Progressive Party) is in order? It wouldn’t entail a change of objective. (?)
«One nation under Gaia» is exquisite – thanks, Ted !…
Henri