THE PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS COULD CONFRONT OBAMA'S REACTIONARY POLICIES

Most of the Democratic Party is completely bought and sold, just like the Republicans. Who has bought them?  It is the rich in general and the rich one percent in a little more particularity.  Yet there is a tiny group of more or less progressive Democrats who even have a caucus for themselves.  They call themselves the Progressive Caucus. What could such a small group do to change the political game?

Well, they haven't done much to change anything which is one reason fewer and fewer people believe that the Democratic Party will ever play a role in progressive change. Of course, this is pretty much my conviction. There is a one percent chance the Democrats will do things that are actually liberatory.

Yet a united Progressive Caucus could wield the influence of a small party in a Parliamentary system. Just for example, the Progressive Caucus can block Obama's sellout to big business on the health care denial industry front.  Obama completely sold out! I suppose the bought and sold Democrats are already expecting to give up because of Republican opposition but it is just as possible for the much smaller progressive caucus to play this sort of hardball.

  In a Parliamentary system such maneuvers would be obvious and accepted but the "winner take all" political culture of the United States, created to protect powerful minorities blocks the democratic expression of any party which cannot get the sacred absolute majority of votes.  

  Yet this terrible flaw, this terrible deliberate design error of the slave owner's Constitution need not define the mentality of the dimwits in the Progressive Caucus. So all you Bubbas over there in the so-called Progressive Caucus, throw off your "majority rule" mentality because the so-called "majority rule" in our elections, in the Congress and in our society more generally is protecting "minority rule", the rule of the class that owns and operates society increasingly in its interest alone. Yes, in the United States of America majority rule protects minority rule!



  Progressive demand in the population is overwhelming but the Democrats, as well as the Republican parties are all about denying the people their democratic rights and the fulfillment of their actual political desires.

  The Progressive Caucus could run the Clintonites and Obamaites out of the party and run with the increasingly revolutionary demands of the progressive supermajority in the population. The Democratic party could become democratic!  Or the Progressive Caucus can continue to sit on its hands until others take history into theirs.  Progressive Caucus, GET OFF YOUR ROYAL ROTUNDAS!

  Certainly the ONE PERCENT have done a pretty good job of keeping both the Democrats and Republicans on their chain.  Are the so-called progressives in the Democratic Party ever going to do anything like rule America on behalf of the 99 percent?

The Progressive Caucus could threaten Obama with impeachment because the Republicans would impeach him for anything, anyhow, anyway. How about impeaching Obama for torture or war crimes unless he prosecutes Cheney and Bush? You get the idea.

  Progressive Caucus leaders could call the Oval office just for example, "Dear Mr. President, we may file for impeachment this week unless you cancel yout stupid sh-t nuclear power and nuclear weapons programs.  Impeach you for what?  For the nuke policies, Sir, but the Republicans will come up with some other charges, no doubt.  Still with your policies being so similar to theirs with this nuke stuff it will be amusing to watch them cook your goose.  Is that a hopeful goose, you ask?  I don't know, Sir, but it is an impeached goose.  Yes, Mr. President, it would be a bipartisan victory."

"Dear Mr. President, let's put a ten percent tax on the wealth of the top one percent of the population this week or we will have to get together with Congressional leaders on the Republican side to initiate impeachment proceedings. What's that, Mr. President, you say you found a new hope? Well, I hope so, Sir, but unless we get that ten percent we'll be seeing you in court so to speak."

CONGRESSIONAL WATCH COMMITTEES

I like Nader's idea about forming progressive congressional watch committees in every congressional district. I think the model is that a thousand people pledge some monthly amount and a professional staff would be able to lead a powerful citizen group in each congressional district.

Similarly progressive Democrats would be advised to do the same thing, building congressional organizations with clout. Of course this doesn't mean third party and progressive democrats are in the same congressional groups but either group and others could apply the same model.

The Greens of Kansas for example could try to do the same thing. Of course the Democrats used to have political organizations with some clout that reached into every community and constituency. Any party that could establish a grassroots relationship with a thousand active citizens in each congressional district would be a force to be reckoned with and could get folks elected to other political offices if not the congress right away.

I will put some links on the page to the Nader-third party initiative.

IS VOTING FOR NADER SUCH A BAD IDEA?

Every four years we are told by desperate and narrow-minded Democrats that voting for Nader is a terrible idea because we will get a Republican in the White House. Yet, we have not seen the Democratic Congress take progressive positions, have we?

Do Democrats want to end the special privileges of corporations as well as corporate status as a "person"? No they don't. Of course, here I am referring to the professional politicians and those who own them.

Do Democrats want to end the war in Iraq? Not really.

Do Democrats want to do anything progressive? Only reluctantly and if they are forced to do so by a political threat from the "Left" ie. a political movement that pressures them into doing what they pretend they want to do.

The Democratic party is a funnel for the big bourgeoisie, a place to cage and defeat progressive American movements. The Democratic Party is a killing field for popular progressive movements.

Any progressive who votes for Obama must be ready to oppose him immediately after he is elected because he may or may not be a lesser
evil than McCain but he is not a progressive.

RALPH NADER AND PROGRESSIVE CIVICS

I heard Ralph Nader speak recently and if he hasn't become more of a leftist over the years he certainly sounds like it. Perhaps he always quoted folks like socialist Eugene Debs as he did at his recent campaign/funraising rally in Lawrence, Kansas, but I had never noticed it before. Nader remains remarkably restrained and rational in his comments, but this time he talked about how you need a fire in your belly to participate in progressive civics. He seems to be making an effort to sound fired up, something he has either avoided or is simply not in his character.

He doesn't use the term "progressive civics", that is my term, but he does talk a lot about civics. He quoted Cicero and noted that civics courses have been eliminated from our educational system.

Civics is all about being a citizen participating in ruling a nation, a state or a city. Actually being a citizen has lost almost all of its currency in terms of our educational system or cultural expectations. Anyone who does anything in the political sphere and who is not a multi millionaire or billionaire is looked upon with some suspicion and labeled an ahem, "activist" or worse (as if activism was not essentially the same as being an active citizen). Americans have been led to think of themselves as very private people in the sense that they really are not involved in politics. That is left to a political elite and those very strange activists who have not yet understood that they are neither investors nor consumers, not as much as they are citizens and workers.

Of course this is all about the idea that bourgeois elections can somehow express the will of the people and thus lead the nation to serving the interests of the broad majority of people rather than an entrenched political, economic and military elites. It seems that Nader is scratching his head as Eugene Debs did, wondering why Americans are so against their own best interests as workers. He quoted Debs saying something about how under the Constitution that the American workers or was it people could have anything they wanted, but that Debs was apparently disappointed because average Americans seemed to want so little.

Perhaps the answer, now at least, is that Americans have often been quite privileged vis-a-vis past generations and vis-a-vis many other nations. That is changing and more rank and file Americans will experience some of the suffering that American and world capitalism have traditionally imposed on foreign lands and the backs of foreign workers.

Maybe when Americans realize that they are something other than mere investors and ditsy consumers, something much more human and humane, something much more social and political then we will see Americans accept the role and responsibilities of being citizens and overthrow their exploiters and the two marionette parties of our ruling elites.

Anyway, this is definitely one framework of liberation, progressive or revolutionary citizenship. And Nader is one the outstanding examples of someone trying to implement a vision of this framework today.

Of course, Nader supports many progressive changes that Obama crucially does not. An expansion of Medicare to the entire population is Nader's health care proposal. Obama, like McCain wants to keep the entire health care system as it is with few real modifications. Also Nader is an anti-imperialist whereas Obama tries to out imperialist his Republican opponent in his rhetoric about invading Pakistan and winning a war in Afghanistan.

Nader does share one thing with Obama. He hardly ever refers to race or white supremacy.