Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Andy Kroll — Revealed: The Massive New Liberal Plan to Remake American Politics

A month after President Obama won reelection, America's most powerful liberal groups met to plan their next moves. Here's what they talked about.
Mother Jones
Revealed: The Massive New Liberal Plan to Remake American Politics
Andy Kroll

Should be Progressive rather than Liberal. Progressives are populist reformers in the Democratic Party. Liberals are the left wing of the Democratic Establishment.

5 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

"the meeting was invite-only"

In other words, elitist. Sounds like a slightly left-wing version of Bilderberg.

Most of the groups mentioned are *not* what I would call progressive or populist. More like 'urban elitist.' No rural base whatsoever. No blue collar base other than the unions (which are a tiny % of the workforce).

Their main goal seems to be electing Democrats and passing the Democratic agenda.

-- no mention of direct democracy

-- no mandatory voting or vote-by-mail

-- no economic plan

-- it's unlikely that their campaign finance plans will include bans on contributions by unions or non-profits, since the group is composed of unions and non-profits

If these are the people who are going to save us, we're screwed.

Unknown said...

Exactly, Dan. What the article describes is simply a plan for the Democratic establishment to achieve primacy over the Republicans – pure power politics with no suggestion of any progressive-oriented changes to the status quo. The word "jobs", for instance, occurs not once.

– Joel

Tom Hickey said...

"Progressives" means Democratic Party left.

The populist left is loosely speaking Occupy and the 99% movement— not affiliated with any party and, in fact, disaffiliated.

Unknown said...

Given those definitions, Tom, call me disaffiliated. And certainly there's nothing in the MoJo article that could be said to appeal to the disaffiliated.

Reflecting on Matt's Know Nothing / American Party post... My Full Employment & Stable Prices Party gambit fell flat. Calling Dan Kervick – your latest thoughts about or plans for a [generically labeled] public purpose party?

– Joel

Tom Hickey said...

I think a better strategy than a party given the set up of the US political system is a movement like the TP on the right and Occupy on the left. Primary challenges and running candidates within the parties has been effective in the past. While Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party was able to capture power briefly, I would say it is a special case and an exception. There has been a lot of work on third parties to no avail. Ron Paul saw the light that the LIbertarian Party was not going to capture power, for example, and he was able to influence the GOP in way he could not otherwise.