General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Chris Hedges: The Great Unraveling [View all]dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)There is clearly an interest from people. I don't know exactly if there is infratsructure out there already (there are groups like PDA that are solidly behind Bernie and that put out the word for progressive candidates, maybe we just need to step up and be more active there) or if we need a new identifiable social democratic (Bernie says it the other way around, I believe, democratic socialist) entity that can live within the Democratic Party and run candidates in primaries.
We have a large progressive caucus within the party, but they are ineffective, at least in part because most of its members are captured by the campaign financing system, so they stay in line, so to speak. We have to elect candidates without such funding, and in doing so find a way to label them as clean so the public knows, and hold them accountable once in office (maybe the stick is they can lose their clean status) to build a "brand" (I hate that term) that people can relate to and run under. We also need a mechanism to provide them with a clean source of camaign finances.
It's very encouraging to see that a lot of people do still care, as shown by the response to the Sanders campaign. Hopefully that leads to something larger that isn't built around one candidate.