Honestly: Would a true progressive be allowed to ascend to the presidency?

[DerekG]

During the primaries, I gave $70 to the Kucinich campaign, as his vision for America was analogous to my own.

I now regret this gesture, suspecting that it would have been wiser to forward this amount to my local Food Bank. My trepidation is not due to any dissatisfaction with Rep. Kucinich himself (a good soldier, that one, as demonstrated today), but to a supposition that no progressive would ever be allowed into the White House. After reading such tomes as Perkins's "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and William Blum's "Killing Hope," I don't see how one who advocates a Department of Peace has a chance in this deranged empire. Even if a candidate such McKinney or Conyers miraculously survived the neo-liberals who control the party apparatus, braved the MSM onslaught, and managed to win the hearts of the populace, they'd still have to contend with niceties like plane crashes and lone gunmen.

I think Cindy Sheehan was right in that you have to be a monster to be president (starving a civilian population in the hope for regime change is, to me, a qualifier). As far as I see it, there are only two ways out of this:

(1) A mass revolt
(2) Economic collapse


What do you think?

[montanacowboy]

1. Short answer?

No

Long answer?

Hell NO

[Kid OfThe Black Hole]

2. Unfortunately, you are dead on

It sounds like you've thought this through as much as I have...we need someone with a vision to show us a way of this farce is all...but the collapse will come way before the mass revolt (or else beget it)

[Tom Joad]

3. There must be a mass movement first.

That is why, with rare exceptions, i don't do much to support candidates. I support issues.

"starving a civilian population in the hope for regime change is, to me, a qualifier". Is what Bush Elder and Clinton did to Iraq. It is also what congress wants to do to Palestine. Kinda sucks, i say.

[Fridays Child]

4. It'll happen, after the next Great Depression...

...just like it did after the first one.

Edited to add:...if we survive the depredations of the current robber barons.

[pocket]

5. they'd never get past the DLC

.

[htuttle]

6. President? No. Governor? Sure.

I think it will end up being a state governor who eventually leads us out of this anyway. The Federal Government is pretty much beyond redemption at this point.

[teriyaki jones]

7. I hate to agree with you

but I do.

[MuseRider]

8. Nope but I will continue

to support them. Kucinich stuck it out, it had to be a difficult thing for him to do but by doing so his important message was heard by more people than if he had not. If we had an actual, fair media more would have heard it. I will continue to support those people, every person who hears and agrees brings us closer to those ideals.

[Douglas Carpenter]

9. yes....it is possible.....but not easy....it will take time, effort and

unfortunately, money.
I look how the far right working from the aftermath of the Goldwater landslide defeat of 1964 changed the big tent Republicans into a distinctly right wing party; so right wing that poor old Barry wasn't even welcome anymore. But, to do this the right wing did back in general elections candidates and Presidents who were clearly not their ideological soul-mates. Richard Nixon would be a socialist wacko by current Republican Party standards. But, it was the Nixon era that gave real rise to the long-term agenda of the right-wing.

[DerekG]

11. Yes, good point

At times, I wonder what the Democratic Party might have looked like had the McGovern supporters not been deterred by short-term failure. But then, the Goldwater faction had the moguls; somehow, I doubt we would have garnered such assistance.

[Douglas Carpenter]

13. yes that is true

After McGovern lost by a landslide in 1972 - the whole progressive movement went into disarray and never recovered at least as a strong force in the Democratic Party.

Contrast that with Goldwater in 1968

[PATRICK]

10. William Jennings Bryan

The record setting loser for the democrats in the Gilded Age vs. Mark Hannah puppets. But he was NOT the progressive. He co-opted the Populist Party La Follette who was a breakaway from the corporate GOP, in the mold of Lincoln, Teddy and all the regulation, reform Republicans slowly buried by money interests.
If a progressive gets close to the popular base someone in the establishment will do their best in a myriad of ways to blindside him or her. It is the only great political skill the muggers possess. The one who most borrows the progressive mantle will probably be the most suicidal doomed loser and one not truly dedicated to reform, just earning candidacies. If one such sas Bryan should win he might be an FDR without a will or a war to enable him.

Wistfully one thinks of FDR, but that also brings up the two biggest pre-requisites of success- depression and war to shake loose(but not break) the control of banks and corporations. So to get someone more progressive than FDR to win, it would take something real and bigger than 911, the Great Depression and WWII because it would break, not play into the rigged corporate system.

Some such events(energy,ecology,economy,plague) are approaching, but again, the other side is busy and ready to capitalize on digging our own graves.

But many things are possible to those who try simply to do other things. And there is always that huge feckless majority of decent people out there.

[Terran1212]

12. If they took office they'd be attacked by every group

They'd be paralyzed; the rest of the elements of the government would paralyze the Executive Branch in response.