Obama vs. the Teabaggers: The war between the Center Right and the Far Right

[Stoic]

Liberals and Progressives need not apply. Or, in other words, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

[stray cat]

1. Kudos to the far right then - if progressives are not as smart as the tea partiers

and let the tea partiers decide the election while progressives bitch and moan

[polichick]

2. Or progressives could primary the president from the left. nt

[Stoic]

3. Yeah, THAT always works. N/T

[polichick]

6. Could work, with the right candidate - someone like Alan Grayson...

...who hasn't been in DC too long and isn't afraid to be a progressive, populist Democrat.

(Not saying Grayson himself would do it.)

[cali]

9. not a chance in the freakin' universe that Grayson could beat Obama

in the primaries.

[polichick]

10. As I said, someone "like" him, with those qualities. nt

[cali]

12. oh, you mean an imaginary candidate.

[polichick]

16. Yes, a dream and dreamy candidate! :)

[cali]

8. actually, no they couldn't

there aren't nearly enough of us who would do that.

[TheMightyFavog]

15. Remeber what happened the last time we did this?

We got stuck with 8 years of Ronald Reagan.

[polichick]

17. Well, I said "could" for a reason. nt

[EFerrari]

4. What does that mean to you?

The tea baggers are supported and funded by Republican operatives and promoted on RW media. That has nothing to do with being "smart". They won't decide anything that their manipulators don't want them to decide.

[G_j]

11. the baggers are smarter than us

greetings fellow moran!

[EFerrari]

13. LOL. Ooops!

Greetings!

[NJmaverick]

5. You need to move to NJ and live under the hell of Gov Chris Christie

so you can learn first hand the folly of your comments

[zipplewrath]

7. Or under Crist?

Because it ain't so clear down here in Florida, where we have dems blocking legislation of other dems, and Crist supporting the stimulus package. It's like the guy said. Liberals and progressives get to sit back and watch, since "rejecting progressive ideas" is some sort of barganing chip in Washington right now. They'll be begging for our money in a few months, all the while planning on using us for a punching bag when the laws actually get written.

[skeptical cynic]

14. You're swimming against the DU Centrist current

But I'm with you. This "Progressive" isn't buying into the two-party-two-choices paradigm anymore.

Letting the teabaggers decide the election? Only if you believe the choice between bad and not-as-bad (i.e. Republican and Democrat).

The third choice, abandoning the Democratic Party the way it has abandoned Progressives, is a rocky road, but one worth taking in the long run.

I don't believe, in a nation where elections are decided by a few percentage points, that the Democratic Party can maintain a majority without the Progressive vote. They need to be taught that lesson.

If it turns out that the party doesn't need Progressives, then it frees us up to create a democratic alternative to the Democratic Party.

Political parties evolve, and evolution is a messy process with casualties and extinction along the way. That's what we're seeing right now.

[cali]

18. there's only one way to create an alternative- from the ground up

in other words on the local and state level.

[skeptical cynic]

19. Organizing at a national level

dominated by two narratives has a low likelihood of success. Local and state levels are workable, and can be a foundation for something bigger. Local movements of like minds can fuse and eventually become national. One could argue that a local/state level movement that attracts a geographically broader and broader support base is the logical evolutionary path for political change.

While I remain a "democratic voter" voting according to democratic principles, I've been a member of the Green Party since 2004, when I read their platform and realized it was the platform of the Democratic party I had joined so many years ago. (The Democratic Party has become something else--not Republican, as some might claim, but no longer democratic. I guess some might say "corporatist.") Of course, the two-party system is rigged for self-perpetuation and marginalization of alternatives. But, once we reject the lesser-of-two-evils voting paradigm, there's nothing requiring us to buy into either of the two mainstream narratives.

All of that said, I'm also attracted to what appears to be a growing global movement of people who identify themselves as citizens of the world, opposed to imperialism and multinational corporatism. That is, a group that realizes that "peasants" in one country have more in common with "peasants" in every country than they have with their own government/corporate leaders. Where I live, there is a growing number of people who would be considered "unskilled labor" who are joining the IWW, and the number of people identifying themselves as "socialist" in the local liberal hangouts is also growing.

Things are changing. I can't predict how it's going to go, but I'm betting the Democratic/Corporatist/Republican status quo is going to be experiencing a challenge during what's left of my lifetime.