Brenda Archer
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2018
- Messages
- 2,135
- Location
- Arizona
- SL Rez
- 2005
- Joined SLU
- Sept 2007
- SLU Posts
- 12005
This is really interesting.Nevertheless, somehow many countries other than the US do, or have until recently managed to, sustain large, more or less coherent, left-of-centre political parties.
The history of how the Labour Party took over from the Liberals as the main anti-Conservative party in the UK post WW1 is quite instructive, to my mind:
Liberal Party (UK) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
There are places in the US where the voters are more willing to get involved, and other places where they’re much less involved. These attitudes become part of the local cultures.
Three of the places where ordinary voters feel entitled to get involved, and that I’ve been to, are VT, UT and western OR. They actually have a lot in common, including being partly descended from New England, with its traditional town meetings running local government. Utah is a place where many people learn how to lead groups in church and then take this skill set with them when they leave (so the LGBTQIA community in Utah has always been well organized). Portland has a long standing tradition of local activism. The national media wanted to portray Portland’s antifa protests as some weird scary extremism, it’s not, it’s young locals being local.
By way of contrast, Democrats in places where organizing relied on factions coming together in coalition are only as strong as those factions. The weakening of the union movement is damaging not just to voter numbers, but as a place where locals can learn the political ropes.
Democrats in Phoenix include a lot of Latino organizations and progressive liberals like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood supporters. In places like this, it can feel like the Democrats’ support is drawn largely from the professional classes. The problem with this is that average people who can’t see themselves in one of the liberal factions may not have much of a motive to vote. If they’re working class men or evangelicals, they’re probably going to be pulled in by the Republican media aimed at them.
There’s a large number of working class Americans who simply can’t see themselves as involved in politics for themselves, and it’s worse in some places than others, because of local history and traditional industries. It can be really undemocratic on the ground in such places. Leadership in such places is for them, not us. Local churches can have particular influence as they simply tell people which Republicans to vote for.
What makes Bernie’s movement so interesting to me, is that it’s reaching out past the typical Democrat coalitions and appealing directly to young people of all classes. It’s genuinely Left in this way, even if the people in it are not usually particularly ideological.
The business as usual, professional class Democrats have always been almost as conservative as the Republicans on economic issues. If they can tolerate the presence of new factions in the party coalition, the party will survive. It’s right to say the Democrats have to save democracy, now that the Republicans have been taken over by Christofascists. The Democrats’ biggest enemy in many local places is years of letting “someone else” run the government, whether it’s been the old Democratic coalitions, or Republicans. That’s not going to cut it going forward. We could wind up drowning in the incompetence and inexperience in both parties.
