>Otherwise, we are left in the US with the unsatisfying strategic
>maneuvering within the Democratic Party to make it as progressive as
>possible. One unfortunate fact, despite everyone's claim that "this has
>already been tried" is that there is no national organization in existence
>fighting specifically to push the Dems to the left, no equivalent of the
>conservative Democratic Leadership Council. Lots of organizations like
>unions intervene in specific primary races but there is no equivalent to
>the Christian Coalition which has county-by-county seized control of the
>Republican Party apparatus.
Hey, there's Bob Borosage's Campaign for America's Future! They're doing just what you say, but with predictable wimpiness. They did a poll just after the 1996 election, done by the DLC's former pollster Stanley Greenberg, that showed that Clinton won because of support from downscale, not upscale, voters, and because he was seen as protecting social spending against mean old Bob Dole. When an L.A. Times reporter asked Borosage if he thought Clinton wasn't left enough, Borosage ducked & weaved & sputtered incoherent crap about how left and right don't mean much anymore. That's the problem - the people who are inclined to undertake the task of pushing the Dems to the left are too damn compromised and compromising to do the job.
Doug