"How about this similar formulation: The Democratic party sucks because it's too far rightward so I won't attempt to drag it leftward, ensuring that will never be a party of the left?"
-the first comment, criticizing cynical left attitudes, at least has a -shorter history to account for...the greens have only been around for a -relative blink...the second, re the dems, has been attempted(getting in -and working to change), reattempted and produced zero, nothing, nada... -two jesse jackson campaigns roused sectors of this nation that had never -been electorally awake before, but progressives were absolutely helpless -to do anything to move that party. nor even help create something beyond -those campaigns...
Very shortterm perspective-- labor in the 1930s had a major effect in moving the Dems leftward from their 1920s conservative stance, just as progressives moved the Dems leftward in the 1960s by beginning the purge of conservative Dixiecrat dominance in Congress from the 1950s.
The Rainbow Coalition failed to move the Dems because after the 1988 election, Jackson himself liquidated the organization as a grassroots operation. Anyone who says-- "hey we gave it four years (1984-88) and it didn't work" shouldn't go anywhere near politics; you don't have the patience for serious change.
And as I will detail over and over again, the average Democrat votes more consistently for the minimum wage, for health care, for union rights, and for almost anything else you can name, then they did forty years ago. Just the jettisoning of the southern conservatives moved the party significantly leftward.
In the 1940s and into the 1950s, the Dems in Congress were controlled by Sam Rayburn in the House and, behind the throne, largely by Richard Russell of Georgia. Richard Gephart and Tom Daschle are significantly more progressive figures.
And this is with little strategic left mobilization around taking over the party-- a lot more could be accomplished with a bit more strategy to electoral organizing.
-- Nathan Newman