This is really the level of the party - the rank-and-file level - where developments interest me most. If there is ever to be radical change in the US and a new third party to the left of the DP, I think it would begin here. That's not engraved in stone, but new parties typically arise within rather than outside of the ones they eventually replace, so until the Greens or any other third party begin to demonstrate otherwise, that's my working political assumption. I'm less interested in lectures about the bourgeois DP leadership or the perfidious history of previous Democratic governments, about which I'm as familiar as anyone.
I don't have any illusions that the four are going to win their primary races. The party ranks, no matter how sympathetic to their candidacies, are so hostile to the Bush administration and its policies that, as in 2004, they'll hold their noses in the end and support whoever they think, rightly or wrongly, has the best chance at winning seats and destroying the Republicans' hold on Congress. It's frustrating and a conundrum for those who understand this is the constituency on which a new mass party would have to be built, but it does reflect the current state of political consciousness of most progressive Americans, and how to relate to them within this context is the foremost challenge facing US radicals. It's of interest to all of us outside the US since US politics often affect us more than our own.
I think the issue ultimately boils down to whether you think these kind of dissident candidacies can retard or contribute to the development of a strong US left which could eventually produce a party to supplant the Democrats - assuming that the underlying conditions for such a political opening are there; minus the right conditions, nothing the left does matters very much. As an immediate issue, my own view is that if these candidates and others like them are able to mount a serious challenge to the Democratic establishment on Iraq, health care, civil liberties, and other issues - and receive commensurate widespread media coverage for doing so - then it will be a shot in the arm for the antiwar and other movements, and the DP leadership will be pressured to take a firmer stand on their issues. OTOH, if their candidacies fizzle, I think the mood will be even more dispirited within the movements and on the left of the party.
I know that those who see the DP as the "main enemy" or, at best, indistinguishable from the Republicans from top to bottom, think otherwise. You would expect, to be consistent with the sentiments they express on this list, they would openly denounce the Sheehans and the Tasinis for "promoting illusions" in the possibility of reforming the party. But I think even in these circles, there is an intuitive grasp of how sectarian and out of touch this would appear, so for the most part they are for quietly taking their distance from these campaigns and simply dismissing them as a waste of time and effort. The more credulous believe that if these candidacies are defeated, the mountain will come to Mohammed and the demoralized DP left will join them on the political margins outside. This doesn't seem like a serious political perspective to me, but I don't want to distort anyone's views and they can choose to speak for themselves.
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Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 Antiwar Candidates Challenge Incumbent Democrats in House and Senate Races
The 2006 mid-term elections are just five months away. In the Senate, close to three-dozen seats are up for grabs, while all 435 seats are open in the House. Democrats hope growing public discontent with the Bush administration will help them win control of Congress from the Republicans. But some of this year's most heated races won't just come down to Republicans vs. Democrats - or Independents - in November.
Rather, in primaries this week and continuing through the summer, some of the country's closely-watched races will pit Democrats - against Democrats. And there's one main issue that's creating the fault line: the war in Iraq.
Across the country, a handful of challengers are taking some of the leading Democratic figures to task for voting to send US troops to Iraq and refusing now to bring them home.
On this issue and others like government wiretapping, these candidates say many elected Democrats have betrayed core party values and provided political cover for the Bush administration.
We hear from four of these candidates that are shaking up races across the country: Jonathan Tasini in New York, Marcy Winograd in California, Ned Lamont in Connecticut and John Bonifaz in Massachusetts.
We begin here in New York with Jonathan Tasini. He is a union leader and organizer, and former president of the National Writers Union. He is running against incumbent New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
Joining him here in our Firehouse studio is Cindy Sheehan. Since the death of her son Casey in Iraq in April 2004, she has emerged as one of the leading figures of the anti-war movement in the United States. She is the co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace. She has called on Democrats to vote against their pro-war incumbents. Welcome to Democracy Now!
Full transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/06/1337214