> It is probably impossible to build a center-left mass party with a
> center-left program in America (the working people of the countries
> that have such parties built them in the late 19th and early 20th
> centuries, a window of opportunity that Americans missed).
>
> No left in any former empire in history managed to bring its powers
> that be down and turned it into a republic on its own either.
>
> That raises a fundamental question of what a leftist can do in the
> belly of the beast.
============================
Especially since 9/11, which I think really traumatized the US public and
shifted the political centre of gravity further to the right, which the
latest election also reflected, though less virulently than in 2002 and
2004. Up to then, Americans had been historically insulated from attack,
even though the threat of war had been present since the Soviets developed
the bomb in the late 40s. But after the Cuban Missile Crisis, this fear lay
dormant in public consciousness, and any anxiety which Americans felt for
their physical safety came from urban crime rather than terrorist attack
from outside their borders.
Someone remarked on this list about a month or so ago that after visiting Israel, the country reminded him or her of nothing so much as Southern California, except that the right-wing culture of fear and pessimism and xenophobia was even more widespread and a foretaste of what America, also now perceiving itself under seige, was rapidly becoming.
So it does make it seem improbable that a left can be built in such circumstances, with the Democrats, broadly speaking, occupying the same political ground as the Israeli Labour Party and the Greens seeking to build a third party outside of it like Meretz. Not a hopeful prospect in either case.
But if its any small solace the French and Russian Revolutions were examples of popular movements on the left which did succeed in bringing down their empires and replacing them with republics - although very short-lived, to be sure, in the first case, and not living up to expectations in the second.