How to move a political party ..... or not .....

[Stinky The Clown]

Certainly a party can be moved in a political direction. And certainly some on our side want nothing more than to see today's Democratic Party move. For some, that would be to the right. For most, that would be to the left.

I'm just one voter and have zero training in political science. But it seems to me that moving the party has to start with an acknowledgment of where the party is when the great move starts. I don't know how to judge that. Is it the average of the party's elected office holders? After all, they're the one's who are pretty much the de facto party spokespeople. But that assumes they represent the people. Some clearly do. Some, not so much.

So maybe its the people who make up the party's 'base'. And who are they? The people who are active in party governance? The people who self identify as such? The biggest contributors? Is there really a way to define 'the base'?

I think its fair to say that 'The Party' is all of them. An amalgam, not a homogeneous, monolithic bloc. There is no 'average' view or stance. Surely there's no average 'leftness' or 'rightness'.

And whatever the 'official' party position on any given issue, it is not the result of any formal polling of the 'base'. In many ways, its still developed in back rooms heavy with symbolic cigar smoke. It involves compromise and it involves concessions. All too often its strategy that trumps principles. It is surely never left enough or right enough for everyone's taste.

All that said, I still think the Party's general positions are generally a reflection of the base.

So, following on with that, the way to move the party is to move the base. It is an easily defended statement that the party's elected office holders reflect, generally, the base that elected them in the first place.

That would lead to a conclusion. And perhaps *the* best way to 'move the Party'.

Advocacy groups.

Media time for these same advocacy groups.

Celebrity advocates.

Media time for these same celebrity advocates.

If you think about it, that's how the repubs have been moved so far to the right.

Club for Growth
Rush Hannity and Bill Limbaugh and Sean O'Reilley
Ann Malkin and Michelle Coulter.
Heritage Foundation
American Enterprise Institute
Richard Mellon Sciafe
Faux Newz
700 Club

Years of consistent messaging from these groups and individuals have moved the Republican Party to exactly where we find it today. And in the process, they influenced our own 'base', pulling them rightward too. Not as far, but surely and inexorably rightward.

My conclusion?

If we want to move our party left (to me, that would be back to our traditional core positions - from FDR's days) we need just one thing.

Media access. We have everything else we need. The problem, pure and simply, is no voice.

We can argue about The CT 3rd party guy or the Greens, but that's just noise, really. What we NEED is a voice. A venue for honest debate that is heard by the teeming masses of voters - involved or disaffected. Only then will our party find its true base and its true position.

I started out saying I'm no political scientists. Poke all the holes needed in this thesis.

[LincolnMcGrath]

1. Get a subscription to F A I R

They have been screaming what you just said for years.

[patrice]

2. It's not just the media, but WHAT exactly is done with the media.

If it were just the media, the Republicans would be a successful political party. They aren't. They ARE powerful, but not successful, if we define success as good for those whom they represent, because they abuse the use of media. Their magnificent house of cards is crumbling and we don't want to repeat their mistakes by engaging in the same cycle.

I like your analysis, but disagree with your somewhat top-down solution: get the media, use it to repeat certain messages and the party will change. This puts the people in a role that is too passive.

You are right that we need media to communicate consistent messages, but in order to help the people to become more unified, that communication should call them to action. Action that includes the development of their own VOICE, so that they are not so dependent upon media.

The DU is an example of a type of media that can accomplish this goal.

[theanarch]

3. with all due respect, the only thing the DP needs...

...to move "to the left" (or in this instance, back to a more reasonable center) is a leadership that can read a poll and draw the proper inference. Molly Ivins (among others) has compiled a list of issues on which a majority-to-super-majority of citizens endorse or support the "left" side thereof: anti-war, pro-environment, pro-UHC, anti-supply-side tax cuts, pro-choice, anti-gun, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum. And then annotates, with all appropriate sarcasm and disgust, how the DP leadership either waters-down the Party's official position on these issues to suit the opinions of the Party's big (e.g. corporate) contributors, or adopts the GOP position outright. It is this rigid refusal of party leaders to follow the opinions of the masses that is alienating the electorate (especially the working class, working poor and the poor; not to mention such "ideological" groups as the peace movement) from the DP.

As for the M$M, by now it should be taken for granted that the corporate media is little more than the propaganda arm of the GOP, as it pretty much always has been; and they will never give liberal/left/progressive Democrats a fair hearing or shake. The way to counter this is to redirect the Party's communications away from mass-market television and radio, and into more local outlets (print and electronic), who are so desparate for filler that's interesting they'll generally report anything, and without the ideological spin (for the most part); as well into more direct-to-the-voter devices as personalized mailings and the internet.