People who I don’t consider Democratic lemmings, like Noam Chomsky and Robert Reich, have said that the healthcare “reform” bill is worth voting for, even if one has to hold one’s nose. However, Chomsky recently wrote

“There should be headlines explaining why, for decades, what’s been called politically impossible is what most of the public has wanted,” Chomsky said. “There should be headlines explaining what that means about the political system and the media.”

Problem is, Chomsky, as well as anybody, knows that there will be no such headlines, unless activists force such headlines. Which won’t happen from veal pen groups, such as MoveOn. But this diary isn’t for groups such as Moveon. As Jesus might have said, “They have their reward.”

Dealing w/Kucinich: Blogging to the choir VS. Firing Him in an Organized Way VS. Firing Him in an Unorganized Way

There are many pieces of democratic infrastructure that exist, or should exist, to help deal with Kucinich’s dive on healthcare. I will take it as axiomatic that Kucinich should now be targetted for removal from office, and won’t even argue the point. Actually, I don’t have time and energy to develop much of any argument. My goal is more modest – to just sketch out 3 possible responses, and to get people to start thinking about them. The options I point to don’t essentially depend on the Kucinich dive, or even Kucinich, at all. However, such framing is timely and quite useful.

The title says it all.

I thought that an answer I posted to in a diary I started, called Coffee Party Hits 100,000 members, deserved it’s own diary. IMO, over-consumption of blogs actually prevents action. Also, most of the most important activism (such as peace activism) never seems to accomplish much of anything. So, even when action is attempted (in preference to endless arguments and opinionating on blogs), the actions tend to be a complete FAIL – except in the spiritual sense.

There needs to be more thinking about what I have called democratic efficiency (small ‘d’ democratic; nothing to do with the Democratic Party, per se). To that end, I am posting my tongue-in-cheek theory, hoping to expose superficial thinking which would obscure the sorts of analyses, research, and (frankly) democratic experimentation that we should be eagerly pursuing.

Not bad! I don’t have much more to say about this, but I will quote myself, from OpenLeft, about one of the most significant things  – perhaps THE most significant thing – that the Coffee Party is doing. The Coffee Party is creating democratic infrastructure – a means for people of diverse beliefs to meets, on items of mutual concern, even if of different perspective.

hopefully, they will not even try to enforce conformity at the local level, where policies would be decided by the local members. (According to my reading of their website, they don’t have a top-down structure, except for some basic principles such as civility, and the principle that government is a necessary part of the solution of many of our problems. Thus, they can’t enforce conformity across chapters.)

What intrigues me most is that they are creating democratic infrastructure – whether they realize it, or not. Corrupt politicos and lobbyists have extensive infrastructure already in place to corrupt Congress – e.g., K-Street. But where are the meeting spaces – which is part of the infrastructure – that citizens who share similar concerns can meet? Even if those citizens, like the Ancient Athenians, have radically different perspectives on how to deal with those concerns? Where can such citizens in modern day America meet and start to forge alliances, unfettered by a corrupted Democratic or Republican machinery?

Ancient Athens had what I can only view as a vigorous democracy (for eligible citizens, anyway). It certainly was not vigorous because citizens would share separate spaces, and just make snide remarks about opposing groups. There was plenty of head-butting, which could even lead to formal ostracism as a means to tone down any perceived threats to stability, but the head-butting was face-to-face and everybody knew that, at the end of the day, they were most all in the in the same boat. (Indeed, the small size of the polis, coupled with the ancient Greeks’ penchant for fighting with each other, made cooperation a life-and-death matter.)

It remains to be seen if the originators of the Coffee Party will make any attempt to co-opt the enormous potential they are tapping into, for the sake of Democratic Party purposes. IMO, independents and of course Republicans will immediately revolt if this is attempted. But note that, as long as the movement takes off before any such attempt at co-option, it will actually become  well nigh impossible to co-opt, later on.

I think this is the best thing to happen in American civic life in a long, long time.

Democracy Now had a program segment called “The Citizens’ Candidate”-Grassroots Effort Uses Craigslist to Find Candidate For Utah House Seat

Utah Citizen’s Movement website is here.

If Craigslist works for UCM, why not the Full Court Press?

Back in Nov. 10, at OpenLeft, I wrote
 

Frankly, I believe that if the Republicans had any brains, they’d tell one or two of their members in the Senate to help break any filibuster attempt, so as to let the healthcare ‘reform’ become law ASAP. If the reform is as bad, overall, as some of us believe (even while simultaneously having some very good reform elements), then the Republicans could use this issue to rout the Democrats in 2010. But only if they ‘help’ the Democrats achieve their mandate-laden ‘reform’ legislation soon enough.  

Well, well, check out this HuffPo article by Lawrence O’Donnell Will Scott Brown Ruin Republicans’ (Secret) Plan to Pass Obamacare?

(Will be cross-posted at OpenLeft and thomhartmann.com)

Is it realistic to think that two groups such as MoveOn.org and Freedom Works, the lead catalyst and organizer of the Tea Party/9-12 movement could possibly find common ground? Given the institutional and financial pressures inherent in the two-party system it will be very difficult for these groups to actually work togther publicly, but recently two of their leaders met on a “transpartisan panel” at the Engaging the Other Conference. Their was a remarkably civil dialogue and all present were inspired that if the unthinkable cooperation were possible, the red-blue game may begin to shift in dramatic ways. Here’s a 7 min. video that gives a flavor of the very hopeful conversations…

“You have to begin somewhere” I remember somebody telling me that when I first started lifting weights in a gym. (Not much weight on the bar, you see. IIRC, there was actually no weight on the bar.) However, it’s true in a lot of areas – like all of them.

So, even though I’m not a Democrat, I’m trying to help jeffroby get the ‘Full Court Press’ going for Dems. (I expect I’ll try and help Republicans get their version  going, if I can find any Republican-leaning citizens who are interested). Because we all have to start somewhere, and complaining in the blogosphere and petitioning those in power don’t seem very effective, we need to truly dump sellout Congress critters.

Chris Bowers has wisely advised us to do things correctly, legally speaking, so I sent an email to a lawyer I had retained, who I knew was a Democrat and seemed like a very good guy, overall. What follows is a modified, de-personalized version, that has a lot of links which will be useful for telling friend, family, and even strangers about the new group.

Admittedly, at a local level. But magnify this organized, directed passion to a nation-wide effort, pushed in communities across America, and you’ll start to see Full Court Press candidates win, even with minimal $$.

New Brunswick Ward Campaign 2009 from Daniel Dalonzo on Vimeo.

(From Empower Our Neighborhoods, that generated the wins described in the PDA article Progressives and Revolutionaries Win 25 Seats in Local Democratic Party)

(I will be cross-posting at OpenLeft and thomhartmann.com)

I.e., a set of national demonstrations by which people will demonstrate not on any one or two particular issues which serves as a theme, but rather on any issue for which they believe that neither the Democrats nor Republicans represent them. Another way to think of this is: the protests are jointly directed at the Democratic and Republican parties, themselves. I’ve never heard of such a thing, so the novelty, alone, might make it significant.

I’ve already thought up my sign’s slogan: “Down with the Dumbos, and down with the Jackasses! (If I want clowns running things, I can go to a circus.)”

Besides the Demonstration-As-Free-Speech-Expression aspect, and the (probably vain) hope that Congressional D’s and R’s will change course, such a demonstration COULD HELP FOSTER COOPERATION BETWEEN GROUPS THAT, THOUGH HAVING UNBRIDGEABLE GAPS IN SOME OF THEIR POSITIONS, WOULD DO WELL TO COLLABORATE IN THROWING OUT CORPORATIST SCOUNDRELS, OF BOTH PARTIES.

Voting bloc technology is going to make this more practical than it is, right now, but getting rid of UNECESSARY polarization could help us get a jump start on bottom-up, collaborative processes.

Another benefit is that it’ll help Independents to realize their collective power.

Yet another benefit: I’ll bet you could make an entertaining book and movie out of the demonstrations. Hopefully including a friendly competition of skits wherein the hypocrisy and apparent incompetence of members of the government (especially Presidents) is the subject – but the audience will not be told, ahead of time, the ideological orientation of the actors (if any). Think of political skits on “Saturday Night Live”, but with more of a bite, and with an implicit motive of actually doing something about the situation. The idea here is educational as much as entertaining – instead of wallowing in the “aren’t they stupid?” mudhole, Democrats can see that Republican voters aren’t happy with Republican politicos, and vice versa, and often for some of the same reasons. Such a video and book might prove seminal as the public moves to an e-democracy.