If the left is going to start winning primaries, and taking power, it’s going to require a long-term project of building the kind of organizations the right invested in. It’s going to take candidate recruitment and training organizations that prepare people to run for office, think tanks that put forth ideas for the candidates to run on and influence the debate, and mass audience-focused media outlets designed to wage ideological conflict in the Democratic Party.
The groups representing the major constituencies of the Democratic Party—Planned Parenthood, #BlackLivesMatter, The DREAMers, unions and the socialist left, the climate movement—need to collaborate to take power together, instead of fighting amongst themselves to gain access. Right now, these groups don’t see themselves as part of a shared political project, with a shared strategy. But for each of their urgently necessary projects to succeed, all of them should be collaborating on challenges to establishment Democrats.
And it’s going to take the creation of a new political identity that fuses the various strands of the left’s coalition into a coherent narrative.
He’s not wrong.
Edit: Although right now what matters is defeating Republicans, but it increasingly looks like that is not going to happen. Americans don’t care about corruption apparently so long as they have a job.
The idea that the leftmost coalitions in the party have to band together and fight off having mainstream establishment Democrats adopt their platform planks was the most striking, especially on a night when centrist Democrats in Texas did very well and pose a real threat now to flip a couple of House seats there.
It reeks of litmus test.
“Kamala Harris can’t be pro-legalization. She used to prosecute drug offenders.”
“Kirsten Gillibrand can’t be pro-gay marriage. She used to be all about civil unions.”
Candidates can’t adapt and change over time (despite the fact that the most successful Democrat in generations did exactly that) as they grow in their understanding of their constituency and policy. Instead, they must be replaced.
Hmm, well, I haven’t read the article so can’t comment directly on it, but if there’s a problem with politicians changing their views, then bang* goes Lincoln.
Skimmed the article for the only part I cared about:
The company drew protests in April after two black men were arrested while they were waiting inside a Philadelphia store. Starbucks closed 8,000 stores for an afternoon last week to teach employees about racial bias.
“We realize that four hours of training is not going to solve racial inequity in America,” Schultz told Harlow last week. But he said, “We need to have the conversation. We need to start.”
