and nothing liberal about neolib geopolitics.

Liberalism based on Keynes produced the only economic system in this country that has ever treated labor fairly, leading to a large and very stable middle class.

Nothing else will do, I'm afraid, and economic conservatives who have been coasting solely based on social issues are going to be in for an extremely rude awakening at the next crash.

There will be a next crash. Conservatives in the Democratic Party made sure of that by helping the Republicans scuttle any meaningful reforms. Wars based on neoliberal geopolitics are not going to save them.

If by "next crash" you mean another huge leg down for most of us, then yes I agree. That will undoubtedly happen too.

TPTB just continue to grind us down (i.e. 99%) year after year, and that will NO DOUBT continue until more of us wake up and make the Democratic Party embrace progressive politics again. To do that, the Third Way/DLC/New Democrats have to be exposed and KICKED OUT of the Party. Right now, they are in firm control, and the Senate is where they have things locked up right now. I can't believe how many Democratic Senators currently embrace Third Way policies.

A SUSTAINED movement will be needed to clean things up, and that will mean primaries. Otherwise, we're just going to continue our current economic trends (upward redistribution of wealth/income to the 1% from the 99%).

Above all, we will have to break the corporate media hold that has brainwashed so many Americans. If Americans don't even know what's happened and what NEEDS to happen, then I have no hope things will improve. Currently, I have no hope, but I have hope that one day in the future Americans will know what's needed (i.e. PROGRESSIVE politicians) and we will turn things around.

I left my blue links at home....

Clintonites abound in all of them, too.

these are the 2 parties now, any other labels are irrelevant

Pick your candidates accordingly.

and the "Progressive Policy Institute?"

No thank you.


Otherwise, great OP, Dragonfli!



K&R

I welcome the civil war in the party between the 3rd-way and the populists.

The former has the cash, and the latter has the numbers.

As Cyrus in 'The Warriors' exhorts: "We got the streets suckas!!!"

Thank you for spelling it out so brilliantly. And this is why Rahm insists the Dems have no base. Who besides a small group of elites would respond to this non-ideology?

if you want to win elections, maybe a 4th way is required, since Keynesianism, commitment to labor, spending on social programs, progressive taxation etc, are all dependent on capitalism, exploitation and imperialism; precisely the roots of all evils. If you want to change the world or save the planet, it going to have to be radical socialism.

On a day to day basis.

When you realize that almost everyone carries a cell phone, but those devices are made by slave labor in third world nations and/or China, what does that tell us about our struggle to have real progressive politics here?

Certain things are very politically chic - for instance, being vegan, or jumping on the climate change band wagon. But when no one is even thinking of organizing a real push to have devices everyone uses being made here in the USA, then what does that indicate about the lack of enlightenment?

And since Apple has people standing in line overnight to get their latest watch or whatever, and Apple posts an 18 billion dollar profit in one quarter only, with that profit being a new record, why can't some humanity return to manufacturing happening here in the USA?

(Or when will I learn to just shut up and accept what people all around me accept. I mean, Chinese people aren't people, are they? <sarcasm meant> They live on the other side of the world, so who cares if they are slaves, being driven to suicide, due to Apple's concern for its profits, and people's concern to have the popular devices?)

And corporations should pay some damn taxes.

The term Third Way refers to various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.

We do not need a "Fourth Way" to accomplish this, all we need is a return to the fundamentals of Keynesianism, a strong commitment to labor, increased spending on social programs (rather than cuts), progressive taxation, and an end to the cancer of privatization that would reduce the commons and the basic needs of the populace (such as health care and drinking water etc.) into the cash cows of profiteers of human suffering

Time to dump the "Third Way" for the unquestionably effective "Democratic way" made successful by the New Deal, The Great Society, and civil liberties. Our party can not serve two masters, the choice is clear, they must serve the financial elite, or the economically struggling populace.

That last sentence sums it all up very concisely.

*

Is the earth flat?

What I wrote was more or less a history of the party for the past thirty years or so and your post does not appear to address anything I wrote, so I found it confusing and random to say the least, perhaps you could expand on it and explain what such party history has to do with the moral corruption or purity of the author, feigned or otherwise.

I never even wrote about myself so perhaps you can understand my confusion regarding your cryptic and off topic reply.
Please clarify.

Thank you, Dragonfli. I'm with you 100%.

I don't understand WHY we needed a "3rd Way".

The FDR Way was good enough for me.
Fuck a bunch a half Republicans.

They arrived with Reagan and enough money to take over the Democratic Party for two decades. Like the Republicans, they remain essentially dynastic and protective of property rights - according to the iron law of inheritance, the Presidency now belongs to Hillary.

They know that some of us can now see them for what they are, but remain confident in their mission of planetary conquest.

Rather than form their own party, or take it back from the Birchers, I believe they simply took over ours.

In only some cases can they be tracked as registered (R) changing over, but the money and the ideals are the same and such people would have felt more comfortable in that party if it still existed as it did 30 years ago.

It is very obvious to those of us that have followed the parties and policies for decades, unfortunately for the younger generations, they have no real idea what the party actually was and how it once helped the lower and working classes. The party can no longer be honestly said to represent workers and unions, and since Clinton all but destroyed assistance programs for the poor, they could no longer be said to represent the lower classes - they "lowest" most of them will go with their rhetoric is the "middle class" which to them appears to be those making 100 k to 1 M a year, and even they only really get rhetoric without action.

Most of the country no longer has representation, the war on poverty has transmuted into a war on the poor and the unions have been used but not supported.

I don't think this dynamic can remain stable for long.

or whoever offers them the best package deal of Returns On Investment and security.

Like any other industry, American politics is all about ROI and hedging risks, and it's a global market.

human being to enable it.

Gotta think big. Gotta act big. Gotta do big.

ALL together for the benefit of ALL.

That's the true Democratic way.

http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/new-deal-20

Thank you for an outstanding post, thread, and message, Dragonfli.

and then reassemble it without the Corporate and 1% influence.

Think about HOW that can be accomplished. They will not allow you to patch or change it.

going on.

Google "Progressive Liberalisation" (use that spelling)

What do you see?

Example:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A.in+India+GATS+WTO+education

Forcing India to give up their right to education?

Is that American values? No.


Here is another example, on health care- Everything we are being told is the cause, is wrong.

is because Democrats like Obama & the Clintons have been far too tone deaf to working class voters. These kind of Democrats always seem to be more interested in bipartisanship than wise, pro-middle class policy. Obamacare is the perfect example. Obama chose Obamacare not because he believed it was objectively better policy than Medicare for all but because he thought Republicans might vote for it. And you see where that penchant landed him. He now is forced to have his name be eternally associated with & THE WORST possible version of healthcare reform. The reason the majority of the GOP supported its identical twin, Romneycare, up until 2007, was precisely because it is a system which mainly benefits blood sucker insurance companies. The GOP has traditionally ALWAYS preferred government solutions that benefit businesses rather than the poor & middle class. They would describe it as "helping the job creators." So it was entirely reasonable for Obama to believe Republicans might go for it. He didn't realize that the GOP was simply determined to act as a spiteful & purposely unreasonable insurgency no matter what he proposed.

from its corporatist corruption are NEVER coming back to the party as it is.