I think this is something to this but I would caution a single party approach. We vote as a block but we must also understand the value of consolidating around core values. We need to hold values above party affiliation. There should be progressives in all parties. I will also say libertarians are somewhat aligned with progressive values why not libertarian progressives.
1 Like
The problem with a single party approach is the right wing of the Republican Party has half the country scared of the words socialism, progressive, “the left”. We need to play their game and take control of the dominant political parties because most of the country lean that way. The right wing managed to hijack the Republican Party. All I’m saying if we play by their rules and control both parties there’s nothing standing in the way of change.
It would be great to have a progressive party but If we go with the one party approach for progressives for example libertarians… It would split votes with the democrats empowering the republican vote… this is why independents like Bernie run democrat.
“We need to hold values above party affiliation” I so agree
[/quote]
2 Likes
Values are highly regarded but when you have a bully kicking sand in your face on a continuous basis the gloves have to come off sometimes. This is the reason democrats are perceived as weak when dealing with republican antics. Granted this current presidency has accomplished quite a bit but look who is in the center of the storm… People like Bernie and the “Squad” fighting the good fight however they can. They need help. Having progressives take over the Republican Party could very well be that help.
I agree but I think there is a semantics issue. Neither side seems willing to adopt he name of the other. I think this will not be the case in time. For now I think it is wise to create a sub name like Justice Republicans or something of that nature.
1 Like
“A rose by any other name will still smell as sweet… “ Whatever we call ourselves the outcome would still be the same with all progressives uniting be it libertarians, independent, leftist, progressive democrat, or justice republicans; progressives at the end of the day would be in key positions to pass bills that finally are for the people by the people and not by the rich for the rich to make the rich richer… (that was a mouthful.) By the way love the naming of the new name Justice Republicans. Anything with the word republican would be eaten up.
2 Likes
Now the question is who will set this in motion?
Just think about it, if the few maga seats in congress that are wreaking havoc in the Republican Party were progressives imagine how much we can get done!!! In retrospect we don’t need to take control of the entire party; we simply need about 15-20 seats to vote with democrats.
Maybe have progressives register republican and primary candidates in key swing states would be the way to go.
1 Like
Howdy @eagle1
We also have a topic thread on the specific strategy of running progressive republicans. Our politics require progressives to be not confined to any single party. Basically, renewed progressive strength beyond the democrat party is inevitable in a long enough time frame, and the sooner it happens then the sooner our political results will be more progressive in general. I advocate our organization accelerate that, and empower progressive nonpartisan collaboration. I’ll leave the details to the specific thread.
Other than this strategy, I’d be curious to hear about other strategies in this thread as well.
2 Likes
Greetings @jared123456,
This is good to hear as I don’t think progressives should be in one single party. I believe in order to accomplish progressive goals we should strive to control seats in key states in multiple parties as to facilitate the passing of important issues that are prevalent to change in our country.
2 Likes
Well, we haven’t had much more input here, so, I figured I’d drop more ideas:
This interview highlights some key historical geopolitical economy points. It shows the neoliberal world order held the reins of our American politics when how both our parties had to accept aspects of the neoliberal worldview. (Obviously this reinforces my points regarding the necessity for progressive republicans, yet…). My point here is for us to see this past order, to learn how to foresee our next political order, (and to recognize the structure of it), all in order for us to strategize on how we can influence it’s content to be progressive, (and to influence it’s structure to be sustainable).
Well, still not much response. Here is a more specific idea. But first a definition:
Buyer power refers to a customer’s ability to reduce prices, improve quality, or generally play industry participants off one another. Buyer power examples include larger and influential customers demanding higher-quality products for lower prices.
So basically a way traditional economic indicators (eg: GDP / stock market) are inadequate is how they obscure the market power dynamics. For instance, mainstream media reports a recovering economy using traditional measures, yet our prices for essential goods (housing, food, etc) at the median remain inflated due to persistent market/buyer power imbalance (which enabled the precipitating inflationary price gouging). If media consistently reported economic health in terms such as buyer power, then it would inform how the economy is still failing, as people experience that it is.
For example: Our public investments in direct covid payments helped many people, but because it did not address our insufficient buyer power, the direct payments was a public expense quickly absorbed into oligarch coffers and accelerated price gouging. If we had more buyer power, then it would have circulated more (ie benefited the real economy more), before eventually being absorbed with less inflation.
For hypothetical examples: We could say the economy is bad because Americans have insufficient buying power to afford living expenses, such as housing and food, and we could then clarify the need for public investments to provide market floors which resolve the imbalance of market/buyer power. Then we later report on how that improved our economy because it increased buyer power. (Note such industrial floors could range from subsidized to nationalized as appropriate, and to gain traction politically one would probably start just subsidized, and likely integrated with a jobs program).
Back to the larger point, since such analysis should be used to benefit the public, it is apartisan. If we coordinate with research and media allies and collaborate with right-wing populist media, and if we together so focus, then maybe it starts and builds into a shared political economy analysis lexicon, (like how the neoliberal order contained the shared lexicon). Leveraging this shared populist lexicon, we could start to rebuild functional political economy.
How could we collaborate to move such a focus into the relevant media? What is the relevant media?
For my next attempt to revive this thread, I’m jumping back to the start.
In @Galphar’s response to the original post, it sounded to me as if we’re suggesting we should have a goal before the strategy. However, to my mind, the “3 issues” which @Galphar referenced are in fact only sub-goals or simply just a step towards our larger goal. I think you suggest, and we agree, that we need a goal first to then have a strategy second, yet, to reiterate, I think we have disagreement on understanding what our goal is; (it seems to me that @galphar’s idea of goal was one of three possible policies, which I would agree is a place to start, but certainly not an ultimate goal for our organization). In my past couple posts, I outlined some of my concepts of our goal.
And so, perhaps we should more explicitly discuss our goals. (Hopefully @sciguy24 doesn’t mind if I temporarily hijack this thread about strategy for my tangent of objective; I feel it may help focus our strategies). My past couple of posts probably do a fair job of demonstrating some of what I have in mind for the goals of the progressive movement. But more clearly, to my understanding, Operation Hope was to be where progressive political change can be organized by the people, (or at least the TYT audience), and (clearly) I assume the ultimate goal of progressives would be the rise of our new progressive political order, following the yet shambling demise of the neoliberal order, (and the prevention of something worse).
I should add, I am aware that goal is obviously not something we can simply just do ourselves, but I should point out that: the time is now; our people have been ready for change; people are only going to grow more ready over time; we have an increasing wealth of knowledge, power, technology, opportunity, and resources available to us; we only need to organize ourselves to help direct our already dynamically evolving social environment; we have what we need; and we can do it.
…
1 Like
…
In our process of self organization, here is how I see things. Our goal is a new progressive political order (or maybe the world such would be a means to enable, yet I digress). We have yet to collectively focus on any such ultimate goal. In order to begin our process of organization, we know we need a starter goal in order to figure ourself out, and we worked through some kinks to choose some policy ideas. We are learning about ourself as an organization in process. And if I’m being critical, I think we may be decreasing in general engagement from where we started, but this is fine; (and/or, maybe we’ve switched to discord, and I didn’t get the memo). Not every TYT member has capacity to help in all aspects of the organization, and Cenk can always call on members when we need a larger group for some tactic. We do need some dedicated people to consistently collaborate on how we can help TYT put us to use (and how TYT can help us put them to use). Looking forward, I expect we will eventually need some people with influence (perhaps TYT hosts) to reach other segments of the larger populist movement for us to collaborate with them (such as people within positions of power or media or other organizational leadership, etc), but such opportunities need to be mutual to entice their collaboration. What I think we can offer is, as I suggested earlier, collaborative populist direction. All sorts of social segments are doing their own things, and if we can pull strings to tap people in from such disparate operations, then we can serve as a hub of coordination, which would multiply the effectiveness any such participating operation could have had otherwise.
For example, imagine if we had liaisons to coordinate with squad members’ aides, as well as representatives from extinction rebellion, sunrise movement, economists, policy wonks, reporters, religious-/-spiritual movements-&-leaders, etc. All such groups and many others stand to benefit from collaboration. If we are so dedicated, we can provide the medium of populist collaborative organization, and we can help enable the changes we need by empowering each participating branch of populist sentiment to coordinate with and through us. And again, I guess the change we should target would be a progressive political order, (and to be clear, I expect we would have some continued iteration over the definition of our ultimate goal as we grow).
Is a concept that is measured now in pricing data when compared to income data.
The problem is the economy in a nut shell should be viewed more like a Tree. You can have a tree that resembles a bonsai or one that is unfettered in the wild. Both work for the time an place in which they exist. The emergent organizational structures that seem to be defined in an economy is; growth, size, accessibility / value.
You can seem to have any mix here and have an economy. The problem you have is if you have to much buying power that allows for many transactions to take place. This will in turn cause inflationary pressure. Meaning if all people can buy things they will and this will cause the preverbal overheating of the economy. This is especially dangerous if factors exist that are restrictive to growth of the market (this borrowing against the future (printing money (quantitive easing)) isn’t a bug it is a feature) is the traditional solution to this sort of turbulence in the economy. You flood forced spending through the government and in turn you buy yourself time to grow out of the problem.
One problem then comes in when the economy recovers you should address the systemic issues that put you in the ditch in the first place.
This second part never seems to happen. The real thing that you should understand is our wealth is partly built on the ingenuity of the poorer classes. In other words our creativity and our tenacity for entrepreneurship is our secret sauce.
For instance read about the origin of victory gardens. Bartering is another phenomenon you see here with breadth.
Understanding and leveraging potential opportunity seems to be at the core of an economy.
What you describe in your other posts seam to be what is happening organically. I think you’re used to a more thigh control on how things organize. This is folly. Having a goal is great. Attempting to doggedly control an outcome is a fools errand.
It is folly due to the nature of perception and emergent structures. When chaos happens and power vacuums occur the nature of power structures reveal themselves organically. Once these structures emerge then you can start to employ direct actions in the form of plans.
As for perception this is what you’re likely getting at. When you begin to build a plan here it must happen organically.
I suggest you look for an topic called progressive think tanks.
Since the economy was brought up… Let’s talk about taxes for a moment.
We work and our hard earned money is taxed. We have needs and as consumers we take our money that has been taxed and go make purchases with our money that has been taxed to also pay taxes on our purchase. We buy a car with our money that has been taxed and we pay taxes on that as well. We purchase property with money that has been taxed and they pay property taxes on a yearly based on top of that.
Looking at things from a different perspective our economy depends on us (the middle and lower class) to pay taxes while the rich get these huge tax cuts sometimes paying zero in federal taxes while we take the brunt of the burden. Now how just is that?
How just is it that people that legislate can vote to increase their own salary with our tax dollars, continue getting paid for life with our tax dollars, and have total say on how our tax dollars are spent?
- Let’s not forget how Bush and Republicans “borrowed” trillions from social security (our tax dollars) to pay for war and have not til this day paid it back then have the nerve to say social security is running out!!! Social security is in an account that Reagan himself can not be touched!!! I digress… this in itself is another topic.
I believe a complete revamp of government is due. These people that have complete control of how our tax dollars are spent need to be checked.
We need term limits.
We need age limits. If we have a minimum of 33 to be president we should have a maximum for all 3 branches of government that at 69 Max they must retire and end this nonsense of lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court!!!
This running for office at ridiculous ages where we have elderly people with antiquated ideas continue in office. Our founding fathers fought to
To get away from a monarchy and the same people ruling but slowly and surely we have found our way back to the same situation. The same people in office for 30, 40, 50 years!!! It’s distressing and it’s time we change this.
Give them an age limit and when they retire if a 401k is good enough for us it should be good enough for them. They should not get paid for life with our money.
We need another way to determine how much our government officials get paid other than have them decide for themselves. We need to streamline government and make government more efficient. Their is so much much needless spending and siphoning of our tax dollars that we have become blind to it.
I’d love to hear thoughts on this and how we can attack this problem.
You make fair points. The buying power idea was meant as an example on improving the way economics is communicated that could enable more collaboration with a wider populist base, especially since current language is often used to obscure the potential common ground, (in order to defend the dying political order). And I’m sure other ways to focus the narrative, better than using buyer power, could better invite the common ground. The over all point was that we might better enable the common ground, in order to support the rise of a political order which actually empowers popular policies.
It sounds like you’re also saying such an outcome needn’t be doggedly controlled. I think I’m suggesting it would be helpful for our organization to share such a goal explicitly, as it could enable shared wisdom on what we do and how we do it.
Would you have any thoughts on that?
And I’ll go check the think tank topic again.
You also make many fair points. My thoughts though, rather than being focused on each thing, is more focused on the goal and strategy for political power in a more general sense, rather than for each of such specific issues.
Perhaps we could start other threads for a more detailed conversation focused on various issues, such as: economics, governance, etc. I’d probably enjoy discussing such specifics in another thread.
That said, perhaps I missed how your points related to your thoughts on strategy here. If you would clarify that, I’d strategize with you over the points.
Please forgive my post as what was supposed to be a post on strategy turned out to be a frustrated rant on government where you are correct many threads can be formed ie:
- Tax reform
- Term limits
- Maximum age limits
- compensation reform for elder statesmen.
*How to make government pay back the social security loan which Bush Jr. borrowed to pay for war. - streamlining government and government spending…
As we can see from all the topics that has spawned from my rant, it all starts from the top. The heads of state. The decision makers. These things get addressed the Economy will fall in line.
Just a thought for a short term strategy. We all want the big ball of wax:
A Progressive president backed by a progressive Congress, with a progressive Supreme Court.
Has anyone thought maybe we are biting off more than we can chew? Maybe we should start attacking the problem by taking over local government.
Republicans would be helping as they want to empower governors more. We start winning local elections and governorships slowly making our way into the upper echelon of government.
Mayors and governors have a major influence on local economies and can make a great impact on local levels. For example. President Obama approved to allocate millions to a florida train line which was declined by the governor. That train line could have been completed by now making transportation easier boosting the local economy.
Thoughts?
1 Like
Thanks for the reply, @eagle1 !
Regarding your question, are we biting off more than we can chew?; I’d answer not necessarily and point to your idea about winning locally as instrumental in order to reach the upper echelon of government. My point with this discussion is to frame a shared goal sufficiently, such that we can, as you have just done, allow the goal to implicitly and explicitly inform our broader discussions on strategies, instrumental goals, etc. You suggested affecting local government can build to national power, and move us towards a larger goal; you are already chewing. (Tangentially, here is an example of an organization following your suggestion).
The way I see it, we will need to address politics locally as you suggest, and we will also need to organize complementary if disparate objectives simultaneously. For instance, an organization affecting only local government is alone insufficient as an instrument for our ultimate goal, as is an organization affecting only national government, as are other individual organizations. What is needed is organized collaboration over as many aspects of naturally emergent initiatives as possible, including local initiatives, national initiatives, activists, academics, etc.
We don’t need to resolve our ultimate goal directly, nor can we; we can help to organize and coordinate all the interests which naturally emerge from the problem our ultimate goal resolves. We may also identify areas where work is lacking and share this information with relevant organizers. We may identify areas where collaborative organizations could better support each other. We could identify areas where collaborative organizations may be undermining each other (especially for potential unintended systemically complex results). There are many such benefits to wider collaborative organization, and those types of benefits are the types which I am arguing are needed most.
As an aside, you also make a statement about issues starting at the top; yet, I think my perspective is a bit different. I see these types of issues as not fully starting anywhere nor are they mostly determined by any one factor. I see these types of issues as complex, systemic, evolutionary, emergent, intrinsically interconnected, etc.
Hey Everyone, I just started a new topic in General Discussion > Economics and Society. This is where we can have the deep discussions about the best economic system for our society check it out.
2 Likes