Building a Party: Having a little backbone

There have been many who have said they wished the Democrats would show a little spine. The truth is that the backbone is the reason I vote for Democrats. I see the party as a skeleton. We are its muscles. Our power is what holds up the Democratic party and we decide which direction it moves. We shape the party as our muscles shape our bones. Together there is enormous might.

But we have atrophied and or tensed into deadlock. There is value in compromise and the incremental change it brings. There are also times when the weight of what is good and just is so great that there is no room for give and take. For too long we’ve sat back and watched while the wise elders of two parties decided when to lavish righteous indignation on the world. Hiding behind the veneers of strength and surety is a skittish beast, the politician.

As elections near a remarkable thing happens, we have a change to flex our muscles, not only to change our politicians but to change our parties. That is one of our goals here at Impatient Sufferance. We hope to help sketch what an ideal Democratic Party would look like, what policy goals it would pursue and how it would speak about them. We wish to explore both idealism but also realism. We want to understand how we can move from our reality towards our aspirations.

Why the Democratic Party? Frankly, it appears the Republican Party is so totally the property of extremely moneyed interests that it would be nearly impossible to buy it back. It is so sold on the politics of fear instead of hope that it would take much greater effort to create significant populist tendencies in the Republican Party than it would the Democratic Party.

Since the muscles on the Democratic Party are so atrophied, we have an opportunity to rebuild that muscle and reshape the skeleton. We can return the party to its proudest moments, when it was expanding the safety net so that no one is left behind in times of success or overwhelmed in times of failure. We can strengthen a party of progressive ideals.

With that strength we can envision a new course for America. We can work towards a healthy economy and a healthy ecology. We can invest in our citizens first, in health and education in particular. We can achieve great things. Going forward we will explore specifics but more importantly the nexus of where what we believe about one issue intersects with our beliefs on another. At the end of the day we believe we will find everything to be related and that an understanding of those relationships will serve to aid in leading us forward.

When we understand the where one problem becomes another, we also understand where we can work together, where we can build muscle mass. While we will often not endorse a particular tact or policy the Democratic Party takes, in this ongoing feature series we will continue to explore a path forward and continue to be optimistic about what we can achieve.