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Desperately needed now, if Constitutional Democracy, as defined by the Preamble to that great document (see my Commentary of almost a year ago, "The Preamblers" http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/185) and the Bill of Rights, is to be maintained, indeed restored in the United States, and if a Second Civil War is to be prevented, is a new party. I am not talking here about a traditional US "third party" which could make a lot of us feel good but which would go nowhere politically. What we need is for the Democratic Party to split. We need the formation of the Progressive Democratic Party. Its platform would be fairly obvious and I need not detail it here. But what I will deal with here, briefly, is what it would need in order to be effective.
A Progressive Democratic Party with a chance of winning elections, and in 2012 in a three-way battle the possibility of even winning the Presidency, needs three things. It needs a significant cadre of elected officials at the Federal, state and local levels to split from Obama and the Corporate Power Democrats and join it, people like John Conyers, Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, and Peter Shumlin (the new, pro-single payer, Governor of Vermont). It needs very significant amount of money from National Interest Capitalists (URL: http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/214) like George Soros and his new group. It needs strong support from at least part of what's left of the US trade union movement (which would obviously not include that sector of it that is trying to make nice with the US Chamber of Commerce); and it needs dynamic leadership and potential Presidential candidates, like Alan Grayson (yes, Abraham Lincoln was also a one-term Congressman defeated for re-election, in his case because he had opposed the Mexican War), Howard Dean, and Dennis Kucinich.
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I don't have much hope but if this happens, I'm there.
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