Running someone against Obama/Gibbs in the primary won't do any good.

[theophilus]

What we will have to do is throw out a really good third party (People's Party or ?????)candidate. This would put the pressure on. Not that the candidate would go all the way and allow a Reptard win. We need a lightening rod out there, though, to push Obama to the left to fulfill some of his promise. IMO.

[derby378]

1. Third party? Not going to happen

The Green Party had a chance, but now they've been turned into a subsidiary of the Republican Party.

Even George W. Bush had a Republican primary opponent in 2004, even though the media did their best to ignore him.

[BzaDem]

2. It is much easier for a Democrat to move to the right to solve the third party problem (as opposed

to moving to the left). If a third party is taking away 5% of the vote from Obama, that just means he will try to move sufficiently to the right to get 5% more independents. After all, independents are at least rational, and it is much easier to get a rational person's vote than it is to get an irrational person's vote.

And on top of that, an independent going from a Republican to a Democrat is a net gain of 2 for the margin, whereas a fickle third party voter going to a Democrat is just a gain of +1.

[Enrique]

3. they should run on the progressive legislation that passed the House

the House passed a robust public option with no mandate, and it passed a strong energy bill with cap and trade, and the House version of the stimulus had more than $100 billion more spending than the senate version, and much less of the money went to tax cuts.

[BzaDem]

Um, that is totally not true. The House's bill had a non-robust public option WITH a mandate.

It is actually impossible for there to be ANY public option without a mandate. The public option would die in an insurance-premium-death-spiral when people realize they can avoid signing up for the public option until they become sick.

[theophilus]

7. That's what I feel, too. n/t

[corkhead]

4. Kennedy's primary challenge to Carter helped bring us Ronbo.

and the resultant destruction of the American dream...

but we have our prinicples.

[theophilus]

8. That is exactly true, imo. The Progressive must be "nice" to Obama on the whole. n/t

[T Wolf]

5. There is no incentive for any of the current Dems to move left unless they are forced to.

forced to.

I have yet to see any of the must-vote-for-any-Democrat crowd explain how returning the same DINOs to office will ever move policy to the left.

[theophilus]

10. It won't. We almost popped Lincoln here in AR but she's back for a

shot at a really right wing Rep. I am waiting to see if she will move to the left at all.

[sinkingfeeling]

13. You're watching Lincoln move even further to the right. She voted, along with Nelson and all GOP,

extend the Bush tax cuts. Doing her duty for Walton family.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/05/nelson-lincoln-bush /

Before passing the state fiscal aid bill, Democrats actually gave Jim DeMint two votes on tax rates. He wanted to add massively to the deficit – literally trillions of dollars – by freezing in place the tax rates on individuals and “small businesses” that we have now, and which make us one of the most lightly-taxed industrialized nations on the planet. And look at this: Democrats rejected the measure entirely. On both votes, only Ben Nelson crossed the aisle to vote with all Republicans

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Oh goody! Then we can have a party with 15% of the votes and really punish the Democrats.

[theophilus]

9. That should not happen. Read the OP. n/t

[sinkingfeeling]

12. Read it. You're pushing for a third-party, which isn't what DU is for.

[theophilus]

14. Oops! You're right. Never mind. My bad. n/t

[Warpy]

11. A progressive party is not going to happen

until and unless the GOP is reduced to a sputtering collection of state parties that don't field a national candidate for president. That's how they've come about in the past, when first the Federalists and then the Whigs collapsed. The new parties came about for specific goals and when those goals were met, the members became apathetic and the parties were easily taken over by the plutocracy again to become the Hamiltonian opposition to the Jeffersonian Democrats.

History does tend to repeat itself, especially when it comes to the Hamiltonian parties in this country. The party of the plutocracy can stay stable only as long as it stays small. Once it makes a deal with the devil to gain total power, that devil always insists on taking over and the party collapses as the relatively sane flee.

Starting at the top with a political party is not going to push the Democrats left, it will push them right in order to attract a broader conservative base in opposition. What will work is starting at the bottom, with labor and consumer actions, something that is barely beginning now.

[zipplewrath]

15. Nope

If you want to pull him left, and alot of other candidates as well, there needs to be a credible challenge in the primary. Doesn't have to win, just has to pull him left. The result will be alot of folks in congress as worried about "guarding their left" as worrying about the right.

A general election strategy tends to actually push them in the opposite direction, trying to find the "sweet spot" between the GOP and your left side challenger.

[lazarus]

16. We're locking this

Third party advocation is not permitted on DU.