A Progressive President Will Help Reform the Democratic Party

Reason #14 to elect a progressive President: Reform the Democratic Party from the bottom up and the top down.

Every progressive knows that the Democratic Party is in need of reform. The institutions of the Democratic Party are in the grasp of people who are trying to drag the Democrats toward the right, seeking to transform the Democratic Party into a place where Republicans can feel at home.

The sad thing is that these Democratic politicians, in organizations like the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, believe that the best way for Democratic candidates to gain victory is for them to become less like Democrats and more like Republicans. What they don’t understand is that the reason American voters are disgusted with the Democratic Party is that too many Democratic politicians don’t seem willing to stand for anything any more. When the Democratic leadership offers little resistance to the Republicans’ right wing agenda, voters become disillusioned with the Democratic Party.

The 2008 presidential campaign is a great opportunity for the American people to set the Democratic Party back on a course of clear progressive strength. If we can elect a progressive Democrat as President in 2008, that progressive will become the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, and will set about replacing all the rightward leaning collaborationist officials in the Democratic Party.

A progressive President will work to make change from the top down, but we’ll be working from the bottom up to provide the power to make that change possible. In 2008, we need a grassroots campaign for a progressive President with the organizational might of Howard Dean’s Democracy for America, but with a candidate with better progressive credentials than Dean. As we’ve seen with him as head of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean was never really a progressive Democrat. Dean has set about promoting right wing candidates like Bob Casey for Senate in Pennsylvania, and promoting right wing causes like mixing religion and politics.

Ultimately, the best reason to elect a progressive candidate for President in 2008 is that, through the mere effort to support a truly progressive candidate, we the progressive activists of the Democratic Party will become a greater force to be reckoned with, and Democratic politicians will learn to think twice before voting against progressive interests as they have so often in the past.

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