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| Photo Credit: Sarah Jaffe |
As long as there has been a thing called Occupy Wall Street, there have been people who've suggested it should become the left's version of the Tea Party. Josh Harkinson's piece is a notable contribution to the conversation because it comes after eight months of in-depth reporting on the movement. Harkinson, like Jennifer Granholm, suggests that Occupy should recruit and run candidates, so the left has champions in Congress and can credibly threaten less ideologically aligned Democrats. According to this logic, it doesn't matter if Occupy does this itself or essentially outsources the job to our progressive allies -- the point is to find ways to elect more good Democrats.
The
idea of a progressive Tea Party was totally my jam before Occupy
started. Like Harkinson, I didn't see how the left could create real
change in America without taking control of the Democratic Party. Now I
think it's important to recognize that the problems we face as a
country can't be solved by electing more Democrats, or even by electing
more good Democrats. A progressive Tea Party would be a welcome
addition, but it wouldn't be nearly enough to create the kind of change
we need.
If Occupy tried to
start a left Tea Party, we would be following in the footsteps of
several progressive movement efforts that came up short. Howard Dean's
presidential campaign turned into Democracy for America to reclaim the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," the Progressive Change Campaign Committee explicitly references the DCCC, and Rebuild the Dream
originally billed itself as the progressive Tea Party. I have worked
for each of these organizations and have lots of respect for their work.
But unfortunately, none of these projects, despite their many
successes, have managed to mount a serious national effort to take out
bad Democrats and replace them with good ones. They are constrained by
the lack of a grassroots base in many congressional districts and big
donors reluctance to fund challenges to Democrats. Even big,
collaborative efforts to take out bad Democrats have a relatively poor
record (See Sheyman, Ilya; Halter, Bill; or Lamont, Ned).
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