Trans-partisan Strategy and Tactics for the Next 8 to 12 Years

Now that the 2012 elections are history, clear-eyed progressives and reality-based libertarians can both say unequivocally, “We lost big time.” Those who try to make excuses or bask in how much better Ron Paul did this time around are whistling in the dark. Progressives who have stayed with Obama believing that he’s the best that we can do or that he is even one of us anymore are completely deluded.

I know that is not the best way to begin to communicate with my targeted audiences, but it has to be said with crystal clarity… there is no way on earth that either libertarians or progressives can, over the next 12 years, win a majority in the Senate or the House or get anywhere near the White House, not if we continue to go at it alone. This is true whether one chooses an inside the major parties strategy, an independent strategy or a sectarian party strategy.  Even if there were one among us with Ross Perot’s money and charisma, we will still lose. We lost and any repeated or better funded, more polished version of any of the tactics and/or strategies deployed by Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson will lose.

The numbers are not there for either libertarians or progressives. The numbers are growing in both camps and it is probable that one of the two will at last dominate one of the two parties. My bet is that libertarians are more likely to take over the Republican Party in the next 20 years than are progressives to do the same with the Democratic party, given the inability after 4 years of Obama for many of us to know what the word means (not mention the previous support for Dr. Poser Progressive Dean… a libertarian at heart if anybody’s still interested).

What is needed is clearly a real coalition/alliance strategy that is willing to fight both inside and outside the major parties and from the bottom up at local, state and national levels.

By coalition/alliance I do not mean clever PR from one side toward the other which says out loud, “We have so much in common!” But then thinks, “If you just let me use you this once, you’ll see how smart I am and let me have you my way all the time.”

What I mean is an intentional and real but temporary partnership between two ideological forces who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are no match going solo against the two-headed corporate beast. If you have not reached that conclusion yet, don’t waste your time reading any further.

This coalition/alliance must be specifically policy-based and must have some very concrete economic compromises firmly in place if it is ever going to see the light of day. Thinking we can all get together around anti-war, hemponomics, and get out of my bedroom politics has already failed miserably. There have to be some major and concrete compromises on economic policies  concerning debt reduction, federal spending and taxes. If you can’t see the necessity of that, again, you should have stopped reading after the previous paragraph.

I have and will continue to set forth and seek proposals for building this essential economic platform but for this article, I want to focus on the political strategy and tactics of this alliance. With an economic compromise in place, we can win but not without a realistic political strategy of naming friends and foes, recruiting and promoting tenable candidates and working on the inside and outside of both major parties.

Naming our friends and foes ought to be the easiest step in the process. A litmus test is already in place. It’s called the NDAA.  Every libertarian and progressive organization and individual ought to pledge right now to support or not oppose any of the Senators or Representatives who have opposed or voted consistently against the NDAA over the last 4 years, or for that matter have seen the light over the last 2 years. What’s the problem?

The problem is Michele Bachman just voted against the NDAA.  I can’t see many progressives or libertarians being thrilled about the idea of allowing her to stay one more day in the congress. Maybe there is a libertarian Republican or a progressive Democrat who can beat her in the 2014 election and if so, by all means, make it happen. However, if Bachman’s seat is like the vast majority of House seats, safe for incumbents until gerrymandering recommences in 2020, then for goodness sake, let’s not waste time or precious financial resources trying to do the impossible.

Impossible… that’s right. It is all but impossible to beat incumbent House members once they have served two terms.  This may mean we have to focus on state legislatures and the US Senate.  Maybe with very selective targeting, we can move the number of pro peace and civil liberty Representatives up toward 150 or 160 by 2016 and with the right executive coat tails, maybe we reach 218 by 2018 or 220 by 2020. In any case the strategy and tactics for getting there are the same up and down the ballot.

Let us think about this for a moment with a few examples. In California, there is no use opposing Feinstein or Pelosi although neither of them are ideal progressives and the latter of them should be in jail with George W. right now. We might however be able to take out a Lindsey Graham if a libertarian rebellion can ally itself with a progressive Democrat. Put Jim DeMint and his recent rejection of the NDAA and the US Senate to the ultimate test.

Or perhaps there are a select few House seats where a neo-con Republican or a blue dog Democrat is vulnerable. I would look for seats where the incumbent neo-con just defeated a one or two term blue dog or vice versa. In the NC-11 race this year, blue dog Heath Shuler’s chief of staff got shut down by Vance Patterson who will probably turn out to be another war-mongering, chicken hawk homophobe spouting free market rhetoric to insure military contractors in his district get their fair share. I hope he turns into the next Walter Jones but just in case he’s not and the demographics are plausible, let’s take him down. Here’s how:

Gather all 13 Greens and all 22 Libertarian in the 11th district and get them together with liberty minded Republicans and progressive leaning Democrats and independents to find a candidate who is progressive on issues of war, peace, and economics and moderate on civil rights and liberties. What we would be looking for is a combination of Jill Stein and Virgil Goode, if you can imagine that. Progressives, pinch your noses or cover your ears when this candidate talks about God, guns and gays and tries to tell you not to abort a fetus just because we find out it’s lesbian.

Libertarians, you do the same and hold your breath too when this same candidate talks about the rich coughing up their fair share so we can pay teachers, pave roads and subsidize local farmers’ markets. Vote for this culturally conservative and economically progressive William Jennings Bryan throwback in the Democratic primary. And progressives if she doesn’t win the primary, join with the libertarians in supporting their independent candidate in the general election. If tact 1 works out, we get a shot at ending the neo-con, blue dog dance in NC-11. If not, then tactic 2 punishes Democrats and scares the living daylights out of Republicans.

The same sort of tactic could be played out in a few districts and several states. In the case of the Senate we can aim our sites at the most vulnerable violent corporatists. Any Senator regardless of party who won by less than 4 percentage points in the last election and who consistently kowtows to corporate lobbyists and mercenaries, preferably in smaller states, needs to be hunted down and targeted for replacement. In many cases, libertarians and progressives may have to bite their lips when it comes to cultural issues if they want to get done what needs to be done.

Obviously, even with the platform and the above mentioned tactics in place, US House and Senate races are going to be extremely difficult so we may all need to do what none of us really wants to do, start small by finding, equipping and running the most suitable candidates for local and state office. We may not win another single Senate or House seat before 2022. We may have to aim for state legislatures so we can gerrymander the districts in our favor in 2020. It’s a tedious and nasty prospect but it might be our only chance of pulling America out of the muck and mire of crony corporate corruption.

While we lurk low, we can also aim high with an inside/outside double team tactic in the presidential race. This year, I failed miserably at persuading my fellow progressives to vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries and caucuses.  Next time around, we will not have an incumbent to herd the tribe. I will not be trying to convince progressives to vote for Rand in the GOP primary, and Blue Republican, Robin Koerner  (I love that Brit we’ve smit)will hopefully be doing it my way this time around.

What we need are 4 candidates in cahoots with one another while running for president. It may be the most improbable strategy in political history, but it is the only chance we have of wresting the White House from the military industrial catastrophe’s empire building and maintenance strangle-hold any time soon.

The four candidates are two libertarians and two progressives. One libertarian (Rand Paul) runs inside the GOP while another runs as a Libertarian (Gary Johnson). One progressive (Barbara Lee…you thought I was going to say Dennis K.) runs for the Democratic nomination while another runs as a Green (Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson…for goodness sake, somebody check an ego! It’s about policy and winning… not personality and making a statement!) . The point is we need one and only one progressive and one and only one libertarian running inside the Democratic and Republican parties respectively. We also need to expect these two candidates to fail, maybe finish second, more likely finish third behind 4 pseudo puritan candidates. (I know…  I can hear all the blades clanging against Don Quixote’s sword! “Total victory and unconditional surrender are nigh at hand!” Please…you were supposed to stop reading several paragraphs ago!)

When we face up to the inevitable defeat of the insiders, we can begin to talk about part 2 of this guerrilla tactic. Sometime between Super Tuesday and convention time, the insiders need to drop out and a week or so later endorse the two outsiders. Imagine the scene: July 4, 2016 inside independence hall in Philadelphia…. (Can somebody book the venue of Obama’s best speech now?) Dennis Kucinich and Rand Paul, surrounded by Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Virgil Goode, Barbara Lee, Ron Paul, Justine Amash, etc., announce that they are endorsing an independent ticket of Gary Johnson and Bernie Sanders.

Can you imagine the shock waves ringing through MSNBC and Fox board rooms as they and all the corporate media cabal  scramble to find a way to pre-empt and dismiss this story?!

Admittedly, such a scene is a long shot, but if unemployment is hovering around 7%  (or worse if we are in the full throes of austerity) and we are getting news of CIA agents killed in Iran and a satellite successfully launched by North Korea along with competitive brinkmanship rhetoric from Mike Huckabee and Hillary Clinton, we might just see it.

And one more piece to this political puzzle: It might be easier to get Mars and Venus to switch places without crashing our rock, but with this and all the other tactics, we need the GP, JP, LP and CP to suspend nominations and start endorsing Democrats and Republicans in the primaries and independents in the general elections.

I don’t know what it will take to get libertarian, progressive, and yes, even cultural conservatives to do the right thing, but if you’re still reading this, maybe you can begin to imagine the outlines of a hopeful and realistic strategy to rescue a nation from imperial disaster. The tired virtue of patience and the reluctant will to compromise might be necessary, and it might even be too late to wake up from this corporate nightmare, but what other strategy is there? Do tell if you are still reading.