This is the last episode of Paul Jay's interview of journalism professor Jeff Cohen of FAIR and the Park Center for Independent Media.

In the previous episode Cohen talked about the struggle for power and direction within the Democratic Party from the days of the Viet Nam War to the present, and wound up with "Frankly... I would love to see a primary challenge to Obama when he's up for re-election... Because unless you build a base through elections and then you hold the officials accountable, then you'll never get anywhere."

Here in the conclusion of the interview Cohen expands on those ideas and fills in some of the outlines to draw a rough set of guidelines or roadmap of how to get from where things stand now with the Democrats as out and out corporatists to a world of the kind of progressive populism they have been well known for at various points in history, and how it is going to take a no more Mr. Nice Guy approach from progressives and a lot of very hardnosed and fearless aggressiveness, of the kind that I think Muhammad Ali meant when he noted so many years ago "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."


Real News Network - February 6, 2010
Cohen: Far right Republicans are dangerous, but also need to primary against corporate Democrats

Lately there has been a spate of diaries at such web sites as FireDogLake and "Open" Left wherein lay members — typically under attack from site moderators, who act as Democratic Party hacks and gatekeepers — have sought ways to bring back the Progressive Party, or join the Greens, or build up some other institution, that will allow progressives to act together as a cohesive political unit. (I posted an entry there myself, only to end up being attacked by site moderators, threatened with banishment, and ultimately banned when I refused to back down against their incessant bullying.)

FDL's iphelgix explains the reason for leaving the Democrats.

Fellow FDLer TalkingStick points out the wisdom of studying the teabaggers for ideas about how we progressives can rebuild our own movement.

Mason calls for progressives to join him in building a Progressive Party from the ground up, apparently not aware that it already exists in states such as Vermont and Washington, and as Green Party affiliates inMissouri and Wisconsin. He is joined in this effort by MadHemingway, who posted the 1912 platform the Progressive Party ran on.

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Journalism professor Jeff Cohen of FAIR and the Park Center for Independent Media on the struggle within the Democratic Party, starting from the Viet Nam War:

There's no doubt that there's an awakening. What concerns me is that the liberal base, the Democratic Party base, has never been more educated, in my view, and that's because of the independent media. The democratic base is against an imperial foreign policy. The democratic base is for real medicare for all, or at least the strongest public option that would really hurt private insurance. There's an understanding of history, and again it's largely because the independent media is giving us the news in real time, every day when we click on the computer and we watch Real News, we watch Democracy Now.

What hasn't translated is while we have this boom in independent media on the Internet, we don't have a boom of independent politics.

What I believe are needed are new groups, that will be on the Internet, mobilizing the millions to make the kinds of demands of the Democrats that the right wing base, which has clearly transformed the country, the right wing base in the Republican Party not only took over a major party, they haven't let up on that party until their agenda is put in place, whereas on our side we don't have that.

What needs to happen, this is what a few groups are doing, Progressive Democrats of America is one, the idea is we need to take over that major political party.

When people talk about change, and then they deliver only for insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and Wall Street, you vote them out. You primary them. You know this is what the right wing has done for decades. It's what they're doing now.

What we get from MoveOn historically and other groups is apologies for democratic office holders who have faked left with their rhetoric and then governed for big business. And what we need is to primary these people.

Frankly... I would love to see a primary challenge to Obama when he's up for re-election.

Because unless you build a base through elections and then you hold the officials accountable, then you'll never get anywhere.

Real News Network - February 6, 2010

This is Part 3. Part 1 and 2 of this interview are at DocuDharma here. Part 4 is still to come...

At what point do progressives stop being Democrats' whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people? David Sirota wrote today about Obama's latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.

How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted? How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded? Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales. This sh__ has GOT to end.

My political activities now are focusing on the building of a viable third party as a tool of a reinvigorated and independent progressive movement. No efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within can succeed so long as the upper-level of the party establishment is able to crush dissent from within, as is explained here.

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MSNBC's Ed Schultz talking at the AM950 Blue State Bash on Saturday night to a crowd of progressive talk radio fans in Minnesota lets go with both barrels at Robert Gibbs, at Barack Obama, at the "people who have infiltrated the Democratic progressive movement", and at the whole delusional idea of bipartisanship.

"I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him," Schultz said. "And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb the same way Senator Leahy got it on the Senate floor. I told Robert Gibbs, I said, 'I'm sorry you're swearing at me, but I'm just trying to help you out."

"I'm telling you, you're losing your base," he continued. "Do you understand that you're losing your base? And that the American people don't want public option, the American people want single-payer!?'"

Watch...

Remember that polls were out there before the voting began, both nationally and in Massachusetts, such as the Boston Globe poll indicating displeasure that Obama had not lived up to campaign promises.

For all too long the Democratic hierarchy has concluded that progressives will vote predictably on election day for the simple reason that they have no viable alternative to the Republican opposition.

Increased warnings of displeasure drew no more than a few shrugs, but now that Republican Scott Brown has won the Senate seat long held by progressive icon Ted Kennedy perhaps the Democratic Party high command will awaken before more of the same occurs. They should be well aware that if such a result can occur in liberal Massachusetts with its top heavy 3-1 Democratic registration that it can happen anywhere.

Remember what disgusted not only progressives but many mainstream moderates as well when Congress began considering a health care bill. It was made emphatically clear that the single payer system which has served as the model of America’s neighbor to the north, Canada, would not even be discussed in the wake of national polls indicating that a substantial majority of Americans favored such a proposal.

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Bob Fertik is the president of Democrats.com and co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org.

Contact Bob regarding this effort via email: bob@democrats.com

Unfortunately President Obama's change agenda has run into a brick wall of "No We Can't," led by the entire Republican Party plus "BlueDog" conservative Democrats in the Senate and House.

If we want President Obama's change agenda to succeed, we must replace anti-change Republicans and Democrats in the 2010 election with pro-change candidates.

To succeed, we must unite the broad progressive movement behind a broad slate of pro-change candidates. We're calling this strategy: "Yes We Will!"

Below is a spreadsheet with the Senators and Representatives from every state. The first page contains the Issues we all care about: healthcare, jobs, wars, climate, etc. We'll score every politician (incumbent and challenger) on a scale of 1 (best) to 5 (worst) on each of those issues.

The second page contains the hottest races nationwide with our best "Yes We Will!" candidates (and the worst incumbents, even if no pro-change candidate has stepped forward). The remaining pages list every Senator and Representative, along with their challengers.

Our very first challenge is to recruit "Yes We Will!" candidates in as many races as possible. And for that, we need your help.

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Because that's what it's going to take, the netroots joining together to actively campaign against the Dems, in order for the left to be taken seriously. This will require playing genuine political hardball going into next year's midterms, and building up going into 2012.

Before I proceed, let me just point out that I am a progressive first and a Democrat second. This is because as an activist, I recognize that movements must control political parties, and when the reverse is true, bad things happen. See this column for elaboration. Therefore, I recognize that it is time for the left to start waging all-out war.

The following is based largely on the entry, "For a Full Court Press". It proposes action going into the 2012 elections, but it seems to me that we can and should begin building the foundations next year (which is only days away) for the midterms. The point is this: if progressives don't start getting genuinely tough with the Democrats, and start making the party accountable to us, then it's going to continue behaving like a party of Republican-wannabes that simply use and abuse us while implementing Republican policies — which we all know are utterly disastrous for the country. Here is what I propose.

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David Swanson, Washington Director of Democrats.com, talks with Paul Jay of The Real News, dissecting the politics of health care reform and the roadblocks in the way of getting to a real reform that serves peoples needs rather than politicians needs and the fact that politicians, even democrats and so-called "progressive" politicians and not just republicans, are the major roadblocks.

Real News Network - December 21, 2009
No public option, no bill?
David Swanson: Will progressives shoot down a healthcare bill that lacks a public option

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It's no secret that the far right loathes anyone and everyone to the left of Adolf Hitler. Just try to get into one of Sarah Palin's Nuremberg-style rallies; you'll find plenty of evidence for that statement. But a certain branch of liberalism is hated even by unapologetic left-wingers.

In a 1996 column by Adolph Reed, reproduced this week on CommonDreams.org, the progressive writer summarized the reason for his hatred in one paragraph:

during the '80s liberal opinion gradually accommodated to Reaganism by sliding rightward. Two rhetorical justifications emerged for this adaptation. The Democratic Leadership Council called for a new centrism, jettisoning egalitarian politics and the constituencies identified with it. Additionally, an excesses-of-the-'60s-as-fall-from-grace fable propelled this slide and justified the smug dismissal of those of us who didn't want to go along. This new liberalism curtly demanded that we grow up and accept the realpolitik; Reaganism was all our fault for going too far anyway.

That evaluation is echoed this week by self-professed socialist and TruthDig.com writer Chris Hedges, who writes:

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