Political Ideas

Stage 1: Media debate between Republicans in power and what the people and the Democrats want.

Stage 2: The people give the Democrats complete control.

Stage 3: Media debate between the hideous proposals of the Democrats and the powerless Republicans.

Stage 4: A debate between the proposals of those in power and what we the people demand begins to percolate up through the internet and grassroots organizing.

Stage 5: We take control or lose it completely.

By David Swanson

I’m not a big fan of post-partisan America, a notion that seems to amount to running the government through two political parties but taking care that one of them not perform in any significant way better than the other one. But I am a fan of the idea, which nobody ever seems to consider, of actually disempowering parties.

That idea has a precedent in the first dozen years or so of our republic whose Constitution never planned for party rule, although nonpartisanship would read more

By David Swanson

I’ve followed the struggles of progressives within the California Democratic Party from the opposite coast and admired their achievements but wondered about their limitations. They’re the first to pass resolutions opposing wars, but for the most part their members in Congress vote to fund the wars just the same. I’d rather have a party that “supported” wars but didn’t fund them, if that option were available. I’d rather have a brand read more

Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico has put an honest description of the antidemocratic filibuster rule on his website.

According to Jon Walker at FireDogLake Udall plans to call a point of order at the start of the next Congress to eliminate the filibuster rule.

This is the real solution that we need (although not all experts agree it has to wait for the start of a session), not asking the Vice President pretty please to declare the rule unconstitutional as Thomas Geoghegan suggests read more

By David Swanson

Answer: They get around the pesky will of the majority of the American people.

Here’s a lovely post from the DailyKos praising the president of the AFL-CIO for encouraging the president of the United States to appoint officials during a recess in order to get around the Senate.

We’ve grown used to hearing “progressives” urge Obama to make laws with signing statements and executive orders. The treaty he’s using to occupy Iraq never went to the Senate read more

Excerpt from an Email promoting an upcoming conference:

Imagine stripping this out of the context of partisan thinking. Imagine supporting Reagan to be a brilliant intellectual. Imagine supporting the military to teach nonviolence. Shall we try supporting Wall Street to solve the housing crisis? We could support thieves to protect our stuff while we’re out supporting hurricanes to provide gentle breezes.

Will anyone at this conference perhaps ask whether opposing everything we oppose read more

Nothing Lawrence Lessig says here is false exactly. But if Congress is the problem and the problem is the money, how can there never — in anybody’s predictable articles on this topic — be any mention of the fact that the president takes more money than any congress member, and power to do most things has been handed over by Congress to the president? How can these two points be avoided?

Obama’s State of the Union speech called for jobs, health care reform, and fighting the influence of corporations on our government processes, but after the past year, many progressives are skeptical that he’ll actually fight. He did include a sharp critique in his speech of the decision of the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a decision that Steve Cobble called an “intellectually dishonest power grab.”

Cobble, a fellow at the read more

The filibuster rule just isn’t very popular among those who know what it is. Pew found that 26% of Americans knew how many votes were needed to get around a filibuster. Zogby reports that 32% want to get rid of that anti-democratic blockage.

And these two polls were probably looking at samples of the same population, given Zogby’s findings confirming vast ignorance: Only 34% knew Republicans use the filibuster more. Only 28% knew the House represented public opinion better than read more

By David Swanson

Those are the words used in Article II Section 3 of the US Constitution. The president is also to “recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Why does this not come up in Article I with all the other supreme powers of our Commander in Chief? Well, because only the military has one of those, and Article I is devoted to the most powerful branch of our government, the Congress.

The president is supposed to inform Congress read more

By David Swanson

I spoke in Van Nuys, California, and in Ventura, California, on Saturday as part of a book tour, talking about peace, justice, and activism. The first event had me speaking to loyal members of the Democratic Party. A number of participants in the second event made clear that their top priority is demolishing the Democratic Party.

I didn’t agree with either group on the matter of the Democrats, but I agreed with both and they all agreed with each other on what they want from read more

By Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine

“In Virginia, we started making a big community garden and everybody pitched in and worked on it, digging ditches to make sure we’d get water to the garden, and with a little effort we were getting some success,” progressive organizer, activist and author David Swanson told his audience at the First Unitarian-Universalist Church Friday, January 15. “Then this crowd of rain dancers showed up and said we ought to have a rain dance, and they read more

It’s time for the Senate to abolish the filibuster.

The filibuster is undemocratic and contradicts the core principle that legislation should become law by majority vote. The mere threat of a filibuster can bring the business of the Senate and the American people to a halt.

The filibuster allows a minority of 41 Senators to block the will of 59 Senators. Even when 60 Senators support a bill, the 60th Senator can hold the bill hostage to individual demands that can warp important legislation.

We read more

By David Swanson

Whenever I write about U.S. politics, people ask me “Don’t you have any good news?” (Unless the Republicans are in power, in which case people ask me “Who are you going to vote for?”) But I do have good news, boatloads of good news, if Americans want to hear it.

If a city or state next to yours were to achieve a dramatic breakthrough for democratic representation, environmental sustainability, healthcare, education, peace, or justice, wouldn’t read more