For instance, anti-war activist David Swanson, who is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, opposed his local congressman, Rep. Tom Perriello, for voting in favor of a war funding bill. Perriello, a staunch Obama ally and possibly the most progressive congressman ever elected from that conservative district, lost his reelection bid by about 9,000 votes.
History may shake its head over why so many progressives abandoned the nation's first African-American president less than two years after his election. [For more on the tragic history of this electoral strategy, see Consortiumnews.com's "The "Teach-the-Dems-a-Lesson' Myth."]
But the story of Election 2010 is more troubling than just Democrats coming up short on Obama's promises of "change" or some disaffected progressives sitting on the sidelines for an off-year election. This is the culmination of calculations and miscalculations dating back to the 1970s when the Left and the Right chose diametrically opposite approaches to national politics.
The Left, which then had the upper hand in media and a strong reformist voice in Washington, opted to reduce its presence in the nation's capital in favor of "organizing" the countryside. There was a professed fear among some progressives of being co-opted by Washington insiderism.
Media also was considered expendable, as promising news outlets were shuttered, like Ramparts magazine and the Dispatch News wire service, despite having broken important investigative stories that changed the frame of the national debate. Other left-of-center publications, like The New Republic and The Atlantic, were sold to neocons or conservatives.
The Left settled on a new slogan: "think globally, act locally." But this reliance on "grassroots organizing" failed miserably to counter the Right's new strategy of investing heavily in national media outlets, think tanks and pressure groups to lobby on behalf of corporate interests and to go after troublesome mainstream journalists.
The Republicans also played whatever hardball was needed to win, and the Democrats after the Watergate scandal ousted President Richard Nixon in 1974 lost their stomach for standing up to the GOP's nastiness. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
Reagan's Victory
Reagan's victory in 1980 was the first clear indication of the direction of things to come, but the Left continued with its strategic withdrawal. The Democrats chose to finesse the Republican onslaught of well-funded attack groups by tacking to the center and cozying up to corporate interests themselves.
Even as this pattern became obvious with the Right's media machine becoming a powerhouse and with the Left left with no messaging capability to speak of the progressives refused to change course. Building media remained near the bottom of the Left's priority list. [For more, see Consortiumnews.com's "The Left's Media Miscalculation."]
In 1992, when the Democrats finally clawed their way back to power mostly due to Republican mistakes and divisions the chasm only widened between corporate Democrats like President Bill Clinton and a Left that although it had dissipated its own influence still demanded progressive policies from the governing Democrats.
The Right's powerful media machine also gave the Republicans enduring strength even after suffering a stinging defeat at the polls. The locker-room-style rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and other hard-talking Righties had a potent appeal especially to white working- and middle-class males.
It didn't take long for the Republican media advantages and the Democratic weaknesses to prove decisive with a GOP landslide victory in 1994. It was no accident that the victorious House Republicans made Limbaugh an honorary member of their caucus.
However, despite the Left's deepening media deficit, almost nothing was done through the 1990s. Rather than engaging in the hard work of building outlets for explaining the nation's problems to the American people and offering practical solutions, the Left opted for fanciful notions about third parties somehow changing the national political dynamic.
In 2000, many progressives rallied to Green Party candidate Ralph Nader under the deceptive slogan "not a dime's worth of difference" between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Nader's success in siphoning off energy and votes from Gore allowed Bush to stay close enough nationally and in Florida to steal the White House with the help of five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gore's shortcomings aside, Bush's "election" may have marked the end of American democracy as a meaningful concept. Besides his theft of the presidency, Bush further stacked the U.S. Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues, as Democrats again shied away from nasty confirmation fights.
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