Historian: Progressive Democrats Should Go Green

From Counter Punch:

For quite awhile now, the political streams have been flooded with the ever increasing wail of the progressive Democrats. The weeping and gnashing of teeth by peace and justice groups, unions, focus groups, Democratic Party blogs and liberal/left journals has become deafening: What happened, why didn't we get what we voted for on November 4, 2008?

These progressive Democrats organized, campaigned and voted for a progressive agenda and go--drum roll--nothing. That's right, nothing. For the past year, their party has controlled both houses of Congess and the presidency. For three years, their party has enjoyed majority power in the House. What the progressive Democrats got out of all that: absolutely nothing . . . On the rank and file level, what if all the progressive Democat voters registered Green Pary tomorrow? Think they'd get the DIC's attention?

First of all, the Green party authentically represents the values the progrssive Democrats ostensibly espouse--peace, justice, small d democracy--so it's not as if these stranded Democrats would have some kind of political heart attack over changing registration. After all, their party is the historic party of segregation, and Franklin D Roosevelt couldn't even get an anti-lynching law passed by his Democratic Congress. Seventy years later, this same party continues to approve the over-bloated imperial war budget at the expense of critical assistance to economically destroyed non-white cities like New Orleans and Detroit. Also, for all the recent Democratic Party moaning about the Supreme Court decision to legally install the corporate state, let's not forget that 22 of their senators voted to confirm Chief Justice Roberts.