Our greatest President was elected because Northern progressives formed a new party

150 years ago today, Fort Sumter was fired on and the Civil War began.  I feel like we're on the verge of another civil war sometimes.

Lately there has been a lot of acrimony over at DailyKos over President Obama.  A year ago anyone who dared speak out against Obama over there was hooted down.  But now it looks like almost half, maybe more, have turned on him.  It will only grow.

I've expressed my feelings there, I've written that I can't support someone who pretended to be a progressive, pretended to be for the common man, the middle class, just to get our energy, our money and our votes,  and then kicked us and the middle class aside.  I'm told to look at Nadar and how he swung the 2000 election to Bush.  I'm told if we don't support Obama, a truly loony Republican might win instead.  I'm told liberals can't start our own movement, that we are stuck with a two party system and if I turn my back on the Democrats it's like throwing my support to the Republicans.

I say NO.  We are not stuck with the two party system.  At one other critical moment in our history our parties fractured, and guess what, it resulted in the election of what my have been our greatest President ever, Abraham Lincoln who won the 1860 election with just 39.8% of the vote.  That's because there were four (4!) viable political parties with candidates for President in that election.

Lincoln's Republican party was formed in 1854 (just six years earlier!) by Northerners who had a "vision of modernizing the United States—emphasizing free homesteads to farmers ("free soil"), banking, railroads, and industry. They vigorously argued that free-market labor was superior to slavery and the very foundation of civic virtue and true republicanism" (from Wikipedia).

Check out the Wikipedia entry for the 1860 election.  We must break with the Wall Street controlled Democratic Party.  We can't afford to let them control us any longer.  We must start now and get the poor and middle class behind us.  We won't be very effective right away but perhaps by 2016 we can be strong enough to make a difference.

--Trakker

 

Comments

[Andy]

Just today I heard on NPR how Bush (!) refused to give Hosni Mubarak more money because of human rights violations in 2002:

Tom Malinowski, of Human Rights Watch's Washington office, said
the decision could be "the most significant step the United States
has ever taken to defend human rights in the Arab world."

For all of his rhetoric, Obama cut funding for Egyptian pro-democracy organizations in half since 2009.

[horsec]

3016

We must start now and get the poor and middle class behind us.

The government fears a rabble-rouser because it's difficult to wake the rabble.

What will the sleeping giant do awake?

[horsec]

Did Abraham Lincoln say it? or Joe-the-plumber?

Washington Post, Complaint Department

On or after 12Mar2011 Washington Post online reader's UsrIDs are no longer live links to their comment history. This makes it impossible to check reader credibility via what they've said in previous posts. By rendering reader's comments less valuable, the Washington Post made sure that only fools will post, and only fools will read the comments.

Board-room discussion: How can we make our newspaper less useful?

[Trakker]

...the Washington Post made sure that only fools will post, and only fools will read the comments.

Recently the comments left on the Washington Post articles and blogs have become so vile and unhinged that I can only shake my head and shiver at how stupid a segment of our population is. I honestly believe that if Rush Limbaugh insisted that the earth is flat and the round-earth theory is just another liberal hoax, within a month we would have a growing movement to remove all globes from our schools and libraries.

[Andy]

What do you think of Obama's recent statement about not extending the Bush tax cuts again? I am incredulous, but I did feel a jolt of enthusiasm-- emotionally I am still attached to Obama, even if intellectually I really don't trust him.

[Trakker]

Obviously the man is in campaign mode again. He needs us and I suspect he's going to make a bunch of tough promises of thing he'll do in the future and we'll get all excited and vote for him and then he won't need us anymore.

I don't want any more promises. He should have let the Bush tax cuts expire on the wealthy last year, and if he feels so strongly about it, make it one of the demands NOW, not after the election when he can break the promise AGAIN and all we can do is fume.

I just don't trust Obama at all. My Daddy always told me "Look at what man does, not what he says. Words are cheap and politicians lie." (actually he never said that. I wish he had.)

I think I'm jaded.