TEA, COFFEE OR WE THE PEOPLE?

By Jerry D. Rose

Ah, this is the summer of our discontent! Responding to intractable conflicts abroad and uncontrolled oil spills and double digit unemployment at home, American voters are showing their discontent by voting against incumbents, often for candidates with more than a tinge of the Tea Party ethos of lower taxes and lesser government. The “majority” party in the Congress and the White House quakes at the thought of losing its control and begins the inexorable shift to the right that always comes when conservative political views show any sign of resurgence.

This rightward shift of the Democratic Party should be good news for the prospects of success for progressive candidates for public office. As health care “reform” is effectively emasculated by the “socialism” shouts of Tea Partiers at health care “forums,” the abandonment of the Democratic Party, even its “progressive” members like Kucinich, Grayson and Weiner, of the ideal of truly universal health care (as opposed to “insurance reform”) should embolden candidates who defy the Democratic Party’s cave-in and offer to stand for single payer health insurance during this year’s congressional elections. It should be a very good year, indeed, for Green Party and other progressive third party and for independent candidates who articulate the expectations of the great majority of the American people. The summer (and fall) of the Democratic Party’s discontent should be a season of new opportunity for progressive populist forces.

But wait a minute! Into the breach and at seemingly the last minute a Mighty Mouse called the Coffee Party comes to save the day. The party was “founded” in March of this year and the “mission statement” of the Party, stated at the top of its website is:

The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

Immediately below this mission statement is an appeal for people to sign a “pledge of civility” which is described elsewhere on the website as postulating that “We cannot have a functioning democracy when there is no real dialogue, only shouting from the most extreme and passionate participants.”

So there you have the essence of the Coffee Party agenda. While the Party articulates a veneer of progressive populism (the federal government is not the enemy of the people; the Party takes no contributions from corporations), its operating agenda is one of “cooperation” and “civility,” precisely, it would seem, that of the establishment Democratic Party. True progressives are marginalized along with the Tea Party as among “extreme and passionate participants.”

In many ways, the Coffee Party seems but the extension of MoveOn, the internet behemoth which, in the name of “progressive” politics, was a moving force behind the election of Barack Obama and then of the “triangulating” (compromising) tendency that has been the hallmark of his administration. It is helping the party to position itself as the representative of the “grassroots” of America, devoted to “positive solutions” rather than the shouting rancor of people from the right or left sides of the political spectrum. It appears that Tea Partiers will be oblivious to these calls for “cooperation” in the framing of policies against which they are opposed. Progressives are seemingly more tractable and more open to the politics of “civility” even though the outcome of the politics of cooperation is collusion with the corporately-funded Democratic Party in continuing to rule in the interests of the corporate hand that feeds it.

We are left with the ominous likelihood that American voters this November will once again be confronted with painful choices between “lesser evil” candidates of the two major parties, neither of whom represent their own political preferences. By helping the Democratic Party in demonizing the “evils” associated with Tea Party politics, the Coffee Party is doing the work of the Democratic Party. Only if progressives disdain the offers of tea or coffee and demand a serving of genuine “we the people” candidates for office will this dreadful cycle of lesser evilism in American politics be broken.