My brother, via telephone: The Dems are that old joke...

Q: Will you respect me in the morning?

A: Why would I? I don't respect you now!

Here's another twist that would make such a Progressive Contract viable. We don't want another Nader-style suicide run.

What we face here is a classic example of a collective action problem (the locus classicus of which is Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action), also familiar to a lot of progressives as the Tragedy of the Commons. The basic idea is that we are all better off if we work together, but no one, as an individual, has sufficient incentive to be one of the first ones to do so without everyone else coooperating as well.

There are many among the Democratic party elite (officeholders and people who work at various interest grops and party organizations) who would be overjoyed to support such a movement if it existed but can't afford to lose their careers and reputations on a pipe dream.

No one wants to sink the Democratic party. No one wants to threaten to sink the party either unless -- unike Nader -- by means of making that threat, we can actually avoid carrying it out because the Leadership and the presidential candidates fall into line. But things have become so bad that soemthing has to be done.

Many officeholders would be reluctant to be the first ones to defect but might well be convinced to do so if they knew that exactly 50 or 75 or 100 of their fellow members were hypothetically on board with them. Similarly, there are many other people like myself who currently work with the party in one capacity or another who don't want to risk losing our jobs etc. just to be one of the first signers of another fleeting online petition. But if we knew there was a movement of hundreds of thouands or millions of people, including people we work with, committed to exercising their political power we just might do so.

Maybe we could handle the petition and general strike as follows. At first, we could have both public and anonymous signers. Public signers would sign their names, the amount of money and time they typically give to the Democratic party, and their positions, if relevant. Anonymous signers would withhold their names at first, but give some description of their position (if relevant) and their typical funding level.

This would put the Leadership on notice as to exactly what would be at stake in the event that we call a General Strike and withold our votes, money, and time. As the Progressive Contract exceeded some threshold number of signers and perhaps became a cause celebre, more and more of the anonymous signers could decide to go public and reveal themselves. Imagine what Pelosi would think if there were signatures from 100 progressive members of Congress, able to send a message to the Leadership without, at first, risking their positions.

The key to this approach is that it would allow people like me, who have a lot to lose in joining some speculative movement that never gets off the ground, to go ahead and add most of the weight of our support without immediately jeopardizing our livelihoods, reputations etc. Instead, we could see if this movement was actually going anywhere in terms of numbers and influential support before we made a public committment.

I am not trying to reduce this to an elite effort. We would need the support of as much of the Democratic base as can get and regular Progressives everywhere. But in addition to our ultimate policy goals, the idea is to force a change within and among the elites, both in the Congressional Leadership and in the Democratic party as an institution, widely conceived to include all the interest groups and consultants who work with it.

Part of the current problem is that many of the most important strategic and tactical decisions are made by, or heavily influenced by, a tiny, tiny minority of top consultants. There are a lot of people like me who work for those people who could absolutely cripple their operations if all of a sudden in the middle of an election year, we went on strike. There are a lot of oficeholders whose campaigns would be jeopardized as well. And there are a lot of people working in these organizations who are just as frustrated as me and would gladly join in such a collective movement.

If all went well, a movement like this could snowball and get huge quickly as it gained momentum in terms of sheer numbers and recruitment of more and more prominent people. Imagine if all the bloggers got behind it! Imagine presidential candidates being asked if they will support the demands of the Progressive Contract! Imagine Pelosi finding out that she might lose the votes of 50 or 100 members of Congress -- votes on everything unless she refused to fund Iraq, refused to grant telecom immunity, put impeachment back on the table etc.

Whew! After reading that Washington Post article, I'm reallly hot under the collar.

Am I surprised? Not really, but this is upsetting nevertheless. I mean, what can one expect from a politician (Pelosi) who simply purchased her Congressional seat.

You say "purchased"? Yes, that's what I said - purchased from the Phil-John Burton/Willie Brown political machine after Phil's wife, Sala Burton, who had been elected (appointed is a better word) after Phil's death (nepotism?) died herself. But, how did Nancy actually purchase it? With money - her's and her rich friend's, which you silly little Salon reader simply don't have... *tsk*

Shame on Pelosi and the Democrats. They make me sick.

Regarding criticism of Che Pasa and others who express views without offering solutions and honest, nearly hopeless despair like Jkalos, I'd like to offer my support for whatever it may be worth. To dismiss such comments as attempting to be "cooler than thou" misses the point by a considerable distance.

As long as the consensus here at UT and in the country in general tends to be "things may be bad, but a few tweaks will take care of it," the depth of the disease than some of us see will never be addressed. And these attempts to communicate our perception of the severity of the problems continue to be ridiculed and marginalized.

The conversation here today (as it tends to frequently be) leans toward the ideas that a) the problems we perceive are a fairly recent vintage and b) getting the "right" people into power will undoubtedly provide the necessary correction.

Here are my questions:

Do you think that Lord Acton's admonition regarding the corruption that follows power is incorrect? If so, can you supply examples that support that view? If not, do you really believe that 21st century Democrats are going to be the exception to the rule...again, if so, why?

And since Glenn won't take these comments seriously unless they supply a solution, here's mine:

A new Constitutional Convention in which we can take the lessons we've learned in the past 220 years and form them into something that's far less easily misunderstood or ignored.