The Democratic Party is the lightning rod of discontent. It adapts itself to radical movements more readily than the Republicans. It bends. It is flexible. And one of its main functions is to prevent the formation of a genuine people’s party, a party that would express the interests of the working people, of the oppressed peoples, and of all the sectors of our population interested in peace and fundamental social change.
And so it accepts reform – as much as necessary but as little as possible – in order to calm the people’s anger, co-opt the people’s leaders, and ride out the storm until the crisis has passed. It then gradually curtails those reforms and cuts back programs in the people’s interest. In periods of popular apathy the Democratic Party takes on a very conservative hue and then takes on a pinkish coloration as the masses once more get into motion and begin making radical demands.
The political stance of the Democratic Party is a kind of litmus paper of the strength of the people’s movements. Of course, there are limits beyond which the Democratic Party will not go in the interest of assuaging popular discontent.
It is just the inability of reformists of the Left to understand the function of the Democratic Party within the system of political control, which is the two-party system, that leads it into the impasse of accepting the theory of the “lesser of the two evils” or chasing the will-o-the-wisp of capturing the Democratic Party, thinking that it is, for example, merely a matter of capturing a majority of convention delegates, and failing to appreciate all the impregnable tentacles of control which fasten the Democratic Party to the Establishment.
