Time for the national Dems to go the way of the once-national Whig Party. Only national politicians can make this start to happen.

I have reached the conclusion that national progressive Dems in Congress need to strongly consider, and then do, what then-progressive Whigs did in the early 1850s, which is to form a new national political party. Just as the then-new Republican Party rose quickly out of the morass of the hopelessly divided Whig Party, this new party will find so much support across the nation, starting in places where the Dems are already toxic. The primary platform should revolve around economic policies of a social democratic form to directly challenge corporate power and the Empire. It will also acknowledge cultural issues, but strongly support "live the way you want to live" on LGBTQ and abortion issues, and promote gun safety regulation more than outright confiscation.

I realize the main difference in the 1850s was the Republican Party was able to unite people outside the enslavement institutional South through one issue, the Scourge of Slavery. However, we face an existential threat of corporate domination and a climate crisis that needs to ensure people can be employed in a New Deal of people-helping jobs and green-oriented infrastructure redevelopment, and not continue to be tied to fossil fuel production.

Structurally, the national Democratic Party resembles nothing more than an equivalent to Communist-front organizations where, once the New Deal liberals left in the wake of the Stalin-Hitler deal of 1939, they became hollow shells. Sadly, the national Democratic Party remains controlled by major corporate donors and major consultant companies which have largely destroyed the Democratic Party's ties to working people and New Deal values.

However, all the activists across labor, environmental, and antiwar movements continue to be unable to create a new political party. What it is going to take is leadership from already known politicians, as with William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Charles Sumner, and even a Lincoln, who was very well known in Illinois, contrary to the usual way we think of Lincoln coming out of nowhere for the 1860 presidential nomination.

I am also confident that states with decent Democratic Party leadership, such as New Mexico, will quickly find their way to a new party, and eventually gain more political power in areas now dominated by right-wing Republicans.

 
It is time. Past time. So, Congressional politicians who supported Bernie Sanders' values and/or Bernie, #DitchtheDems.