In this series I've tried to make the case that the American political system is - and to varying degrees always has been - so heavily tilted in favor of the wealth class that people of average or less than average means are effectively frozen out of it. That for the American left to 'unmarginalize' itself means both thinking and working outside the box - i.e., that remaining within the accepted parameters as defined by the current political establishment is the same as accepting permanent irrelevancy.

The gospel according to people like Moulitsas, Bowers and many other Democratic Party activists states that all it will take for liberals to wrest power away from the reactionary right is for us to become more skillful political players - that is, recruit better candidates, and become better communicators, fund-raisers, organizers, etc. I'm sorry to say that I categorically reject that construct. Their solution only works if you're playing in an honest game, and the fundamental problem is that ours isn't. What I've been trying to do so far in this series is explain why that's so.

First off, I just wanted to say thanks for the positive and encouraging feedback I received from my initial post. For quite some time I have sensed - and the comments seemed to confirm - that there is a growing feeling of unease and frustration among many on the left, a feeling that stems from their perception that the prescriptions endorsed by the leading voices of the liberal mainstream come uncomfortably close to satisfying that classic definition of insanity - i.e., doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Sub-title: Why the US government sucks so badly, and what (I believe) can and should be done about it.

Good day all. Please pardon my presumptuousness in posting a diary - or more precisely, launching an ongoing series of diaries - on only my second day here, but the fact is that I've been participating in various left-wing blogs for a number of years now, so it's not as if I'm a total newbie to all this. Merely a newbie to this particular little corner of cyberspace, which may be meaningful to some, but seems like a fairly marginal distinction to me. And I find myself already feeling quite at home on this blog, and believe that a majority of readers here will be interested in and sympathetic to what I have to say.