The Left Needs To Acknowledge the "Electoral Problem"

 Much of the alleged in-fighting amongst the Left in America deals with the online personalities not liking each other because of (a) the level of attention they place on a particular policy, (b) their approach to getting a policy implemented, or (c) the actual personality of the other person.

That said, there is one issue that the Left must address, whether or not they actually come to an agreement: the role of electoral politics.

At the very least, there are four general camps:

1. The "Take Over One of the Two Major Parties" Camp
2. The "Create Our Own Party" Camp
3. The "Just Focus on the Local" Camp
4. The "All Parties Are Evil" Camp

TAKE OVER ONE OF THE TWO MAJOR PARTIES. The argument is essentially: Creating a viable party from scratch costs too much in terms of time, money and resources in order to enact the policies we want given the limited time frame (because the earth is doomed; forgot to mention that constant) so we need to focus on taking over one of the two major parties, and the GOP is just a bit too far gone, leaving us with the Democratic Party. History and polling are on their side for the most part.

CREATE OUR OWN PARTY. The premise here is: The GOP is too far gone, correct, but all of the remotely sane-yet-corrupt Republicans migrated over to the Democratic Party years ago, and combined with the Democrats who were there but decided to see out to Corporate America, there's no chance of changing that party either so we need a new one. As strange as it may seem, history and polling are on their side as well, but the history isn't recent history (think Whig Party).

JUST FOCUS ON THE LOCAL. At it's core, the idea is: Of course both parties are corrupt; once you go national, you have no choice but to compromise yourself so it best to keep the politics local where more often than not, party affiliation is irrelevant. There's enough anecdotal evidence in local publications regarding local movements and independent politicians to support this idea. 

ALL PARTIES ARE EVIL. In a nutshell: All parties are susceptible to corruption because of the political system we live in and to change that is both so monumental and fundamental we're better off ignoring electoral politics and instead we should focus on any other political tactic.  The Princeton study that revealed a majority of policies voted on by Congress do not reflect the will of the majority of voters can be used to support this outlook. 

Of course there are hybrids, combinations and variants, but other than "Electoral Politics + Other Stuff" this is pretty much it. There are pros and cons to each one. TOOTMP offers a party with an established infrastructure, but good luck getting those in charge to relinquish their power (especially when too many of their voters believe more in tribalism than policy reform). COOP makes a clean break that allows being more policy-focused, but may take longer to formulate than the average change agent wants, and this group will be the enemy of not just one, both both major parties, and the media.  JFOL could create your own hometown utopia, but it limits those who like to travel and could be neutralized on the state or even federal level. APE may give one the most sense of independence, but like JFOL it ignores the reach of the state and federal government.

At this point, "Electoral Politics + Other Stuff" aka "Inside/Outside Game" may be the best way to address the flaws. Overall, there should be people and groups outside of electoral politics who can keep the elected officials in check. If the Left can at least agree to this, that knocks APE off as an option and puts the pressure on JFOL to address the "state and federal interference" rebuttal. 

Sadly, it looks like those in either the TOOTMP and COOP camps may never find common ground. Personally, it seems to be based on how you view the Democratic Party: is it a political organization that has just enough decent people who would embrace Medicare For All, a livable wage, student debt forgiveness and ending the wars if enough key spots were held by enough politically left-minded leaders, or is it too insulated from the inside (donors, super delegates, voting rules) and outside (help from the media, tribal voting base, threat from the opposition party) to truly be reformed?  

Events like "Force the Vote" opened the door to these types of questions. They (and others) will need to be addressed going forward.