Bull Moose in a China Shop

I'm puzzled by the mentality of some, like Dr. Cornel West, who not only advocate for a progressive revolution but for an outright division on the left. They are working to separate progressives from those they consider neoliberals and "corporate Democrats," and form a new political party, a “People's Party,” preferably with Bernie Sanders heading its ticket in 2020. My confusion arises from my understanding of history, both recent and farther back, and my understanding of politics as a former elected official in the minority.

When we look at recent history, I am reminded of the historic electoral coalition that Barack Obama drew together in 2008 and 2012. As a candidate and as an incumbent President, Obama's coalition reached across lines of race, gender, class, region, and ideology. This coalition gave him the Presidency twice, and swept Democrats into control of the House and Senate for the first two years of his tenure. In response, the far-right astroturf organizing of the Tea Party swept the Republicans back into power in Congress in 2010, where they remain in power thanks to successful gerrymandering and their ability to consistently unite under a common banner.

Dr. West's assertion is that because the Democratic Party's leadership are beholden to Wall Street, lack "vision" and "gusto," and do not align with progressive stances on every single issue, from Israel to healthcare to fighting terrorism, they should be abandoned. West – who supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016 – says the Democrats lost 2016 more than the Republicans won it. He believes that Senator Sanders' popularity, currently highest in the nation among politicians, would be a great boon to a new progressive party. It would spell the end of the corporate-run Democrats and usher in a new era where populist progressivism would truly have a voice in government.

In other words, when Barack Obama formed a coalition with progressive values that won by 10 million votes in '08 and 5 million in '12, no new party was necessary. But when Bernie Sanders formed a narrower coalition that lost by 977 delegates and just over 3.7 million votes in the '16 Democratic primary, apparently it's time for a new party.

If there's anything I know about Bernie Sanders, though, it's that he is not about personality politics. That is what he constantly asserts. Sanders believes our politics should be a contest of ideas and not a contest of personalities, and I agree completely. Unfortunately, he seems to have failed in effectively practicing what he preaches, because his supporters seem to have only him in mind for leading the progressive movement. He damages the Democratic brand by remaining independent while touring the nation with its leadership. His ideas have merit, but he does not seem willing to entrust them to the party for whose nomination he ran in 2016. There's a disconnect there, and it's frustrating to someone like me, who not only likes Sanders, but is a Democrat exactly because of the same reasons I have for liking him.

Advocates of forming a new third party under Sanders point to the formation of the Republican party over the issue of abolitionism in the mid-1800s. Their contention is that when the issue becomes strong enough and divisive enough to merit a truly powerful third party, history shows not only can that party be successful, but it can last. The Whigs did, after all, fracture over the issue of slavery, and in time the Republicans became a dominant force in national politics, while the Whigs disappeared altogether. But what people overlook in this comparison is that the election of our first Republican president precipitated a civil war that took the lives of over a million Americans. Indeed, the issue was divisive enough. Do the causes of single-payer healthcare and Wall Street reform carry the same weight?

A more appropriate comparison may be the candidacy of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. After almost two complete terms in 1908, Roosevelt entrusted the Republican party's future to his successor, William Taft, and left politics to tour the world. When he became dissatisfied with Taft's conservatism, he unsuccessfully tried to wrest his party's nomination from the incumbent in the next election. Failing that, Roosevelt and his supporters founded a third party – coincidentally called the Progressive Party, also known as the “Bull Moose” party. A great deal of the positions advocated by the Bull Moose Party seem eerily familiar: the reining in of spending on political campaigns, increased transparency of lobbying and government operations, a National Health Service, a minimum wage, voting rights for women, and government oversight of Wall Street. They also pressed for populist electoral reforms like the direct election of Senators, recall elections, referendums and citizen initiatives, and – funnily enough – primary elections for party nominations.

Roosevelt was an immensely popular former President who put together a serious campaign in 1912, creating a three-way race with Taft and Democrat Woodrow Wilson. The result, however, was disaster for the Progressives and Republicans. Wilson won the election in a landslide and the Democrats took the House and the Senate. Conservative leadership dominated the Republican Party after 1912, and they didn't win back control of Congress for 6 years. Roosevelt himself disavowed the Progressive Party in 1916, effectively destroying what he'd created after numerous internal factions formed and it failed to gain any important amount of representation nationwide. The next Republican president was Warren Harding in 1920. The vast majority of the Progressive Party's platform was not enacted until over twenty years after the 1912 election – and under a Democratic president. Social Security, the Securities & Exchange Commission, the 40-hour work week, and the national minimum wage all were part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

The Bull Moose experience and the Tea Party phenomenon should teach progressives important lessons for today's era. By separating from a major political party and relying on the popularity of one particular politician, progressives set themselves back by twenty years and allowed their ideas to be co-opted by the opposition. It's worth noting, too, that it took the ravages of the Great Depression to bring progressivism to the forefront of American political thought. Perhaps if the Republicans had enacted progressive policies under earlier administrations, the protections against Wall Street's excesses may have forestalled that catastrophe. We will never know. Meanwhile, the Tea Party has become a force in modern Republican politics, allowing a vocal and passionate group of allegedly grassroots activists to not only be recognized by their party's leadership, but to effectively block their own party's initiatives when they disagree, as with the first Trumpcare vote.

The Democrats have always been a “big tent” party. In the past we united Northern civil rights liberals with Southern working men and women. More recently we brought together West Coast progressives with Midwestern pragmatists and Eastern elites. History teaches us that political orthodoxy within a party's ranks can either be expressed internally or externally imposed. Internal activism yields influential results while external factionalism sends both parties to the political wilderness for decades, perhaps to the detriment of the nation as a whole. We Democrats have too much in common to injure ourselves by standing apart, and we've come too far to give Trumpism a chance to usurp our core beliefs with its “drain the swamp” mantra – attractive as a slogan, if absent in practice.

Politics is the art of dissatisfaction. You can walk away from the negotiating table not entirely satisfied but winning on some key points, or you can be denied a seat at the table at all. I believe people like Senator Sanders and Dr. West should not work to further the isolation of the progressive movement by distancing themselves from millions of potential allies in the Democratic Party. They should instead join the party, bring in their friends and supporters, and use it for the exact reason political parties exist: to give like-minded candidates the support they need to get elected. Personal popularity alone will not bring the progressive movement any long-term success.