We die when we share power. Only the extremists win.
In Austria, the race for President ends up being between a Nazi and a Green party member. In the UK, one liberal party (the Lib-Dems) is reduced to 8 members of parliament (now 9) and the other liberal party is led by Jeremy Corbyn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Jeremy_Corbyn), a friend to Sinn Fein who blames NATO for current events in the Ukraine. In France, Marine Le Pen may be the most popular presidential candidate.
In many countries (such as Spain, the UK, and Germany), the traditional left and right have been in government together — and both are dying as the extremists take power.
The traditional parties have supported free trade for about 60 years (see this history: origins.osu.edu/...). But the free trade consensus is dead.
Free trade deals made some sense when the goal was lowering tariffs. But the new trade deals are more about handouts to special interests. And it doesn't help when governments lie about them (see this article in which, just at the USTR said that the deal would improve environmental and labor rules, Greenpeace leaked documents showing the opposite was true: newrepublic.com/...).
Right now, the Democrats are deciding how much they will help Donald Trump and the Republicans. In our two party system, the GOP appears to have won. But they have acceded to a president who will be the most corrupt in history.
The only question is whether he will be impeached by us or the GOP. Whoever leads the impeachment will win the next decade.
More than anything else, our party needs to be trustworthy, because otherwise, despair wins (see this speech by Ethan Zuckerman: www.ethanzuckerman.com/...).
We know what the Democratic party stands for -- and Democrats get no respect when they surrender. When Democrats negotiate in good faith, the GOP negotiates in bad faith, and the GOP wins. The city government of Charlotte, NC is the latest to learn that lesson: abcnews.go.com/....
We won't win by being Trump-lite. We won't win by hiring conservative lobbyists to run our party machine (storify.com/...). We will lose when Democratic presidents appoint GOP partisans to the FBI or SecDef.
Everybody knows what we stand for. Everybody knows we don't always fight for our values. We gave up on miner's health care (www.huffingtonpost.com/...). Gillibrand is leading the fight against Mattis as SecDef because civilian control of the military is a fundamental tenet of the Constitution (blog.constitutioncenter.org/...) -- we'll see how many Dems support her.
I am not sure that I'll be able to march in NY or DC, but please do. We're marching not to influence the GOP, but to influence our own party.
And to save Democracy, as the light goes out, country by country, across the world.