One doesn’t have to crawl far on the Web to run into stories or commentaries about whether or not the Occupy movement will help or hurt Obama and the Democrats.  It’s a natural topic to want to discuss, especially at places like Dag, where the relative merits and demerits of Barack Obama and mainstream Democrats will remain heated topics through the election and, win or lose, well beyond it.

So far as Obama goes, I’ve come to the happy conclusion that I would vote for a credible primary challenger from the left, were one to exist, and that I will consider voting third party, so long as I remain in a safe state.  I would also consider voting for a third party here in my solid blue state in exchange for a pledge from an on-the-fence swing state progressive sucking it up and voting for Obama.  I would call this tepid support for the President, but I do believe it is support.

This is already not the first time I’ve expressed this view, and I can’t imagine writing it over and over again through November 2012.  Further, even if I changed my mind entirely and became a harder core Obama style centrist, I can’t imagine I’d have much original to say about my transformation.

These are, ultimately, very old arguments.  They predate Obama.  They were old when I first encountered them during the Clinton years, and were certainly old back in 2000.  Then there are all the old side discussions we can have, like about the character and motives of Ralph Nader, or Moveon, or the Occupy people. Of course, we can debate pragmatism vs. idealism and Utopianism vs. Realism.  We’re kind of always having that debate, and by “we,” I mean both bloggers around these parts and humans generally.

But I do think we’re getting too caught up in the hows of the debate and in the art of the possible.  Look, I get strategic voting.  I get having blue ribbon panels come up with debt solutions and banking regulations.  I get why it’s good to have a list of priorities and communicable (and even reasonable) demands.

But not everything that happens on the left has to happen within the framework of the President, or the Democratic Party.    They can.  But they don’t have to.  The White House exists to run the executive branch of the government.  The Party exists to attempt to bring control of all branches of government to its members.

We humans might have very different needs and desires.  So the Occupy movement may seem to be all over the map, and in a lot of ways it is.  This will make it very difficult for the more “hands on” elements of politics (the president, the congress, the party) to really make use of it.  There will always be part of the agenda that the hands on elements can use, but also many, many things it cannot.  Changing student loan terms might be on the table.  Radical shifts in drug or foreign policy is probably not.  Some will see this as evidence that the Occupy movement should choose a few doable things, concentrate on them and, ultimately, hone its message.

I think that the party and its operatives certainly see it that way, because that’s how they see everything.  Within the mainstream party there is also a tendency to not want to change too much or too many things.

Say what you will about groups like Third Way (and I have) but their polling data tells a remarkably consistent story, which is that people who identify as moderates or independents are not willing to believe that life can get much better than it is right now.  No Third Way report will tell it that way, and I don’t mean to say that people are happy.  It’s that they have generally accepted that to live is to suffer and that this is about as good as it gets.  They are, in a word, Panglossian.

The Party, and I would include Obama here, has reacted to this with a series of proposals that would tinker around the edges.  It might raise tax revenue, for example, but from very few people.  A health care plan that is sold with the line, “but don’t worry, you can keep your present plan,” before anyone knows what the new plan even is.  A three-year end to the Iraq war and a little war in Libya.
 

That changes sometimes happens incrementally, that it almost never goes as planned and that society evolves slowly are also not new concepts.  They are not necessarily often true (sometimes change is delivered in bold strokes) but they are true enough that you can say them without provoking too heated a response.  
But here’s something else to think about: changes never happen when the Panglossian impulse dominates.  

People who exist closer to the extremes of American politics are the anti-Panglossian elements.  They are wild and unpredictable.  They might threaten to replace your safe Mitt Romney with a radical alternative.  They might nominate a witch as a national candidate.  They might vote for Nader in a close election or not show up at all two years after showing great enthusiasm and voting predictably.

Inconvenient though they might be to candidates, party types and people in government, these extremists are necessary.  They are the only people telling us that things are more deeply wrong than the vast middle or the caretakers in government are letting on.