A PRIMARY CHALLENGE TO OBAMA

What is an angry, demoralized, and disappointed citizen to do? Betrayed by Barack Obama and ignored by the dominant wing of the congressional Democrats, that citizen has few choices short of emigration or utter surrender to a system that no longer responds to that citizen's desire for an end to America's wars, an end to the political right's assault upon the living standards of the lower 90 percent, and a restoration of democratic practices and institutions undone by 35 years of collaboration of two political parties that are two faces of one oligarchy.


The Democratic Party will not permit a primary challenge to Barack Obama. Its leaders believe that in 2012 as in presidential elections from 1980 the 2008 the voters of the center-to-left will vote for the Democrat because to do otherwise will bring into power the truly frightening Republican. That rancid appeal to our baser natures worked in 1992, 1996, and 2008. Instead of voting for what they wanted, these earnest, ever-hopeful souls voted against the existential horror. Now we see just what 30 years of compromise with conscience brings.


I am told that social media made a difference in the routing of the old regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Adroit users of Facebook and Twitter mobilized and rallied, informed their fellows and confounded their enemies, with tweets and postings that put people in the right place at the right time with clarity of analysis and firmness of purpose as their guide.


Why can't that happen in 2012? Why can't we - the citizens no longer befuddled by empty promises of change and vacuous autobiographies and meaningless slogans - why can't we use those same social media to challenge Barack Obama in the presidential primaries in which, otherwise, our voting would be pointless?


I propose an online process in which plausible candidates are proposed by any or all who wish to take part, in which the case for or against each is made with the civility and passion and thoughtfulness that the gravity of the task merits, leading at last to a winnowing of that crop to a deserving few who would, under favorable circumstances be superior to the party-anointed incumbent in fundamental fidelity to the values and principles for which the shorthand term is Progressive. I propose that we then agree that, as voters in our various Democratic primaries in 2012, we write in the name of one of our few paladins. An honest count of the votes would have a salutary effect on candidate Obama. It would show him and his handlers that a price must be paid for four years of betrayal - wars without end, groveling before wealth, spinelessness in defending the social gains of the 20th century, and collaboration with the enemy in destroying our civil liberties.


I'll have more to say about this as time passes. I hope that this appeal and others like it attract friends and followers. With or without them I shall not be voting for Obama in a primary. With enough friends of like mind and what it takes to be steady to the end Obama can lose a primary here or there. It could be the beginning of the end for a dark period in our country's history.


My candidate? Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Who's yours?