A theory I've been kicking around: the 50-year-old origins of our angst
50 years ago, more or less, two radical groups had their watershed moments. The right was dealt a crushing defeat in the 1964 election. That defeat happened in the midst of the rise of the New Left -- two years after the Port Huron statement, three years before the Summer of Love.
50 years later, the losers of the mid-60s are winning big, and the winners appear to be losing. Why?
Increasingly, I think it has to do with attitudes about government. Sure, they hate it and we say we like it, but that's not what I mean. I mean instead that the New Left actually disdained government as an institution, and sought change from without; the Old Right, by contrast, sought change through a hostile takeover. While progressives were holding consciousness-raising sessions and teach-ins, Birchers, Baptists, and Buckleyites were willing themselves to whatever power they could find -- school boards, town councils, even home owner associations. While progressives worked to Save the Earth or Coexist, the reactionaries actually did really square things, like attending public meetings and voting.
The Tea Party exerts a greater influence on the GOP that progressives do on the Democratic Party precisely because no aspect of politics is too venal, petty, or insignificant to feed their will to power. Until we're willing to do the same -- and put in the decades of hard work it takes to truly build a movement -- we're going to be stuck watching the game while others play it. And the game is not "being right" or "telling the truth." The game is seizing power -- period.
20 years ago, as a professor in Pennsylvania, I said at a friendly gathering of academic colleagues that each and every one of them could articulate a thoughtful, nuanced position on sustainable energy and/or transgendered rights -- but not one of them could tell you who their representatives in Harrisburg were. They objected vehemently -- then conceded the point. I don't see what's changed.
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...and you're right about people on the right getting themselves elected to local offices, school boards, etc.
I think another factor is that the right is better at couching their harmful policies in appealing (or at least benign) packages. Siphoning social security funds (& giving to to corporations) is all about people "controlling their own money," directing school tax dollars to private schools (vouchers) is all about "giving parents a choice." They've been doing it for years, and they're good at it.
They're also better at reducing complex issues to easily digestible sound bites. The left wants to talk about the details of why their policies would be beneficial for citizens...but that's often not appealing to voters. Add in the right wing echo chamber, and it's tough to combat (there's a reason why there's no left equivalent to RW talk radio). There are more people listening to Rush and watching Fox News than there are reading The Nation. 
The money generated by people like the Koch brothers and rulings like Citizens United just exacerbates the problem.
How do we go about inspiring people (especially young people) on the left to engage in the process to put in the decades of work needed to build a movement?
I opened and read your post because I was like 
Good post!
