Instead, the American Left’s strategy must be to re-create itself wholesale – a project likely to take at least two decades. It will have to eschew the Democratic party in the same way that, back at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, European labor had to eschew the various liberal/whig parties which shared only a part of the Left’s agenda and had no intention of ever delivering on anything else no matter how often Lefties voted Whig. It will have to begin to see the neoliberal pundits of today as political rivals, rather than as outright allies. It will have to mobilize, turn into voters, the 30% or more who are currently able to vote but do not do so. They come overwhelmingly from the poorest segment of society and do not vote purely because they see neither mainstream party as having anything for them. The Left must build its own electorate and its own party, and leave the Democrats to sink or swim as they are able.