16 September 2005 - 1:09am
How the Democrats can (theoretically) win an election.
SO the fight in the Lefty Blogosphere rages on. I only find out about it when MG or Echidne, or Shakespeare's Sister write about it because I'll be damned if I'll give Kos a link, let alone go to his little corner of the 'net. I've had all the Republican-lite I can stand for one lifetime.
Democrats always had one thing going for them. It was the party that spoke truth to power. It was the party that said you have to let everyone drink from the same water fountain. It's the party that said girl's soccer is important, too. It's the party that stopped Richard Nixon, and ended the Viet Nam war. We used to have stones. John Kerry lost in 2004 because the machines were fixed, but the race might not have been so close if he hadn't been so proud of not using the "L" word about Bush. He thought that made him honorable - the rest of the country thought it made him a wuss. The country was right.
If somebody lies to your face, and you don't call him a liar, you are a coward. It doesn't matter if you're on the side of the angels - you are a coward and your cause will fail, and deservedly so.
Think about it - why do we love Howard Dean so much? Paul Hackett? Wes Clark? Because every one of them says what he thinks and stands by it. To quote Paul Hackett about calling Bush a ChickenHawk - "I said it, I meant it, I stand by it and I'll say it again - he's a chickenhawk." That, my children, is how you talk to an American. This culture loves Rambo, and Arnold, and Steven Segal and a list of other badasses and the reason is - if you lie to their face, they'll call you a liar. If you punch them, they'll kick your ass. The don't back down, they don't mince words and they do what's right even if it's not popular.
Uncertainty scares people. If you prance around while the other guy is drawing lines, well, the other guy may be an idiot and a fascist but he knows where he stands.
Voting Rights are moral. Protecting young women's lives is moral. Standing up for what's right even if it is not popular is moral. Equal protection and marriage rights for Gays are moral issues. Our morality - a kind, caring, compassionate morality that is consistent with every great philosopher/"savior" in history.
Now we may disagree on the fine points, but we ARE on the side of the angels. We've read the Constitution and understood it. We embrace diversity, we march for civil rights, and we have room for Atheists and Pagans and Christians and Muslims and everybody else who is doing their best to get by and get along. We embrace science because WE Love TRUTH.
We're acting as if the party of greed, graft and a vengeful "God" has something we need to emulate or imitate. Bullshit. We need to stand up, stamp it out, get behind the poor and the sick and the elderly and every neglected minority and good people everywhere because the majority of people fall in to one or more of those categories.
I'm from the Women's Studies set, a war-hating hippy and an LGBT and I've got news for the boys - I AM the Democratic Party - or I should be. If they keep kissing elephant ass, I'll soon be Green, which is the wave of the future anyway if the Dems don't find their spines.
Just stop playing politics and do what you know is right. There is no acceptable alternative. Not for a Progressive.
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"Democrats always had one thing going for them. It was the party that spoke truth to power. It was the party that said you have to let everyone drink from the same water fountain. It's the party that said girl's soccer is important, too. It's the party that stopped Richard Nixon, and ended the Viet Nam war. We used to have stones."
You are very wrong about this. In the South, Democrats were, and to a surprising extent remain, the party of racism, the anti-Lincolns. This is not some quaint anachronism, not when one third of the populiation of this nation resides in the South. It is why a putative Democrat like New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin supported Bush for President in both 2000 and 2004, and Governor Blanco's Republican opponent when she ran for office (that and maybe a good dose of sexism). It is why Democratic candidates in the South often distance themselves from the national Democratic party. It is why winning an election supposedly requires moving to the right. It's one reason Eugene V. Debs said he was embarrased to be a Democrat, and left the party. Someday "Democrat" may mean what you say it does in the South, but not yet. Being "Progressive" absolutely will drive people from the Party, but at what cost do we keep them?
(accidentally posted this to the wrong entry before, sorry about that)
of Southern Democrats and their racist agenda - I live in Kentucky. I'm talking about the Party leadership, the mainstream Democrats that embraced Dr. King and the Labor movement.
Support the Women's Autonomy and Sexual Sovereignty Movements
Morgaine, I agree with almost every thing that you suggest here about the strategy that Democrats need to adopt if they're going to get anywhere, and I agree with you that it draws on the better half of the Democratic Party's tradition. But I'm puzzled by the way that you act as if this better half were the only history that the "mainstream" Democratic Party "leadership" has.
It's certainly true that the Democratic Party leadership eventually came around to a position that sometimes vaguely resembled justice. But that doesn't change the record that the Democrats racked up from their foundation right up to about 1965. When you say (emphasis mine): "Democrats always had one thing going for them" and add "It was the party that said you have to let everyone drink from the same water fountain," it's puzzling; puzzling because as you well know, almost every single politician who led the campaign of "massive resistance" against integration, and for militant white supremacy in the South, was a Democrat at the time (cf. Senator Strom Thurmond, Senator James Eastland, Senator Richard Russell, Governor Orval Faubus, Governor George Wallace, et al., not to mention the long history of Democratic leaders such as President Woodrow Wilson and all the way back to the chieftains of the slave power in the 19th century). Moreover, these men were not minor players in the national Democratic Party or marginalized by other Democrats. They were the Party leadership in their states, jealously guarded their power in national Party committees and the Democratic Caucus in the federal House and Senate, and in return for it were pampered and catered to by many other Democrats (such as Roosevelt or Kennedy) who did not share their beliefs, but just didn't give enough of a damn about Black people to risk their electoral prospects on challenging them. (When Democrats wax nostalgic about the "national party" or the "solid South" that used to win them elections, they are waxing nostalgic about the congealed power of Southern white supremacy.)
When folks like the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party said "No more," and took on the militant segregationists within the Party in 1964, mainstream Democrats like Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey didn't get their back; they were apoplectic and did everything they could to marginalize the campaign. The effort to break the back of the Klan Caucus of the Southern Democrats was won at last by oppressed people who were marginalized, disdained, and ignored by the national party leadership, quite against the will of the "mainstream Democrats."
In a similar vein, I'm also unclear on what the Democratic Party leadership ever did to end the Viet Nam War. I do know that they started it.
If Democrats want to win they have to come out for justice. But when they do so, they will be building something substantially new, not recovering some past glory.
I actually agree with much of your post, but I think your insistance on privileging certain identities over others is no better than some other person saying they're "tired of group X always ruining things."
Sounds like a recipie for permanent minority status to me.
Seems to me that an effective political party in a binary system (such as we've got) must either locate its identity within a demographic which can come close to winning an election more or less on its own (e.g. the GOP and white males), or it must transcend individual identity in favor of an effective federation/coalition with some kind of meta-identity constituted around shared values.
You think everyone should just STFU and let the existing privileged identity classes run things the way they see fit?