By Steve Hynd
The coming midterm elections, we are told by partisan Democrats, are the most important elections EVAH! Despite the many and manifest failings of the Democratic leadership to deliver anything approaching good progressive policy on bank bailouts, job stimulus measures, taxation, income inequality, healthcare reform, energy, two failing occupations and so much else - progressives are being told that they must vote Democrat in the coming elections or else.
Or else, what?
We've been told the same story so many times someone even came up with a graphic for it.
But suppose the Republicans - teapartying crazies and all - do take the House and maybe even the Senate. So what? Dubya couldn't dig a deep enough hole to totally bury America in with two whole terms to do it, so how's two years (with a Dem president) going to be the end of the world?
Two years. It's nothing in the big picture. The people who got equal rights for women or for non-whites didn't think in terms of two years and neither did the working-class activists in Europe who finally got universal health systems for the poor. They thought in terms of decades. And they thought in terms of promoting their own people through the tin times for an eventual win, not of pandering to and voting for rich bastards who were never going to change the system unless they were forced to.
In a democracy, forcing gets done by votes -- or the witholding of them. Labour has never and never will win an election or an issue of public policy by voting for Whigs. The average worth of a Democrat lawmaker in D.C, is measured in the millions and damn few have the experience to relate to the needs of the workers, let alone the wish to do so.
In 2010 the Dems need to take a cold shower. We finally need to break the vicious circle shown above and ignore guilt-trips about the most important election EVAH designed to get us to vote Dem even though they don't deliver. We'll get two years of worse pain than we might otherwise have but the end result will be Dems who are far, far more likely to listen to progressives in 2012 and beyond...and if we're really lucky/work hard, an actual working-class political movement than can send working-class representatives to D.C. instead of fat cats with millions in their banks.
Not going to happen Steve. The Citizens United decision placed the US firmly in the fascist nation crowd. As I write this comment I see an ad below for the Republican candidate who is trying to defeat an incumbent Democratic congressman in my area. Money is free speech and it talks very loudly.
ReplyDeleteRon, we can't just throw up our hands and give up. What Steve is suggesting is a long continuing struggle - but I don't see any alternatives. At the very least Steve's approach will make the progressive vote something that needs to be earned.
ReplyDeleteSteve, this post is incredibly naive.
ReplyDeleteI suggest you read Robert Parry, a guy who knows a thing or two about history.
Most of what is wrong about the Democratic Party is the result of this constant infighting. I'm not saying people should be happy. I'm saying they shouldn't be idiots.
Vote for whichever candidate best represents your interests, even if only marginally. It does make a difference.
No Charles, it's not naive. Even if Parry is correct and the reaction of spineless Dems to progressives holding back their vote will be to tack further Right, how does that prove we should vote for anyone so craven? Read the last sentence of my post again for the alternative. Keir Hardie would never have begun the Labour Movement in the UK if he'd stayed with the Liberals who were only ever going to marginally represent the interests of the poorer, working-class people he became a champion for. There were 60 years between Hardie and Aneurin Bevan's triumph of a true universal healthcare system, but it was worth it. Maybe you should look beyond your own shores for the history you should be reading.
ReplyDeleteRegards, Steve
Every election is touted as "the most important election ever." You know what? All of them are, and none of them are. Every election matters. Really, when it comes down to it, the primaries are probably more important than the general, in some ways, because the primaries could keep the crazies out and give us some viable candidates for the general.
ReplyDeleteAll elections are important. All of them matter. All of them are life and death. Literally.
I think Parry's article makes an even stronger case for Steve's view that there is a need to take a long view and build a progressive movement. Throughout Parry's narrative, the Republicans commit crimes and the Democrats validate them - or in Parry's terms shy away from exposing them. So with Nixon's treasonous agreement with the Vietnamese, with Reagan's arrangement with the Iranians, and though Parry doesn't mention it, the Bush torture regime. The takeaway I got from this history was not the one Parry got. It seems the "left" has always flirted with abandoning the Democrats as their standard bearers and then come back at the first sight of pain. There really has been no concerted effort, at least from Parry's recital of history, to take the long view and focus on building a progressive movement, especially the foundation of such a movement which has to be labor, to provide an alternative. Finally, Parry focuses on the Presidential elections as if they are the only game in town. One can well see a situation where one votes to take the "lesser evil" path on the presidential track and focuses on the alternatives at the local and state levels. Parry rightly points to the Republican's (I would establishment's) use of their domination of the media to hammer the left into submission. The rise of alternative venues, such as this one, provides a unique opportunity to, if not neutralize, at least diminish this advantage. To not make, or at least try to make, use of this opportunity would be folly.
ReplyDelete