( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Unless you’ve already voted, you have a decision that must be made by no later than November 2, 2010. Will you choose to exercise your right to vote?
Unless this writer has misjudged the mood of the Docudharma community, there seems to be a prevailing sentiment that the Democrats need to be taught a lesson. If enough of their supporters from 2006 and 2008 stay at home this time, perhaps they will learn a lesson. But the question must be asked, “What will that lesson be?”
Will the Democrats, soon to become a severely chastened minority party, move to the left to recapture the hearts and minds of those who have voluntarily surrendered their right to vote? Will they regard this portion of their electorate as fickle and unreliable, choosing to move further to the right, even further marginalizing the progressives, compensating for their losses by attempting to secure the support of those occupying that elusive “center” of the political continuum? The clear shift to the right under the influence of the deceptively named Tea Party by the Republicans has created a gaping vaccuum in the so-called “center.”
Will the Democrats perceive the stay-at-home progressives as an important constituency to be recaptured at all costs, or simply write them off as not worth the trouble? Even though abortions are still performed in this country, gay marriage is now legal in several states, we haven’t yet adopted a state religion, and a few civil rights still remain, the Republicans can rest easy knowing that the Right to Life movement, the Christian Right, the NRA and the libertarians will show up without fail. And they can still take this for granted even though much that was on these respective factions’ wish lists were not enacted, even with clear Republican majorities from January, 2003 through January, 2007.
The last two years have been terribly disappointing for those who expected so much more. Short of adopting the risky strategy of blowing up the filibuster in the Senate (after all, the Republicans could well have majorities in both houses and win the White House again in 2012), overcoming a filibuster required persuading likes of Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh and their like to all jump on the bandwagon. Even one defection could sink an issue.
Robert Parry over at Consortium News ignited a firestorm by advancing a provocative argument that this writer has not seen on any other progressive websites. Are his views unique, or is he simply the only writer who has the courage to stake out a contrary and what has turned out to be a highly inflammatory position?
Parry’s October 15, 2010 article is entitled, “The Teach-the-Dems-a-Lesson Myth.”
Here are the three opening paragraphs of the article…
The thinking seems to be that the loss of the congressional majorities will punish the Democrats for accepting half-measures and compromises on issues from health care and financial reform to job stimulus and war. The Left’s hope apparently is that the chastened Democrats will then shift toward more progressive positions and be more assertive.
However, modern American political history tells us that this strategy never works. After the four key elections in which many progressives abandoned the governing Democrats – in 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 – not only did Republicans take U.S. politics further to the right, but the surviving Democrats tacked more to the center and grew more timid.
All four elections also were marred by GOP dirty tricks that drew little or no reaction from either the governing Democrats or the progressives, emboldening the slash-and-burn Republicans to operate in an ever more audacious style.
The section describing the 1968 election opens as follows…
Take, for instance, the pivotal election of 1968. The Left was furious with Democratic President Lyndon Johnson for the Vietnam War and with the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, for the bloody Chicago convention.
Many on the Left refused to support Humphrey, even though they knew that would help the election chances of the divisive and disreputable Richard Nixon. Some anti-war activists voted for minor third-party candidates while others simply sat out Election Day, allowing Nixon to win one of the closest elections in U.S. history by less than one percentage point.
And about Jimmy Carter’s bid for re-election in 1980…
However, whenever the Democrats were in power and had the potential to accomplish something meaningful, the split always reopened. The governing pragmatists sought incremental change in an often difficult political/media environment, while the idealists demanded sweeping reforms regardless of public resistance.
The division opened up during Jimmy Carter’s presidency when the Left viewed Carter as too centrist and too cautious, prompting a primary challenge from liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy in 1980. Kennedy’s bid fell short but left behind deep antagonisms between the two wings of the Democratic Party.
Many progressives turned a deaf ear to Carter’s warnings about what Ronald Reagan’s election would do to the country. Some backed independent John Anderson or other minor candidates, and some simply didn’t vote.
The first two years of the Clinton administration begin with the following…
As Bill Clinton became the first Democratic president in a dozen years, the governing Democrats had high hopes that they could make progress on some difficult issues that had been ignored under Republican rule, including health care and environmental initiatives. The Democrats also moved to get the nation’s deficit under control, approving a modest rise in income tax rates.
Yet, for all the Clinton administration’s hopes for bipartisanship, the Democrats instead encountered near unanimous Republican opposition to every major initiative. Not a single GOP vote was cast in favor of Clinton’s budget in either the House or the Senate.
Instead, the Republicans relied on their expanding right-wing media, which had added powerful AM radio programming to an influential roster of newspapers, magazines and book publishing houses. Voices on the Right like Rush Limbaugh made every day a fiesta of Clinton bashing.
The following describes the leadup to what some have described as an election in 2000…
This widely held viewpoint fed into the notion on the Left that Bush would not be much different from Gore and that Election 2000, therefore, represented a good opportunity to “teach the Democrats a lesson” by showing them that they couldn’t “take the Left for granted.”
So, many progressives decided that they would back Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. To rally more support on the Left, Nader’s campaign touted what may be one of the biggest – and most dangerous – lies ever told in American politics, that “there’s not a dime worth of difference” between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Nader succeeded not only in siphoning off votes from Gore but his attacks on the Vice President – often echoing similar attack lines from the Republicans – frustrated the Gore campaign’s efforts to gain momentum.
About the 2010 election…
While many on the Left grumbled about Obama’s centrist approach, the Right sold millions of Americans on an entirely different narrative, that Obama was a closet socialist who was taking over the economy and wasting tax dollars on useless jobs programs.
Again, the Right’s media dominance, contrasted with the Left’s media weakness, has played a key role in convincing a large segment of the population that whatever slur is directed at Obama and the Democrats is true.
This media dynamic, combined with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling permitting unlimited corporate spending on political ads, has thrown the Democrats profoundly on the defensive, with many of them running away from their votes on health care and stimulus spending.
To compound this crisis facing the Democrats, many on the American Left have chosen this moment to repeat the experiences of 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 – determined to “teach the Democrats a lesson” by sitting out the election or voting for third parties.
And the following appears near the conclusion of the article…
Instead of the Left’s goal of pulling the governing Democrats and the American public to the left, the undeniable direction of U.S. politics (and media) has been to the right.
After 42 years, the Republicans are far more right-wing than Richard Nixon (and arguably even crazier), and most governing Democrats are far more centrist than the likes of Tip O’Neill, Lyndon Johnson and the old Democratic lions of that earlier era.
This writer does not intend to ignite a heated argument on this site. Some of us are well aware of how destructive the flame wars that infect other sites can be. That said, it may be well worth our time to consider Parry’s arguments.
If his premise that the strategy of Dems voters staying at home in 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 was counterproductive, then do we have good reason to believe that “this time will be different”?
Perhaps the Dems will lose horribly on November 2nd and take a sharp turn to the left. If so, will it be “too little, too late”? Or will they drift even further to the right, distancing themselves even further from the most passionate and perhaps temperamental segment of their constituency?
Sadly, it appears likely that we will soon have the opportunity to determine for ourselves if history will indeed repeat itself.
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Author
Robert Parry acknowledges that he stirred up a hornet’s nest with this article. His response to the deluge of hate mail that jammed his e-mailbox can be found here.
Considering the viewpoints of those who are on the same page may be comforting and does have its place, but perhaps we can benefit by considering the opinions of those who advance a competing narrative.
I would encourage those choosing to comment to read Parry’s article and carefully weigh his arguments before jumping into the fray.
This writer currently has internet access only via the generosity of friends since his computer is currently awaiting a diagnosis at the shop and will not have access again until perhaps late tonight or tomorrow.
My hope is that the discussion can be constructive and not divide our community.
could vote to try bipartisanship with the left and the independents and the liberals who tipped the balance in their favor in 2008, and give up the batshit crazy bipartisanship with batshit crazy republicans that they’ve been practicing for so long.
It might even earn them some respect, along with some votes.
After all, all those red-neck, sexist, gun-toting, racist war-mongering fascists that Obama and the Dems have been bending over backwards to bipartisan with while giving the finger to the people who elected Obama are going to vote.
What will Obama and the democrats vote to do?
we figured our a way to get done what we need to get done ourselves with things like Makerspaces and the use of social networks to organize people according to what help they want to give towards such ends.
If the politicians want to embarrass themselves by telling us that they’re the ones that will get us what we need after failing more times than I can count I say let them. Fill the halls with Tea Party candidates for all I care.
Positions of authority only work when people listen to you :-/
If we vote Democratic then we will get right wing governance for and by the corps and the out of control military and if we don’t we will get governance for and by the out of control corps and military? That no choice unless you are delusional and believe the doublespeak that comes out of the Democratic pols, that says Peace is ignorance and Ignorance is Strength. As for your historic examples blaming the hippies for Nixon when the Democratic political machine ran a weenie liberal, appeaser at a time when the country wanted leadership that would stop the illegal war and blaming the ‘idealist’s’ for Carter’s wimping out denies the facts and blames the victims, we the people.
This is so illogical and unpragmatic that it makes me not want to vote because it shows me that weenie liberals and Vichy Democratic pols are never going to do a damn thing to stop the train wreck our democracy and the world faces. It’s extortion, and the kicker is that even if you pay up with your vote you will not get one iota of change or actual representation. The owners of the place will just keep moving on with their destruction of our laws our rights and our economy.
As for the lame excuses that the Democrat’s can’t do anything like the absurdity of hiding their corporatist agenda and legislation under a procedural rule that they could have and should have changed at all believable. Sometimes you have to be willing to blow something up as dry powder is useless. All their excuses including the political fiction that were a center right nation are absurd.
We voted a vast majority of us for change and for some end to this shit and instead we get the same shit tarted up as reform, landmark legislation and the law and reality. Fear of the right is a distraction which only aids and abets the destruction of our democratic electoral system.
In light of what is going down right now this week with the wikileaks war logs , DADT, defending war criminals, using our justice department to turn crimes both domestic and international legal by interpreting our laws to fit the new normal how do you expect this to influence anybody with a brain in their head. I will vote but not for Democrat’s if they are part of the problem as Wyden my senator is. I’ll vote for a green or the candidate that gives me some truth. History and politics are not static, tyrannies are not inevitable and nothing is too big to fail or fall.
I will do nothing to prop up this sick mockery of democracy by voting for anyone because they are Democratic. My country right or wrong, my party right or wrong doesn’t get us anything but more of the same evil were fighting now and it comes from both sides. I have more against the corrupt lying pols and their owners then I do against anybodies redneck gun toting brother in law. The fierce urgency of now is acute and by-partisan. It does nothing to vote democratic unless you are content to believe the delusional narrative that say’s this is better then. I don’t believe that, only those who cower in fear do. They only lesson to be learned here is a pol is a pol and it’s irrelevant who you vote for as these pols have been sold to the new ‘people’ formerly known as corporations and their sadistic henchmen the killers and torturers formerly know as Blackwater and the CIA who’s always been known as the spooks.
The Democrat’s took anything I could vote for off the table, along with the rule of law.
… btw I tipped this because it takes a lot of nerve to be willing to risk this discussion or to deconstruct various candidate backings, at this point.
It is my premise that the election is unfortunately going to be a referendum on Obama and Pelosi, the two named targets of the Republicans, and not so much about the individual candidates.
2. After studying the polling, the Dems most deserving of losing are going to, in some cases, retain their seats. Meanwhile the ****ing b*stards at the DNC/OFA are supporting the worst of the lot- the bendy straws, the bendovers, the dixierepubocrats, the blew dawgs, the ones most likely to sacrifice any principles and just vote the party line as dictated by the Beltway and Wall Street, and the right wing Vichy Dems who were being used in the Village Rotation of excuses as to why the Dem majority Senate had to have 60 votes to overcome the threat of a fillibuster.
When President Reluctant decided to support Plantation Blanche ‘There Will Be No Public Option’ Lincoln in the Arkansas Dem primary, he showed what sort of principles he had.
So, it was obvious to me and a lot of others, he took office preparing for that Republican flip over in the 2nd term he’s likely going to get. Because Plantation Blanche is gonna lose to the Republican in November. As the saying goes why vote for the imitation, when you can have the real thing.
His problem now. Not mine.
Instead of going over the long list of administration fvck ups and broken promises, as easy as that is, wars, taxes, oil spill, banks, unemployment, foreclosures, DADT etc, let me point out that the current DNC/OFA is getting exactly what they want.
Which might be the argument to be made to re elect some of the Democrats, as to further stymie the current administration.
Notice how Parry does not list the accomplishments of this administration in attempting to make his case. He says the Tea Party is out to get us. I know that. But he neglects that the Third Way triangulators in the Democratic Party are worse because they are also for domestic spending cuts and gutting Social Security and Medicare. The Third Way types are pointing at the Tea Party and going Oh Big Scary. Not as Big Scary as the President’s Deficit Commission.
Parry:
“these progressives” ?
This is just bullshitting on Parry’s part, but what do you expect from somebody who wrote for the AP. There were not “progressives” in any of those time frames. I can’t find a real biography to check Parry’s age, but he’s been around for awhile and has to be at least as old as I am, so this was not a slip that could be made by a younger person – this was just more gratuitous hippy punching, as I can remember 1968, 1980, 1994, and the year 2000. These are years where the Dems were asking why are people voting for the extremists, (or worse, my G*d, 1968 ? the year they shot Bobby Kennedy and MLK ? ) and at the same time the media is smacking them around as irrelevant.
“Progressive” was a term coined after 2004 to get around the fact that liberals let themselves be called names by Republicans, and they thought they’d run some candidates with military experience and re – brand.
Parry and the rest of the Official News Dispensing Media got behind the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2008, because GW Bush embarrassed them so much, and they are so sorry they cannot somehow insult and con the Democratic base to keep voting for the same people who tell us on a daily basis they just cannot do anything unless the Republican Party lets them. Parry is part of that right wing media he says is dominating the airwaves.
He also cites the Supreme Court. Obama has made 2 SC nominees, one is not going to make any waves and the other one spends half the time recusing herself, plus she and the admin. have never admitted she’s related to the PNAC founders and is most likely very conservative based on her total lack of writing history- what is she hiding – it would have been easy to deny it instead of this deathly silence.
Nobody can intimidate you unless you let them-
Again, exactly who made the decision to cut secret deals with the pharma and insurer industries and screw up the health care bill, not a small screw up, but a massive one ? It was not the liberal or moderate base. They let themselves get punked on this and now they discover the DNC/OFA will try to slit their throats on this topic if they stray from the official line – which is they aren’t going to do anything else but sit there and watch the Repubs revoke at least part of it.
This is a self created problem.
The Democratics in DC can barely control their disdain every time they think of one of us in the hard core base (defined as we remembered what the platform was and we expected them to at least try not to mock us for expecting anything, and we still have internet access ) who dares to say, just what the hell are you doing ?, and could you please just stop screwing it all up further, until we get a few of the less pukey Democrats re elected.
I know the government is going to go more right wing but like I said, there are very big forces here that have been working hard to marginalize the other point of view. Multiply me by thousands…. this is what happens. And of course the b*stards will lay it out they lost because of us and not them. It’s what they do.
Maybe he can write another book about it.
Because the Republicans can and will be worse. There is no question on this, and that’s a cost I really can’t continue to bear.
So, does that leave us fucked over, trapped, having to just always take the less shitty deal?
Maybe, but I don’t think it has to.
Citizens United has changed the game. Truth is, we get the shaft because it costs less to screw us than it does the corporations, and so that happens.
I think the fix is to change how we do civics. Instead of a massive push leading up to the election, we change up, start a PAC for every ass there is, and start building support. Politically active people can set small, recurring donations to that PAC, which then does the following things:
1. Find and begin to groom a worthy challenger.
2. Act as watchdog for the coin operated ass in Congress.
3. When there is a bad vote, run ADs informing the people of that bad vote, how it just fucked them over, what that might cost them, and who the challenger is, and how they can help get change done.
This is done every time, without fail. They screw the people, and they go home on Saturday to watch their challenger calling the play by play, right then and there, keeping score, asking for dollars.
4. When there is a good vote, have the challenger also affirm that, asking for dollars to insure that more of the same happens.
Done right, some serious awareness can occur for that challenger in the target district, and beating that down is going to cost the asshole legislator some serious time and dollars, and it happens the day after they take office, and it keeps happening, until we see real change, or the challenger takes the seat!
5. Organize citizen activism efforts. This includes letters to the editor, exposure of corporate politics, with company names where possible, fund raising, advocacy, and GOTV / Movement building in target areas.
6. Works with other PACs of the same kind to build a brand. Personally, I would make it the Progressive brand, and the core idea is that that brand represents ordinary people, funded by ordinary people, fighting for real leadership, with the rest of Washington coin operated…
I think something like this, done on a national scale, targeting say the worst 50 Congresspeople, both Dem and Republican, would do a lot of damage. I also think it could be funded by recurring donations. Say somebody has 20 or 30 bucks. They send it to the PAC, or perhaps a umbrella PAC, who distributes it to the target ones, or they can pick and choose directly, regularly contributing small amounts.
The key here is to build a consistent, but not overly burdensome stream of money that can be used to inflict a real, material cost for screwing the people, and which can be used to build awareness for challengers, and the Progressive brand, as by the people, for the people politics, up front, in your face, real, every month…
We need a new game. The game we are playing is old news, futile, and is costing us a lot.
So, I’ll do the ticket, because I’m trapped, and I hurt, but I will also start advocacy for some effort like this, where we can keep the civics engaged enough to matter.
I recced you because you made a good case for your POV. First of all I think you are right about the historical references, more or less. And if you made this argument in any of those times I would have agreed with you. But I cannot now.
This is a radically different time than say, the Carter administration. At that time the right had just begun to recover with the dramatic growth of right-wing think-tanks, the decline of the old Establishment that was based on some kind of minimum noblesse oblige and the rise of the predatory finance oligarchs. At the same time within the military and intel services plans were emerging to unify their approach and to re-establish their influence on the press which bore fruit gradually such that the press was willing to accept sheer fabrications on the part of the security officials as legit–this process started during Bush’s year heading up the CIA–of which, I think the evidence shows, he had been a part of since the ’50s.
What I’m trying to say is that, for major issues, at this point in history the game is over. The oligarchs led by the FIRE and MIC sectors are firmly in place with a highly adaptable structure based on emergent network properties that has built up since the end of WWII. It was possible to have influence in this and bring some reform–i.e., less possible with each passing year until 2001. The 9/11 events changed everything. Every repressive measure saved up in various secret and semi-secret operation came rapidly into play such that right now we are no longer a Constitutional republic, in my view. The ability to create a permanent state of war and the abolition of Habeas Corpus as well as the utter repudiation of international law by solid majorities of both political parties indicated to me that we are living in a different era.
I suggest to you that it makes no difference who you vote for in terms of large-scale issues like war, empire, business regulation, criminal justice, law and so on. It will make a difference in cultural and symbolic areas. The Dems will give a few dollars to the green sector and the Republicans will throw those dollars somewhere else like jobs for their brother-in-law, cousins etc. but either way the differences are small compared to the problems we face.
I still think we maybe ought to vote as a part of our symbolic civic duty but think we ought to vote for one of the non-official parties if your Dem candidate is just a hack or something like it. Also, I think it is nearly as good just not to vote, I don’t think the Dem Party will move to the left on that basis because I think the Dem Party is hopelessly compromised and a deeply corrupt entity that can’t and won’t change substantially no matter what the situaion is. Everybody has their interest, their little racket, their nice network of connections and income–nothing can or will change there particularly now where money is the only speech that counts. I thin it is game-over, frankly and that other means to achieve political power must be pursued by the left to get some influence in the direction of national and international policies.
I try to vote every time for the lesser evil who has the best chance of winning.
If everybody on the left did that every time, at some point (not in the near future), maybe my grandchildren would benefit.
I harbor no illusions that the lesser of two evils will vote in a way I would like, but maybe he/she will vote in a manner I dislike much less.
In our democracy, the only thing that protects the minority is the constitution. With right wing judges, they don’t protect the minority on the left very often. But sometimes even middle of the road democrats can be influential in getting a fairly liberal judge appointed who will protect the rights of the left minority.
But it just is not reasonable for me to expect to elect people with my views when my views are so vastly dissimilar to most of the population. The best I can hope for is to have is an elected official whose views are not totally opposite of mine.
Even if Democrats do it. Whether or not Democrats do it.
And if what the population talks about, and Republicans and Democrats alike egg on, is more misery, how then is it the fault of the Left?
We have a 3 way race in the Colorado governorship campaign, because it’s split between two right wingers and a do-nothing centrist, the centrist will win.
And all Hickenlooper, the presumptive victor whether or not the “far left” votes for him can talk about all day long is balancing the budget.
This will create more homelessness, more misery, and more shock to the economy whatever people who are dissatisfied with him on the left think or do.
If a Democrat is good, I vote for him/her. If he/she stinks, I don’t vote for him/her. I’ve always voted like this. I always skip around on my ballot.
As far as lesser of two evils is concerned, that’s been the problem of the country since its founding. It quickly coalesced into factions jockeying for control. Who can kill indigenous people and foreigners the best? Who can lie and sell the people out faster? We didn’t get where we are today-with a shitty tomorrow for our kids- if it weren’t for the factions and parties to begin with.
It’s an arbitrary system based upon getting your hands on the levers of government with your sponsors. What’s better? Let’s ask all the faceless victims of the tyranny of the modern nation state? Let’s go from there. Let’s check out other models, but not the Egyptian, Roman, Vatican version, sprinkled with the lastest English twist.
There is no Authentic American version. No Dream, I’m sorry to report.
I’ll vote for Thoreau, Whitman, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Upton Sinclair any time. Plus, I keep what I do private, unless of course I’m photographed with a tree or
actively merging with the currents of authentic change.
but I’m not staying home. I’m voting Green — where I can, anyway. There are a handful of Democrats who deserve my vote and they’ll be getting it. In the other races where I don’t have a Green or a deserving Dem to vote for, I’ll be voting for myself. If your Democrats want my vote and those of others like me, they’ll have to get them the old-fashioned way, by offering a compelling alternative. And if you want to know why so many choose to stay home, it’s because many think that having to pick between the slow road to disaster and the expressway to disaster really isn’t all that much of a choice. I can’t say I blame them for feeling that way, because folks like you lead them to believe that those two shitty choices are the only ones they have.
It always has, it always will. When the Dems a finger to try a war criminal for war crimes, a torturer for torture (and I’m not talking a Lynndie England here), then I’ll believe they have something other than war crimes and torture in their souls too.
http://www.politico.com/static…
Parry’s position is profoundly anti-left.
Yeah, we got good reason. I believe that this country (and this empire) is in as deep a crisis as it has ever been in, and I include 1860 in that. Throw in 1776 if you want.
Other radical efforts in the past could be headed off through the benefits of empire, as Roosevelt did with the CP through the New Deal. Or, with Clinton, the falsely promised benefits of empire. I don’t think the system has that in it now. Overt repression is becoming an increasingly enticing option in ruling circles, as Obama’s civil liberties approach demonstrates.
And the radical alternative is becoming the only alternative. The center is fast collapsing, and we on the left had better develop some passionate intensity of our own. You see Dump Obama as an impotent burst of anger. But I feel such anger, even rage, is quite appropriate to our times.
Hence my commitment to the Dump Obama movement.
We had better learn how to wield it.
… someone who believes in a European style system which regulates the economy so that it supplies citizens with basic needs and assures the society as a whole security from the most predatory forms of capitalism. It is not, as Americans believe, socialism since it allows private ownership of property and business. Civil rights are very important under social democratic regimes.
As for my economic situation let’s just say I’m unemployed and my circumstances are fairly dire.
Democrats won’t do the things that are good for us. Rock and a hard place.
voting is much more important than it’s cracked up to be, whether you do it or not. The real influence doesn’t come from the politicians, but those who control the politicians. During periods like the early 1900s, the 1930s, the 1960s, and the 1970s, huge portions of the country rallied around radical change in our country and we got some real populist and progressive reforms. That is what we lack now – not anything related to voting.
The conservatives and the corporatists have been outorganizing us (although they, without a doubt, have an advantage in that they’ve got money on their side, but that’s no excuse for us). That’s our problem, IMHO, plain and simple.