I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

My how things change. When Will Rogers said those words above nearly ninety years ago the times really were not so different from today. There was an interregnum with the New Deal until the 1970s where, disorganized or not, Democrats at least had a purpose and were able to get elected, write laws, and tried to address problems facing the country. They were so effective that when Republicans like Eisenhower and Nixon were president they operated much the same way to defend the mish-mash hybrid system of public programs and regulated but still largely free enterprize that made the US a great and relatively just society. Regular working people were able to see the fits and tantrums thrown by business for what they were, a simple case of political "delirium tremems" as the historian Arthur Schlesinger called them. And when reforms proved not to destroy capitalism but make it more humane, the wailers who screamed that the sky was falling were ridiculed and dismissed as the crackpots they were.
So what happened? Why is the US back to being ruled by a business oligarchy exclusively and a good deal of the electorate actually believes the wails of that oligarchy's spokespeople? Is it simply the effectiveness of their propaganda? The breakdown of social bonds that used to reinforce common feelings of mutuality and support? Racial and ethnic tensions? The acceleration and increasing complexity of everyday life? Or just the lack of any organized, genuine resistance from an opposition party?
The Democrats, even when in power, for most of my lifetime have been part of the problem. Politics in America have moved on from the divisive social questions of the 1960s, yet that is the extent of issues and contention in our politics. So much energy is poured into simply defending the progress made for civil rights, women's rights, and so on that crucial economic questions just keep getting glossed over. And regular people on the right are continuously fighting the ghost of Lyndon Johnson.
So here we are again in our quaddrenial circus show. At least there is some entertainment on the republican side this year. The primaries are actually kind of interesting now that most states are awarding delegates proportionately. The longer they fight the better. On the Democratic side, the lines seem to be drawn between lukewarm support for President Obama and outright bitter hatred of him.
Bob Cesca wrote a great plea for compromise and tentative unity in the party that kind of evokes Rodgers, though I don't think Cesca can work a lasso as well.
Cesca opens by writing: "There comes a time during just about every general election cycle when a faction of progressive Democratic voters begin to harrumph and gripe about the two party system. Specifically, the following remark jumps back into popular discourse: 'we're choosing between the lesser of two evils.'" Yes, but if we could all just step back for a second and use a little reason. Who dumped who first, and does it really matter? Did Obama use and abuse the hopes of liberal activists to get into office, then toss them under the bus at the first opportunity? Did the activists simply project what they wanted to see on Obama, when he was a spineless capitulator and risk-averse wimp all along? I guess who shot first is not that important and probably would have splintered the elected from the electors in any case. Cesca argues that it is frustration with the two-party system that leads some liberals to kick out the support poles from the "big tent." Historically, he's right. No one was really happy with the scattershot reforms of FDR at the time, nor with LBJ's Great Society. It is only later, when those reforms become conservative tradition do people forget that they opposed the imperfect solutions.
"Whenever the Republicans are in charge, progressives unite to defeat and replace the Republican leadership with Democrats. But when the Democrats are in charge, progressives have a tendency to hypnotically lapse into contrarian, too-hip-for-the-room ambivalence, apathy and an 'everyone is evil' defeatism. Thus, support for Democratic Leader X is weakened -- often with disastrous consequences, the least tragic of which being a reemergence of the previously ousted Republican leadership."
Boy, if that isn't the truth. Circular firing squad comes to mind. Perfect being the enemy of the good. The sense of betrayal is particularly strong this time around, there was a strong feeling that more could have been done. After all, strong progressive moves would have simply been reversing the grosser excesses of eight years of bush [string of expletives deleted]. At this rate America will be stuck in her new gilded age for a long, long time. To say nothing of actually moving forward with progress.
Cesca recalls how Ross Perot's third party bid gave Clinton an electoral victory but not a mandate. It is difficult to say what would have happened in a strictly two way race but Perot, as Cesca advises all political activists, could have had greater influence on the inside. I remember some of the 1992 election, but mostly I remember my Dad lamenting how the Democrats were no longer the party of the working man. It was kind of a shock because he rarely talked about politics. So when 2000 came along and I was finally able to participate, that was my frame of reference and nothing during the Clinton years changed my mind.
Eight years of fraud, sabotage, eye-popping deficits, wars of aggression, corruption beyond measure later and my overarching goal now to never let that happen again. Nader may have wrote about how Democrats do not have a monopoly on progressive votes. To paraphrase, he said he "wasn't stealing votes, they weren't the Democrats' property." It is pretty easy to see how a young man could believe in a magic bullet to fix things overnight. Even if little has changed for the better since then. After all the hubbub of election entertainment, the act of voting is fairly painless. So, regardless of the perceived betrayal, I can do that little thing for the President. It is proportionately the same effort he has made on behalf of all of us. If a gloomy bum like me can make that decision ten months before election day and now have all that time to work on local stuff, can't you?