There's been a lot of enmity on this board over the primary season. There's Dean folks, Clark folks, Kerry folks, and some portion of each of them go after the others with a fair amount of vitriol. There's pragmatist folks and ideal folks and we go at each other pretty good too.
Then I'm reading this over on american street:
We had a shot at populists and liberals like Kucinich, Edwards, and Dean, and we ended up with a guy more heavily enmeshed with special interests than anyone else in the US Senate.
I'm worried.
Not about Kerry--despite those special interests, he's still got one of the most liberal voting records in the US. He's clearly amenable to following the people; after a yawner of a campaign, he adopted Dean's strategy and took off like a shot. What really worries me is that all the Deaniacs, Kucitizens, and Edwardsians (did they come up with anything catchy?) who came into the electoral process for the first time will now be disillusioned. Or that the old unyielding left will throw eggs at the process because they feel the Democrats have sold out.
And then I read this on
Steve Gilliard:
As another pal of mine put it, Dean will be the "New Ralph Nader" for the Dems, and may divide folks just enough to loose another election by a hair for us. He may be right. One thing that the Repugnicans have done well for years is to get their shock troops back in line after a nomination, and pull a common vote together. Dems are viewed, perhaps correctly, as whiny pains in the ass who will pout in the corner if "their" superspecial group isn't represented or heard, even if it means stopping the game, and taking their ball and going home.
And I keep reading posts here from folks who will vote for Dean and no one else. Back on american street, most of the folks commenting on this requiem for Clark's campaign are taking the pragmatic route, but this of course caught me eye farther down in the comments:
I am a diehard General Clark supporter. I am going nowhere, and I am not transferring my vote to anyone, unless they DESERVE it, the way General Clark did.
And then he goes on about how disappointed he is with the media's coverage, and how they control us, blah blah blah...
Oh lord. "...And may divide folks just enough to loose another election by a hair for us."
I absolutely hear what the "don't just vote against something, stand up for something" folks are saying. But the way I see it, that's not always our luxury. The shitty thing about freewill is that while you will always have a choice, you will not always have a choice between options you desire.
In the same sense that choosing not to choose is an active choice, choosing to stay home and not vote is a vote.
Not voting for Bush's leading opponent does not help get the job done, and I totally understand that there are contingencies where people just won't be able to bring themselves to do it, but that's the fact. Our media sucks. True. Our election system is winner take all, instead of instant runoff, and isn't fair. Also true. Our districts are gerrymandered. You bet. But this is what we got, and you still get a ballot, what are you gonna do with the choice you do have?
There's times in history when people from far away places, with disparate views and cultures and languages have risen up to deal with something that was more important than their narrower interests. At the risk of building Godwin's law into this post, if the British and the French decided to put their differences aside temporarily because the Germans simply had to be dealt with in 1940, you know it was bigger than either of their mutual self-interests or their legendary rivalries.
There's a lot of different viewpoints coming together on this site. And from a diversity standpoint, it's exciting. But when it comes to the Bush administration, which we all recognize is a catastrophe for a variety of reasons on almost every single policy, if we cannot pull it together to defeat them at least until November 10th...
Stand for, stand against, whatever. It's my hope though that for one day in November, we who oppose the Bush Administration can put aside our differences of opinion and stand united against him.