Every day I can manage it, I turn to a double handful of bloggers before clicking on my own
home blog, the sites of the print and broadcast media, the partisan think tanks, a few rightwing sites, and the megablogs of wwwLand.
Digby, Steve Gilliard, TalkLeft, firedoglake, Wampum, Orcinus, Pam's House Blend, Alas - a Blog, Pharyngula, Rude Pundit and Body and Soul all garner my attention for what is usually 20 minutes or so of reading pleasure, even when their subject matter isn't pleasant.
Since the days before I'd posted a single wee comment anywhere in blogdom, one of my favorites has been Jeanne at Body and Soul. Her eloquence never swerves into hyperbole, conventional wisdom never pollutes her analyses, and she voices a wisdom that repeatedly has me thinking, I never saw it that way before.
Today she's written a piece that touched me in several ways. It turns out her mother died 25 years ago this week, as did my grandfather. And though her mother was never old enough to actually vote for FDR, she voted for him long after he was dead, just as my grandfather did.
Let Jeanne
say it:
I started thinking of her this morning while reading Mark Graber's loving tribute to his recently deceased aunt:
At some point in the 1930s or early 1940s, the Democrats did something that made Aunt Lee and numerous other Americans of her generation lifelong loyalists. For the next sixty years, my aunt religiously voted for FDR or whatever Democrat happened to occupy FDR's rightful place on the ballot. Democrats were the source of everything good in the world. Republicans, particularly Ronald Reagan (my exotic aunt lived in California), were the source of all evil.
That was my mom, too. When I was a little kid, in the fifties, I thought Roosevelt was still president, because he was the only one my mother ever talked about. My first understanding of controversy in politics came in fifth grade, when we had to choose a president to write a report on. I chose Roosevelt, of course, but I was certain everyone else would too, and that I'd have to come up with a second choice. I didn't. I remember going home and calling my mother at work to tell her how lucky I was. Out of the whole class, I was the one who got to do Roosevelt, and everyone else had to settle for the second-rate presidents.
My mother gently pointed out that maybe I got Roosevelt because no one else wanted him.
How was that possible? Everyone knew Roosevelt was the best. Lincoln was pretty good, too. But Roosevelt was the best.
That was no doubt before she'd discovered that the anti-Semitic Nazi-lovers of the 1930s called FDR "Rosenfeld" and that others equated him with Stalin.
Jeanne continues:
Roosevelt died before my mother was old enough to vote, but for more than thirty years, she voted for him. She voted for Democrats even when she didn't like them, because she'd find in each of them a little piece of Roosevelt's soul. She walked long distances to polling places, because she never owned a car, and she was always the first in line to vote -- except for one time when her congressman arrived after her, and they let him go first anyway, for the cameras. (Amazingly, she didn't mind -- even though he was a Republican. Following him into the voting booth to cancel out the vote he'd just cast for himself must have been satisfying, though.)
Oddly enough, not only did the Democrats fail to really earn that loyalty, but even Roosevelt himself didn't, strictly speaking, deserve it. The New Deal barely touched her. She was the daughter of an immigrant maid. Her mother became crippled and unable to work while my mom was still in high school, and she and her older sister became the sole support of the family. The New Deal didn't include domestic workers.
Still, even in the critical eyes of dyed-in-the-wool socialists like my grandfather, a regional organizer for the United Mine Workers, Roosevelt in the White House offered not just hope, but also generated real change and the promise of further change.
Again, Jeanne:
Roosevelt died before my mother was old enough to vote, but for more than thirty years, she voted for him. She voted for Democrats even when she didn't like them, because she'd find in each of them a little piece of Roosevelt's soul. ...
{snip}
Oddly enough, not only did the Democrats fail to really earn that loyalty, but even Roosevelt himself didn't, strictly speaking, deserve it. The New Deal barely touched her. ...
But how it affected her personally really didn't matter. My mother knew people whose lives were greatly improved by the New Deal. People like her. That's the key. She understood that the government, when Roosevelt was president, was trying to help people like her, and that if the government held to the spirit of that attempt, eventually it would help her. Or her daughter. Or her grandchildren. Without really sharing in the benefits, she believed in the promise.
If that was my mother, this is me:
The younger members of her family also vote for Democrats, but with much less passion.
Reading that, I suddenly realized I'm still voting for Roosevelt, even though he died before I was born, and even when I can find very little of him in the candidates I'm offered. The man earned two generations of loyalty on a not entirely filled promise. It won't continue. My 21-year-old son has voted Green at least a couple of times. (He hasn't told me all his votes. I don't think he wants to break my heart). Two generations of loyalty is about all even the greatest president can earn.
Democrats have to start earning it again.
They need to give these kids something to tell their children and their grandchildren about the politicians who stood up for people like them.
I've been a diehard Democrat all my voting life, even before I started voting. Passionately. Not because I thought the party was perfect or would usher in utopia, or even come close to the kind of society I would like to see. Rather because, even with all the flaws inherit in a coalition that included segregationists, imperialists and misogynists, the party leadership could be counted on to stand up for people without much money or any access. For people of color, for civil liberties and constitutional rights, and even, sometimes at least, for public good over private gain.
I've always had my objections, sometimes shrieking objections, to this Democrat or that one, this Democratic policy or another one. Who of us can say otherwise?
Over the past five years, however, I've become increasingly - let me call it...troubled - as supposedly bedrock commitments to fundamentals have seemingly shrunk in the face of GOP hegemony. Not that I blame elected Democrats for failing to change Republican policy. But why oh why, I keep asking myself more and more frequently, are so few voices raised against those policies? Why aren't there twenty Russ Feingolds? Half a dozen Wesley Clarks? Ten Barbara Boxers? Fifteen Charlie Rangels? And at least one Franklin Roosevelt?
All of them, standing up for people like us.
There's a growing hope that, come November, the Republicans may again be in the minority in the House of Representatives, maybe even, though far less likely, in the Senate. I'll be doing my part - financially and on the ground - to make that happen.
But if and when it does, I sure hope a lot more Democrats start doing something to earn the loyalty so many of us are having a harder and harder time maintaining.