I had begun a diary Monday evening with the intention of bringing a personal political history to these pages. When I saw maxgray7's diary I was happy to see his political history at its inception. This is my own story and it is meant to be a quick reflection on who I am and what I bring to Daily Kos.
Having grown up in Santa Cruz County, California, as a tweener I was often accused of being high on LSD when merely I was being myself. Next the draft was abolished, I went to college, Ronald Reagan was president for a long time, and I graduated with a BA and a Masters in visual arts. I find myself now not having served in the military nor having served any form of civil service. However, I have been a witness to a politically active family that leans as far to the democratic left as it can. There were internal strains between my mother and my father, and one of the most vivid that I recall- although it seems as most as an apparition of a disagreement - was a split between them in 1968 over one's support for Eugene McCarthy and the other's for Bobby Kennedy. With Kennedy's death and Humphrey's eventual nomination, their disagreement was set aside and they voted as far to the left as they could and their unfortunate votes went to the loser.
There was only one way to vote in 1972 or so it seemed after Nixon's landslide. An easy man to hate who went to china, my memories of the man are of cheeks like dumbo's ears and a nose to ski down no doubt courtesy of Paul Conrad. Nixon was venal and evil but to me carved out a legitimate historical place for himself because his flesh seemed real. Yet one of his accomplishments was to further the presence of civil rights, and to spearhead desegregation:
Starting in Mississippi and moving across the South, the Nixon administration set up biracial state committees to plan and implement school desegregation. The appeal to local control succeeded. By the end of 1970, with little of the anticipated violence and little fanfare, the committees had made significant progress -- only about 18% of black children in the South attended all-black schools.
Unfortunately, it appears to me that by appealing to local control in desegragation that Mr. Nixon began the cascade of conservative rule of local school boards which to me are the springboard of politics. (My mother was an elected official for a number of years, but she began in a local PTA. Then she moved on to the League of Women Voters and I believe was the first local president, and eventually served as a county supervisor.) In my imagination it seems logical that those opposed to the civil rights movement but witness to the success of Nixon's desegregation plans saw the power of organization at a local level and have been running with it ever since. The conflict in my imagination is why hasn't the left been able to harness that power as readily and as continuously as the right.
When I was growing up, we celebrated the fourth of July with a picnic on the beach. There were a few of us who believed that we should never have fought for our independence from Britain, and our parents tried to mollify our loyalty by having two cakes frosted with flags: one stars and stripes, the other the union jack. 1976 was the year Jimmy Carter finished a two year run for the presidency, and it was also the bicentennial of the U.S.'s independence. Carter's victory reminds me that we can push against a tide and change its course. It was not an easy election, but it was won. (I should add that I had the pleasure of editing a short video biography of Jimmy Carter that aired at the DNC in 2000. The strategy of hiding Bill Clinton embarrassed me though. I should also add that as an editor I worked on several political commercials that aired during Newt's midterm romp of '94, and I felt obligated to apologize to my mother because Senator Kyle was only one of several winners who I was paid to help promote. She said "It is a job.")
The malaise that consumed the country by the end of Carter's term did not have any effect on me, and it was for his second term that I cast my first presidential ballot. My first vote and I lost, soon after my malaise began when RR began twelve years of Republican administrations that left just one memory in my political mind: a Republican push to reverse the feminist, environmental, and civil rights movements of the last thirty years needed to be stopped, and I voted as far to the left in every primary with one goal, push my party to the left, and then jump on the train in the general. But my physical political activity besides visiting a poll booth during that time was relegated to one march (incidentally brought about by Jimmy Carter's decision to reinstate draft registration although according to the CATO Institute, it was RR who was going to prosecute registration evaders), and I remember marching around UCSD wondering what kind of damage all the computer science and electrical engineering students could do much more quickly and efficiently than our march.
Mondale lost, Dukakis lost, and when Clinton won, my mother lost after three terms as a county supervisor. At the time I was living in New York on Amsterdam Avenue at 83rd St., and I remember very clearly walking along Broadway near Harry's shoes and having a Clinton campaigner approach me. Already attached to Jerry Brown's candidacy, I remember feeling a wave of revulsion although I had had little contact with Clinton as a figure and absolutely no knowledge of the DLC. But when push came to shove I backed Mr. Clinton whole heartedly and finally cast a ballot for a winning presidential candidate. I don't remember a great taste of victory in 1992 but I was on the winning side for once and along with many others I experienced an upturn in my economic standing (I left my last table waiting job at Kin Khao to edit television programs).
1994 Congressional Elections: An Analysis Realignment and Dealignment by Curtis Gans
The Republican Party won a majority of the votes cast for Congress for the first time since 1946 in 1994, which featured only the second significant increase in mid-term turnout in a quarter century.
In all, 75,114,722 eligible Americans voted in the 1994 election, a 38.8% turnout -- up 2.3 percentage points from 1990. An estimated 108,000,000 eligible Americans did not vote and turnout was more than 20% lower than in the 1960s.
1994: A Watershed Year
By election time in 1994 Christian Coalition had distributed 40 million copies of the "Family Values Voter's Guide" in more than 100,000 churches nationwide. 1994 was the year Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. It was also the year that Republicans made a huge gain in State Legislatures.
As I mentioned earlier, I worked as a television editor on political advertisements at this time of my life. I was a free lance editor just beginning a career, and found myself working for a post facility with a deal to edit political commercials. Unfortunately I can not remember the name of the consulting firm that I worked for. There were TV spots for congressional races, senate races, probably even state level races. What things I remember though are John Kyl and a horse and a truck, a blond congressman from the midwest, and one ad that was based on either Jeapordy or Wheel of Fortune, and the ad was even featured on a CNN piece about the nature of political advertising because of its provocative nature. What I was really working on was the Contract with America.
Newt Gingrich's Contract with America is perceived as a monumental movement in contemporary politics. The Republicans took back control of congress and set about dismantling a system they disagreed with. But I don't think it was monumental, I think it was just a middle step: from a "genial" man who prodded with a wink, to a caucus of conservatives who understood how to enable a base, to today: a cabal.
In 2000, I was editing video packages for the DNC in Los Angeles, and our offfices were in a building downtown. This was when Survivor had first begun to air on television, and I remember how the whole office came to a stop to watch the show. We were given passes to the convention, and I took some free time to wander about the hall. The most senior democratic party member I bumped into was either Tom Hayden's son, or the mayor of Compton. The most dramatic moment of the Democratic National Convention I saw on TV, and that was Bill Clinton's walk through the bowels of Staples Center, to the podium on the floor.
I voted again, and lost again.
And quickly John Kerry was running for office, and for this campaign, I was an auctioneer at a fund raiser that raised over four thousand dollars.
I voted again, and lost again.
In my simplified history, it feels as if I have witnessed during my life the trampling of a society by three giant steps: Reagan, Contract with American, and a cabal. My party has been in the oval office 20 years out of 46. Of the seven presidential elections I have participated in, I have won two and lost five. Those kind of odds are discouraging. I have no doubt that the Republican Party pursues its course in a much more ruthless manner than our party. I have no doubt that the Republican Party amassed a grass roots organization at a very opportune time and that our Party has a tendency to splinter. I have no doubt that given the opportunity the Republican Party would make the Great wall of China look like it was made out of Legos. But I have no doubt that our Party is now finally moving in the correct direction. When I see the net roots pushing at the backs of the most liberal candidates, pushing the standard bearers aside, pushing to the head of the line, I feel my personal strategy taking hold. Keep up the good work, if we push this thing as hard as we can to the left, maybe it will straighten itself out.