Ever since the election, I've been hearing about how the Democratic Party is wracked with despair, in total disarray, marginalized for decades, dazed and confused, obsolete...well, pick your own phrase; you've heard all the same nonsense. The mainstream media, in full condescension mode, has been waxing gleefully melodramatic about the "demise of the left." Rumors contend MSNBC has tapped Tucker Carlson to bring his bowtie and his insipid observations to prime-time as a lead-in to the even more obnoxious Joe Scarborough, casting a decisive vote of no confidence in liberal ideals.
What the bloody blue blazes is going on here?!?
I've got a sizzling hot flash for every one of those patronizing pundits and journalistic vultures who are already lining up behind the hearse: THIS corpse isn't dead!! And I'm certainly not going to let you lot TALK me into surrendering. I don't have any sort of identity crisis, thank you very much, and if you want to start doing the jobs you're dreadfully overpaid for, you might consider asking Writers-Cramp Rumsfeld and his monkey boss some tough questions about that filthy, misbegotten war in Iraq...the ones you SHOULD have asked two years ago, before we got neck-deep in that desert quicksand. Which would, naturally, be untinkable for you at this juncture--too much like admitting your own culpability. Meantime, quit making such a foolish fuss and get out of my face. Your insistence upon passing out grave pronouncements without the slightest bit of investigation just frosts my foglamps. A lost election is NOT the end of the world (Somebody has to lose every time, remember?) and I resent your smarmy, insincere condolences. Shut up and let me get to work.
"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
Plato
Think about it, people: the MSM has to dumb their content down to the lowest common denominator in order to insure its consumption by the greatest number. It's a requirement, almost mathematical in its inevitability. They can't have folks doing something radical like, uh, thinking for example. So they frame EVERYTHING--their drama, their sports, their comedy and their news in the most elementary terms available; us/them, good/bad, left/right. No nuances, no shades of grey. And the same goes for their woeful attempts at political dialogue. The entire purpose here is the inflation of Neilsen numbers and circulation figures to fatten the bottom line...but their reasoning is deeply flawed. To their simplistic way of thinking, "the whole country has gone conservative" just because a borderline retarded ape was returned to the White House. (They are flat wrong, of course; this assumption presupposes both honest campaigning and an honest election, neither of which occurred...but that's another whole diary for a later time.) Still in their unreasonable hurry to dismiss us, to write progressive ideals off entirely, THEREIN lies a clue to what should be our overarching long-term goal.
As a unified movement, we should be striving to achieve a true liberal renaissance, a nationwide consensus, starting at the grassroots level, that will empower everyone, not just moneyed elites, and allow us as a nation to once again be all that we can be...and deserve to be. It's going to take some time and a concerted effort, but I think it's a whale of an objective and very much worth shooting for, don't you? As a by-product, we'll not only win back out legislative majorities, but we'll make them safe from any encroachment by the cheap-labor right, those ugly Raw Deal conservatives. Pie in the sky? Not at all. Pay attention...
I alluded to this in Part II, but let me make this as clear as I can right here: your average American is far more progresive thn he votes. In poll after poll, the majority--and in many cases, the VAST majority!--support universal health care, improvement of schools, restoring our manifacturing base, protecting wages amd jobs and living standards, repeal of tax-cuts on the super-rich to pay down the deficit...and the REAL opportunity for upward mobility. Sounds to me like a big chunk of the Democrats'platform to me. Or if not, it ought to be.
Brief history lesson: Unemployment was 23% when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, thanks to the market crash of 1929 and the ineffectiveness of then-president Herbert Hoover, a Republican. We're talking Great Depression here, folks, the worst social upheaval EVER. Thanks to Roosevelt's populist New Deal policies and the efforts of succesive Democrats, unemployment had dropped to an amazing 2.5% by the time the next Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, was elected. When he left office, it had risen to 6.5%. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, with their War on Poverty, forced it back down to 3.5%. After Nixon took office, unemployment figures--you guessed it!--CLIMBED up over 5% and stayed there for 27 years until Bill Clinton brought them back down to 4.5% early in his second term. Does the picture begin to grow clearer?
The late 1940's until the 1970's was, without question, the golden age of the United States. We built the Interstate Highway System, we walked on the moon, we ended segregation in the South and established Medicare. Back then, a single wage-earner could support an entire family...and live well. Since those halcyon days, we've fallen headlong into the the bleak Republican abyss, starting with Nixon, where TWO working adults now struggle mightily to make ends meet with the resultant collateral damage of a gradual eradication of the nuclear family. Not to mention its attendant ills: the rise of daycare, latch-key kids and a corresponding loss of parental supervision. Everyone takes such miseries for granted these days, little remembering that it didn't used to be this way.
It should now be apparent that, according to verifiable historical fact, Republicans hate prosperity and robust, maximum emoloyment economies. The reason for this is that in their philosophy of corporate feudalism, there must be very few opportunities for workers so that they're easier to control. These despicable flying monkeys of the far right want wage-earners, the backbone of our great nation, to be powerless serfs, entirely under the thumbs of their corporate lords. Don't believe me? Take a look at the interview with Grover Norquist of the Club For Growth in the 5/14/2001 issue of The Nation Magazine. (You should have figured out by now that the "Growth" DOESN'T mean yours...) He's one of their chief strategists and you can bet your last piaster that he's telling the unvarnished truth when he says he wants to see "a return to the McKinley era without the protectionism." In case you didn't know, this period was known infamously as the Era Of Wage Slavery. Feel free to look it up. Do you think that ANY working person--even one of Limbaugh's demented dittoheads--wants this? Of course not! And as long as workers are in the majority...probably forever...then Democrats will have fertile ground for populist ideals. I'd be willing to wager long odds that if this fundamental aspect of conservatism were brought out into the daylight that NO ONE would vote for a Republican gain. Ever.
Obviously, then, people don't know what these cheap-labor maggots are really and truly about...and that's not an accident. The Republicans are fully aware that they have to keep this corrosive agenda under wraps. This is why they've chosen to cloak it in obfuscation and misnomers like 'free market' and 'less government.' Let me give you the skinny on THIS duplicitous misdirection right now.
The free market is a jungle, without pity, without mercy, without protection. Thomas Hobbes called it "war of all against all." That's where the economically powerful--thanks to rights created and enforced by government--can use the vagaries of indiffrent 'market forces' to compel you and I to work cheap. Think about it! There are a couple of BILLION people in Third World hellholes right now that would be just plumb delighted to do YOUR job--no matter how dull, difficult or dangerous--for pennies on the dollar of your salary. Do you think it's fair that you should have to compete with THEM? Republicans do. Even worse, however, is the fact that this vomitous administration is actually giving corporations incentive bonuses to outource jobs. So THEIR version of the 'free market' starts out stacked harshly against workers...and then they stack it even more so! Wonderful, eh? This is what YOU voted for on November 2, you morons!
"Less government" is more of the same fried ice cream. The odious Mr. Norquist has said repeatedly that he'd like to make government "small enough to drown it in a bathtub." You may be certain he means less government for his wealthy corporate heirarchy and more for workers. There ARE places on this planet where minimalist rule has been achieved, places with no Social Security, no minimum wage, no welfare, no unions, no OSHA and no environmental protection. The only thing the laws and government do is protect the interests of the wealthy. I'm talking here about places like Bolivia, Chad and Guatemala. There isn't one--NOT ONE!--first world economy that doesn't have a significant public sector...yet that's what these cheap-labor scoundrels envision for the United States. And believe me, Joe Lunchbox, your average GOP voter, doesn't have a clue about ANY of this. And they won't tell him until it's too late.
Enough about them for now. I'll go into all the sordid details of their ruinous vision of corporate feudalism in my next diary. Now I want to talk about US, who we are and what we want.
We're the 55 million progressives who came together and cast more votes for John Kerry than any prior elected president in history. George Lakoff, whom I quoted in Part II, describes us this way: "...care and responsibility, fairness and equality, freedom and courage, fulfillment in life, opportunity and community, cooperation and trust, honesty and openness. These are traditional values American values and principles, what we are proudest of in this country. The Democrats' failure was a failure to put forth our moral vision, celebrate our values and principles and shout them out loud."
Despite some high-profile electoral losses, there is still massive evidence that our message is not obsolete. Many progressive initiatives, candidates and trends did splendidly at state and local levels. People still voted for environmental protection, rational drug policies, raising minimum wages and a just, tolerant state, all the while opposing that stinking pre-emptive war. Seven Democratic Senators won re-election by an average margin of 30% and ALL Of them voted against the invasion of Iraq. Maybe the next time issues of war and peace are on the table, the left won't be so bloody timid. The safe, centerist, fence-sitting position that's driven by focus groups and demographics analyses is simply NOT what people want. They're looking for a valid and viable alternative to "more of the same." Wishy-washy uncommitted candidates stand for NOTHING and their constituents can sense that. Progressives who were able to articulte their values strongly DID connect with their base and were voted into office. Let's face it: John Kerry wasn't every Democrat's cup of Darjeeling. I personlly preferred General Wes Clark or Howard Dean. Kerry was the inoffensive non-Bush candidate who played it right down the middle, safe for business, safe for moderates...and never wholly satisfying to ANYBODY. That's why he lost.
If we are out of power now, it is the fault of our Party leaders, at the behest of the pseuso-progressive Democratic Leadership Council, who have deigned to water down and even ignore our ideals for the immediate gratification of financial gain. Let us NEVER question our beliefs which are good and true...and just as viable now as when they were set forth by Andrew Jackson. Here we confront an extremely important short-term goal: let us strive to always be who we are and, in so doing, rid ourselves of those who would compromise our beliefs--Hello, DLC!--and betray America's Middle Class.
So then, who ARE we really? It's not a hard question...not nearly so hard as people like Al From and Bob Schrum make it out to be, all the while costing us elections. We started out as the party of the working man and that's where our roots should remain today, championing everybody who works for a living. We're about equality, security and responsibility. We're inclusive, we embrace diversity. We value work over wealth and support strong unions and workplace safety regulations. We believe that a sound work ethic ought to be rewarded and protected. Education, the environment, deficit reduction and energy independence are all issues that the Democrats have traditionally run on. All of them can be handily united under the single theme of personal responsibility. Clean up your mess, take care of your children, pay your debts, don't shirk, stand on your own two feet; it all comes down to being responsible.
We need to get this message out and hammer it home...because these values are shared by a majority of Americans. If we can demonstrate that our values are theirs, then everything else will fall into line. We'll win and we'll win big. People will see for themselves that Republicam populism is a sham and a fraud; big business doesn't want workers united or protected...or even terribly educated. It wants them alone and afraid, intimidated into working for beggars' wages. And it cannot be trusted to police itself or adhere to even the most minimal standards of decency and ethical behavior; its motivation is financial, not human. Just ask Enron...or WorldCom...or Marsh & McLennan. THIS is what I mean by cheap-labor conservatism. If we do not hesitate to reveal this agenda for the disaster that it so obviously is, then the far right will fold up like an accordion.
This, then, is who we really are. Let us stand up and be proud of it...and allow no one to take it from us.
Stay tuned for PartIV--"THE GOP: LIARS, SCOUNDRELS, HYPOCRITES AND GREEDHEADS"
(I am deeply indebted to the Conceptual Guerilla for much of the inspiration, information and attitude found in this diary and my next one, Part IV. CG is a sharp and sassy progressive tactician; intuitive, knowledgable...and wickedly funny. I wholeheartedly recommend his website, http://www.conceptualguerilla.com. He is our secret weapon, our very own Dr. Van Helsing who is fully qualified to drive a stake through the heart of those bloodsucking right-wingers. Read what he has to say, assimilate it, use it, and pass it on!)