A message to my friends and colleagues (and you are both) who argue for things such as (1) that we should impeach Bush now, (2) that we should defund the Iraq war now, (3) that we should refuse to support nominated Dems who are so conservative that they will compromise with Republicans, etc.
Bad things will happen in the future. Plenty more may die in Iraq. We may bomb Iran and kill millions. We may never take a step towards solving global warming. Bush may try to declare martial law due to a flu pandemic. He may try to cancel the 2008 election. Democrats may roll over and fail to stop Republicans from enacting truly atrocious policies. Democrats may often be too cozy with monied interests. Even if some of this doesn't happen, things comparably bad to most of it inevitably will.
I've taken a radical view at times and I've taken some solace from the notion that when bad things happened I would at least be able to look back and say that I was right.
No, when any of that happens, you will not get to tell the rest of us that you were right.
This diary is about why, if that is part of what you imagine about politics, you should give it up.
(more)
Let me clarify: you will certainly be able to tell the American people that they should have listened to and better heeded the advice of the Left. But those aren't the discussions we have here on DKos for the most part. The discussions we have here are within the progressive community. They are discussions about strategies and tactics, rarely about our fundamental values.
1. Realos and Fundis
I've said previously that the division between people who do and don't push the sorts of policies I list in my intro text may be closest to that between the "realo" (realist) and "fundi" (fundamentalist) factions of the German Green Party, the first to adopt that party label. In Germany's parliamentary system, one which makes it much easier for third parties to join in a coalition government, the issue splitting them was whether to cooperate with the Social Democratic Party, which was roughly in the position of the Democratic Party here. Here's a Wikipedian take:
In the 1980s and 1990s, a conflict between the fundis and the realos with the German Green Party arose. While the realos, the group around Joschka Fischer, were in favour of moderate policies and cabinet cooperation, the fundis opposed cabinet cooperation. The Fundis were composed of deep greens and eco-socialists. They did not only oppose cabinet cooperation, but were also in favour of strict term limits.
The term was first used within the Hessen Green party. In the 1982 state elections the party gained 8% of vote, and neither the SPD or the CDU had a majority of their own. In their program Hessen Greens had claimed that there was a "fundamental opposition between the anti-life and anti-democratic politics of the SPD, CDU and FDP." Those who had opposed a coalition with the SPD were called fundis. The Greens tolerated a SPD-minority government for three years and in 1985 they entered the coalition, a victory for the Realos. Joschka Fischer became their minister.
... At the end of the 1980s the fundis founded the Left Forum. In 1990 a group of prominent eco-socialists left the party, in 1991 a group of deep greens also left. ... In 1998 the Greens joined the cabinet, a final victory for the realos. After that year the division between realos and fundis became less important.
Here's the plain fact: barring a violent revolution -- a prospect that I will be happy to discuss, though not in a pleasant way -- any major positive change in our policies is going to come through actions of our government (a term I use broadly to include our legal system.) Public opinion matters in a lot of ways -- certainly it matters most when it comes to how people treat one another -- but it matters most when it comes to our decisions about who is going to be in government deciding policy. And the sad fact is that -- putting aside very legitimate concerns about election integrity for the moment -- we have a bad government largely because people have voted it in. It's hard to create a truly good government, largely because politicians are people too and react to things like bribes and threats, but it is possible to create a better government by electing better people. And that means changing the laws to create better elections and changing the public to create a better electorate.
The fundis did not want to be part of the government. They did not want to be sullied with compromise. I understand that desire. And I will grant that there is a theory behind it: that by refusing to be sullied by the ugliness of governance, eventually the public will tire of politics as usual and put complete control into the hands of those outside the system -- and, if our public relations has been good, it will be the fundis rather than, say, the neo-Nazis.
The problem with that theory is that there's really not much reason to believe it is true. Traditional political parties are resilient. Getting elected and governing is what they do. We're not going to beat them easily at that game, and if we are going to beat them at all, it will not be soon.
2. Realos and fundis on Daily Kos
The realo versus fundi split on DKos, especially since the election of a Democratic Congress, is most evident when the realos ask the one question that drives fundis mad: "where are we going to get the votes for that?"
I ask that question a lot. I know it drives people bonkers. I'm not happy about that -- my fundi counterparts are good people to a person and we are on the same side. But for me not to ask that question would be a kind of political malpractice.
We have a conservative majority in Congress. Only a handful of Republicans can fairly be called "moderates" any more, and I submit that that number is fewer than the number of Democrats who can be called "conservative." That is our political reality.
Impeachment. That is why, if your "solution" to the Gulf War is that we have to impeach Bush and Cheney, I'm going to start to get unpleasant to be around. That solution is no solution. As I've said, I think there's a decent chance we can impeach Cheney now, enough so that I favor turning on the switch and getting the machine into gear. But my argument is not that it should happen because I want it to happen. My argument is that I think that Cheney may finally have done something that the Senate simply will not accept for institutional reasons, and that his party may not defend him for self-interested reasons. I may be wrong in my more radical suggestion there, but it's grounded in a political analysis of how we can get 67 votes to remove him (or, for all I care, get enough votes so that the people and party who end up defending him are permanently disgraced.)
If your solution to a problem like Iraq and Iran is that Bush must be removed from office, then my answer to you is to question how it is going to happen at all, and even more to the point how is it going to happen in time. I'm not saying that to be a prick. I'm just saying that I don't want to be an "Impeachment Underwear Gnome":
- Collect reasons to impeach and remove Bush
- ???????????
- Bush is impeached and removed!
That is: how are we going to do it? I do have a proposal: we will collect information through hearings and turning subordinates through testimony under oath, and we will turn public opinion to the point where Bush's continued presence in office is unacceptable, and we will turn elite opinion to the point where they believe that Bush's crimes are so unusual that impeaching him does not risk turning our government into a mobocracy. And then we have a real chance, even with a conservative Congress. But when someone says "impeachment is not on the table," or "we are not ready to impeach," or "we are not trying to impeach," please understand that they are saying what they must in talking to other realos and to non-progressives. They're not talking to fundis. You already want impeachment, and from what I can tell any basis for it will do. (As an aside, it always irritates me when people say "impeach Bush" rather than "impeach Bush for XYZ." I accept it as an argument made to help move public opinion; see my conciliatory comments below -- but not as an actual political strategy.)
Defunding the war. Should the war be defunded? Yes. Is proposing that a way to stop the war? Not necessarily. Look at what is happening right now with Murtha, who is proposing something much less than defunding the war, something that in a rational world would not even be particularly controversial. Watch what is happening to him -- the Democrats serving with him in Congress sure are. We should be pressing them to support and defend him with the same about of fervor they just devoted to opposing the surge, absolutely. But the point is that what is happening right now is a fight over what political price is to be paid by those who oppose Bush. And our reps care about that, a lot.
So that raises the question of whether we have the votes to defund the war, beyond even whether we have the votes to push Murtha's legislation. I want to toss out some names at you:
Mary Landrieu. Mark Pryor. Ben Nelson. Blanche Lincoln. Joe Biden. Bill Nelson.
Henry Cuellar. Ellen Tauscher. Steny Hoyer. Gene Taylor. Al Wynn. Jane Harman.
Those are our allies. Those are the people whose votes we need to be able to pass legislation we want, potentially without a single Republican vote. Now I may become convinced that we should try to defund the war. But I am also going to want to know if we can hold our coalition together. There is a reason that Republicans have been saying on talk shows that Democrats should just use the power of the purse and defund the war, if we feel so strongly about it. It's because they think that we will split our party and get our asses kicked -- ideally, to the point where it becomes a problem particularly for the House leadership. Pelosi and Murtha may say that they will simply not let funding out of the Appropriations Committee -- but what happens when the conservative end of the caucus starts screaming for them to stanch the bleeding of support they're experiencing in their own districts?
That is the GOP game plan for winning the political battle over Iraq in the short term. It is far from stupid. Our leaders are smart and they know this and they can count. If they end up backing something less aggressive than we know would be best, it will be because they realize that they do not have the votes to win. They will not have the votes to win because politicians will not be convinced that they will face a greater penalty for voting for funding than voting to withhold all of it. (And that is something we can be doing something about.) So, when you say "Democrats are worthless and don't deserve our support," if this vote does not go as we wish, that is why I will jump down your throat. The failure will be ours, collectively, as a society -- a society of which we are a part.
Extreme awfulness. Bush may, seriously, initiate a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran. He may try to cancel the 2008 elections. Half a year from now, I may be blogging from an isolation cell in the hot desert outside Yuma, Arizona, for my seditious criticism of the President -- and so might you.
If you're in the next cell, you may ask me: doesn't this prove that I was right? And through my wired jaw, I will still say "no."
People want to believe that every problem has a solution. Adults know that it is not true. Someone with a terminal disease eventually dies. Someone without an income eventually runs out of money, and terrible things happen. Just because we are in a rotten position does not mean that the solution we don't try is the one that would have worked.
Barring an actual, non-metaphorical revolution -- which, again, I don't favor -- we are left to play the cards that we are dealt. Those cards are ones that involve working through our current, flawed political system with the representatives we have, as well as trying to elect better ones. If the 2008 elections are canceled, the answer would then not suddenly become "We should have impeached Bush while we could." The answer would remain "There was nothing we could do." With hindsight, it would be clear that impeaching Bush was best, and with hindsight, the public and our political leaders might well wish they had supported us in that. But we do not now have the benefit of hindsight, nor of other people having hindsight. We can only play the cards that have been dealt.
3. Then am I saying that people should shut the fuck up?
Absolutely not. The energy people put into pushing for the right thing is critical. What I'm saying is:
WE ALL HAVE OUR ROLES
We realos have to keep an eye on the political system and what could be accomplished -- possibly only over the long term. Here are some realos whose careers may provide some guidance:
Mohandas Gandhi. Martin Luther King, Jr. William Brennan. Thurgood Marshall. Nelson Mandela.
All of them have been concerned with how they would be able to effectuate change, either through the existing political system or by getting the existing political system to accommodate its own replacement. But that's not all they did. They also tried to affect popular opinion.
And so, my fundi friends and my realo friends too, that's what you can do. Get out and talk to people, not just here. Help arrange for an electorate that will demand and receive better representation. Help to address their own cynicism about the political process, their own desire to pretend they are above it all. Because the ultimate truth is that
NONE OF US IS ABOVE IT ALL
None of us gets to stand apart and aside and sneer at the people who are trying to get changes implemented through government. No one who does not figure out how to get the votes we need -- 50%+1, 60%, 67%, 270 electoral votes, a Supreme Court Majority -- gets to stand around after things go bad and say that they were right if we had only done something else regardless of whether we had the votes. None of us have that luxury. We all win or lose together.