Today's Washington Post features opinion from my favorite progressive columnist, Harold Meyerson.
As the first actual voting in this year's presidential contest is finally about to begin, the two parties have swapped places. The Democrats, by tradition the party of irreconcilable factions, are, for all their election-eve squabbling, more united than they've been in decades. The Republicans, by tradition the party that submerges its differences to rally 'round the front-runner, have become a collection of distinct, disconsolate camps.
That's a refreshing comment given the stuff that I keep reading here. It makes me remember that soon we will be finished with the selection and rallying behind our candidate.
Here's his take on the candidates:
Barack Obama and John Edwards are just now having at it, and each is touching distinct themes in the final appeals to Iowa voters. Obama seems more in the tradition of the early-20th-century progressives, middle-class reformers who sought to clean up politics to restore a functioning democracy. Edwards is more in the tradition of the early-20th-century populists, railing at the monied interests that really ran the country. But Obama is a rather populist progressive, a onetime community organizer who understands the power of organized popular protest. And Edwards is a progressive populist, heir to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, not William Jennings Bryan or Huey Long.
Time was when the Democratic presidential field would extend from the hawkish Henry Jackson to the dovish George McGovern, neither of whom could count on the other's Democratic supporters in a race against the Republican. These days, the differences dividing the Democrats are far narrower, and the Democrat who wins the party's nod will command nearly consensual Democratic support. The same cannot be said for the Republicans.
Maybe we are coming together? The differences between our candidates are minor in comparison to the tragic comedy being put on by the republicans. Maybe it is time to step back and look at the situation from a perspective that says that we will win no matter who we choose. Then we can save some energy to counter the dirty tricks and other junk the opposition is sure to dish out.
Update 1/2/08 Who is he?
| Harold Meyerson is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing mainly about politics. His column appears on Wednesdays.
Meyerson is executive editor of the American Prospect as well as a member of the editorial board of Dissent. From 1989 to 2001, he was executive editor of the L.A. Weekly. From 1991 to 1995, Meyerson hosted the weekly show "Real Politics" on the public radio station KCRW in Sanata Monica, Calif. He is a frequent guest on television and radio talk shows and has been a regular columnist for The Post since 2003. He is the author of "Who Put The Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz?" (1995), a biography of Broadway lyricist Yip Harburg.