There's all this talk of an enthusiasm gap and punishing Democrats but I suspect this is a very overblown meme. Yes there is a lack of enthusiasm amongst Democrats this year, but I suspect most of us here are doing exactly what we always do. That is:
- Vote for Democrats
- Work hard for progressives
- Give money to progressives
Has any of that really changed? No.
What is changing is that the country as a whole is returning to the voting patterns that had been established back before Bush took office. A polarized and narrowly divided country with a split house and a split senate. We haven't changed and we haven't given up, it's just that the country is going back to the way it was.
Is anybody out there really seriously contemplating not voting at all in this election? I mean we're all progressive political activist types. I mean yeah maybe it's fun to talk the talk of not showing up and saying the Democrats can piss off, but at the end of the day, are you going to be doing anything different come November? My guess is no.
If you are somebody who worked on a campaign for a progressive candidate before, are you doing the same thing today? My guess is that you probably are. You know who the good guys are and you want them to win. Some years I find a candidate I like and get involved. Other years I don't. This is an off year for me, not because I'm fed up with Democrats and want Republican rule, it's just I don't have any candidate that's really garnered my interest.
If you are somebody who donated to a campaign for a progressive candidate, are you doing the same thing today? My guess, once again, is yes. I donated to Bill Halter. I donated to Russ Feingold. I donated to a few other candidates here and there. It's no different than years past. I donated a lot to Obama in 2008 and I'm not going to donate nearly that much this year, but that's because honestly I went overboard last time.
Reality
What's really going on is that we're returning to historic norms. The normal alignment of politics in this country is one that is closely split. We had a country react very strongly against Bush's reign and the Democrats were handed seats left and right during the 2006 and 2008 elections. Democrats were winning in places they'd never won before. It was highly unusual.
But now what's happening is that we're going back the other way. Those conservative districts that never elected a Democrat before are returning to their old ways. Unpopular corporate sell out Democratic politicians are getting replaced with soon to be unpopular corporate sell out Republicans. We're back to the status quo of the 2000 election, rather than the unusual 2006/2008 elections.
It's not that progressives aren't energized and that we're not doing out jobs. It's that we're doing the same things we've been doing but the multipliers that we had under Bush's abject failure of a presidency are gone. No longer can we count on Republicans not showing up and moderates swinging heavily in favor of Democrats. No longer do we have an unusual turnout amongst young voters.
So just let it go already...
We're all doing what we've been doing for years now. We're bitching and kvetching about what Democrats should be doing. It's what we did in 2004, 2006, and 2008, and it's what we are doing in 2010. It's not because we want Boehner to win and frankly it's not going to make Boehner win. We're doing the same things we did before to try to win and if the broader public isn't on board, then we'll lose.
Yes some of us will talk of not voting but that's just posturing. In the end, we'll hold our noses and pull levers, fill in circles, punch out chads, etc. It's what we've always done and what we always will do because that's how we roll. In the long run we're in the right and over time the public will come around to realize this. We just have to keep fighting as we always do.