What I'm talking about is not purity of politics so much purity of candidate choice. By all means we should press for a change in the politics by which our candidate act. What we should beware of are strategies that say that it is better to lose with candidate you like than win with candidates that aren't true believers.
Go and take a look at the Republicans. They act more unified than they actually are. Peel off the top layers, and you find many more different layers of belief than you otherwise would suspect. For years they were successful in keeping a strong party together, but recently, they've been having more problems.
Why? For the same reason we had trouble in 2010. Republicans are quite put out with the political compromising of their leaders, too. Unfortunately for them, they'll inflict a weakness on themselves that's entirely avoidable in order to satisfy that frustration, and by doing that, get absolutely nothing done.
Politics in a Democracy is a numbers game. Frustration at the lack of progress towards our goals, on both sides of the aisle, doesn't change that. In fact, it can make it worse. We get so charged up on the question of why people won't vote with their particular caucus or cause, that we don't ask how we can get people to vote our way, or whether we can get that vote at the current time at all.
Majorities rule. Getting to leaders who control those majorities at key points, or manipulating the situation against them if needs be is important to laying hold of those majorities as well.
It's not just a matter of what you, I, or anybody else believes. It's a matter of getting the votes to manifest those beliefs in real policy, and making sure that policy isn't a disaster. There are fair criticisms of Democrats on that count over the first half of Obama's current term, but many of these critics did a lot to express their contempt of those who went off message or off course, but didn't suggest a lot in the way of how to box these people in to force their hand, to persuade the public at large.
I look at the 2010 election results, and whatever the cause, what I see is a Senate even deeper into filibustered territory, and a House in Republican hands. As just a basic, practical matter, this does not get our policy priorities passed. It helps the Republicans force even more paralysis and unearned rightward drift in policy than they were able to before. They have not been shy about using the power the voters gave them, even as it puts them at odds with their voters. I doubt any time you give a Republican power in the next decade, can you expect them to practice restraint.
Now, of course, you could say that's what we should be doing, not worrying about being bipartisan or anything like that. Arguably, you'd be right. Even so, not all districts will support a doctrinaire partisan, and Americans do have a pronounced taste for government that works. Republicans forget about that, and sometimes we do, too. Even so, the way the system works, no matter whether our party has a 50%+1 pure souls in a chamber of congress, or a filibuster-proof majority filled with lukewarm centrists, that party controls the chamber in question.
We were fortunate, and unfortunate in the past election. We were fortunate that we held on to the Senate. Otherwise it would have been the uglier sequel to the 1994 takeover. But we lost the house. We lost control over budgeting in a major way. We'd not be staring a debt ceiling failure in the face if we had won last year, and there would have been no egregious deals like the one we needed to accept in order to keep the government going.
Those are the plain facts. Whatever the purity of your liberal and progressive agenda, we lost more than just an election, we lost many opportunities, and the ability to prevent Republicans from causing more havoc.
I would submit to you that rather than just looking at the harm one representative can do, we should consider the harm a majority of of Republicans could do, and vote and act accordingly, and with equal committment to how we acted in 2006 and 2008.
I know this is difficult and frustrating, but let's consider the task we face in terms of what opposes us. Simply put, the Republican party of today's generation is much more rigidly conformist than the version that existed when they first took the majority in 1994. They've also grown much more callous to public dissent, and maintain much less perspective on how their ideas are received. I mean, you don't get this masterpiece of interpretative dance from folks who are in touch with modern sensibilities. These are folks who are willing to take this country over the cliff, and won't stop themselves.
Our first priority has to be stopping them, blunting and frustrating their agenda at all turns, and exposing it for what it is. If you can both do that, and put some instransigent Democrats to shame, be my guest, but just keep in mind, while the Democrats sometimes let crazy get on the bus, Republicans put crazy in the driver's seat and cut the brakelines. We should not trust in public outcry and backlash alone to get the job done and the change managed. We have to organize the country against the Republicans, and keep them out until we can set a new political normal. Yes, the politicians should help, make that job easier by helping to promote our agenda, but if they don't do it, we shouldn't abandon hope, we should pull their unwilling asses along with a movement we organize for the sake of our interests, not theirs.
My point is this: numbers matter, even if they include people we dislike. If we win an internal partisan battle, and lose the numbers battle at the same time, we will lose the political war against the Republicans.
I have no objection for people increasing the unity of the party, forcing the party bosses to take us more seriously. What I object to is the attitude that we can just carve away all our imperfections as a party, and not have to worry about where we stand in terms of majorities. That's thinking born of a time where you could actually get things done in a bipartisan way without a fucking fist-fight breaking out. Now we have to consider how we manage to get the upper hand in taking back the majority in Congress.