It has been four years since I wrote my ideas detailing the fallacy of what I called the Carville doctrine (http://www.dailykos.com/...). This way of thinking states that it is useless, nay harmful, to challenge established Democrats in the primary who are not being progressive enough, because, one, the challenger would never win the primary, and two, it would invariably throw the election to the Republican as the incumbent would have to waste valuable resources defending a doomed primary challenge. I had also argued that this way of thinking was problematic because it ensured that progressive ideas were always put on hold as Democrats tried to pander to the latest nonsensical right wing whim. I had said that a primary challenge was the only way to get these Democrats to actually live up to the progressive ideals outlined in the party platform that they purported to strongly believe in. Yes, splitting the vote like this would sometimes result in a Republican victory, but the upside was that you would only have to do it a few times before the establishment Democrats got the message and started toeing the line.
Without going into too much detail about the blowback I got for saying this, I think the comments from my fellow Democrats can be summed up nicely by what Rahm Emmanuel said when at an August 2009 meeting with the progressive community. They had said they were planning on running ads against some conservative Democrats who were hesitant to support President Obama’s health care reform efforts. Not a primary challenge per se, but the same general idea. Mr. Emmanuel’s highly educated and considered opinion?
“F**king retarded”
Well, I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit the topic four years down the road, now that we have the benefit of a bit of hindsight, and see if anything has changed the political fortunes of either party in these intervening years. I would love to say that the Democrats’ prospects have improved, but I would be lying. As everyone knows, quite the opposite has actually happened. The Republicans now have the house and have a fighting chance of winning control of the Senate in November.
Now the Democrats of course, did not really primary anyone. There was some talk about it, but no serious, systematic efforts were put together. Remember, the conventional wisdom is that to do so is “retarded”. But hold up now. What have the Republicans been up to? At the time I wrote my original article, I did not realize that Republicans would be smarter than Democrats in this regard (I know, I know, who woulda thunk?). Have they been wringing their hands and bleating about how “retarded” it is to primary a fellow Republican? Hell no! As a matter of fact, they have been primarying some of the most conservative Republicans right and left, saying they are not conservative enough. Has the Republican party started losing a lot of seats? Has there been a run on the Republican party at all? The short answer? No, not at all. In fact, for the most part, the result of these primarying efforts has been nothing short of
S-P-E-C-T-A-C-U-L-A-R!
Consider the following:
- The Tea Party now counts roughly 60 members in the house and senate,
- The Republicans now routinely block Presidential appointments of even Republican nominees,
- The right wing now shuts the government down on a whim and blocks nominees not because they are unqualified, but because Republicans do not like the simple IDEA of the position that the President is trying to fill.
- Established Republicans and many Democrats are falling all over themselves in their headlong rush to the right. Feinstein jumped all over Snowden when his revelations came out, knowing that her oversight, as head of the Intelligence Committee, had been all but a rubber stamp for NSA activities. When the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, admitted to lying (3 times) to congress (a felony) about NSA surveillance, there was NO serious effort to prosecute him,
- Right wingers cannot wait to increase payments to rich people, but have no qualms about reducing SNAP, Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment benefits; things that affect the most vulnerable in our country,
- President Obama puts Republicans into his cabinet instead of putting progressives in these positions. He is more concerned about appeasing the right wing than taking care of the middle and lower classes.
Even when the incumbent Republican did win, he or she was forced to the far right to fight the challenger off. Conservative Democratic politicians are so scared of these right-wingers and their nonsense, that instead of explaining to the people why this stuff IS nonsense, they try to “out right” the right. They have refused to embrace progressive values for the most part despite the groundswell of support from progressives that put Obama into office in the first place. They have denied this support despite the broad appeal and simple logic of progressive positions. We progressives support access to quality healthcare for all, a decent wage and education for every American. Climate change is hurting everyone and something needs to be done about it. NO widely held positions on the left are considered absurd or rely on tortured logic to defend. ALL of them rest on a solid, logical foundation. What to do? We have tried reasoning with these people. We have tried petitions and protests (think Occupy). The result has been a whole lot of nothing; compromise after compromise to appease the right. Was the ACA a good thing? Sure it was. But how much better would it have been if President Obama had started negotiations with single payer instead of the Bob Dole plan proposed a number of years earlier. As it was, he started with a right wing plan and then watered that down to get what we have now. We ended up with a plan that barely covers what it needs to.
The right has engineered and implemented the most successful political strategy arguably since a small group of rabble-rousers managed to persuade a bunch of other people to rebel against the most powerful nation on the planet back in 1776. But think about it. One of the most successful political strategies of all time was built by peddling an absurd group of ideologies. That’s how GOOD this strategy is. Radical conservatives have turned the whole political landscape to the right by championing such nonsense as:
- There should be no exceptions for an abortion even in the case of rape or incest because “If it’s a [forcible] rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” (former Republican U.S. Representative Todd Akin Aug. 2012),
- Evolution and the big bang theory are lies from the pit of hell (current U.S. Representative Paul Broun Sept. 2012),
- The President’s fist bump with Michelle is a terrorist gesture (Fox News June 2008),
- Vaccines cause mental retardation and endanger children’s lives (former Republican presidential candidate and current U.S. Representative Michelle Bachmann),
- Global climate change is a hoax or at the very least, not caused by humans (ALL Republicans, ALL the time).
Now let me propose a thought experiment for you.
What do you think would happen if when you mounted a primary challenge, what you were selling,
ACTUALLY MADE SENSE?
That’s a rhetorical question. The Democrats would run the table, that’s what would happen! Instead of constant battles with Republicans, as we have today, within ten years, the big arguments will be with the Green Party over how many solar panels every American would be required to install on their roof. The Republicans and the radical right would be relegated to a footnote in history.
So, who’s up for a bit of rabble-rousing? Occupy stopped short and decided mainly to just talk about change. It is time for Occupy 2.0. Let’s start primarying these conservative Democrats. Will we lose one or two battles on the way and throw the election to the Republicans on occasion? Sure, but remember, we already have concrete evidence the strategy will work in the long run. As an added bonus (not that we need it given the Republican success with the strategy), we’ve actually got common sense and logic on our side, and a platform that most Americans agree with.
Let’s get this done!