Yawr!
Let's get down to biz, my Daily Kos dawgs ...
I just flipped through the long front page posting from Markos and the five-hundred odd comments that followed. We talked about civil rights, principles and politics. We accused. We gabbed. We threatened to leave Daily Kos forever. We rolled our eyes. We snickered. We did whatever.
And then we had a realization:
My issues aren't more important than yours.
Sneak a peak below the fold for more.
I'm a middle-class, white male.
I stand in solidarity with women, minorities, the working class and the poor -- not because their issues are always my issues -- but because I believe that the only way for me to my issues dealt with is to make sure that their issues are dealt with, too.
This will strike you as sad, but my interests in the political game are -- to a great degree, but not exclusively -- economic. I care about jobs. I care about education. I care about health care costs. I care about retirement.
Because I'm a white guy and I live in a prosperous blue state, the world looks to me like this: If I can empower myself economically, the rest will follow. This is because there are relatively fewer societal and institutional barriers standing between me and what I want: Access to jobs, access to education, access to health care and access to a retirement with dignity.
Why, then, do I not cast my lot with the Republican Party, which has sold itself to much of America as the party of white, middle class men?
Because the evidence is there that -- although the Republican Party puts on a good show -- they do not deliver on issues that people like me care about. What's more, their blatant disregard for and even nasty dismissal of the issues of my fellow society members ... Well, that is just un-American and makes me, frankly, ill.
The only way that the middle class will get the jobs, the education, the health care and the retirement that they want is by holding firm in solidarity with women, minorities and the working class and the poor. We won't get it by trying to be "especially pleasing" to the masters.
And so ...
Kos's rant on the Rhode Island race and Langevin helped solidify two very important realizations for me:
1) This is one "compromise" that I am not entirely comfortable in making ... If the Democratic Party feels like women's issues -- and I know that abortion is not just a woman's issue -- are a chip that can be easily traded in against others in order to gain power ... Well, doesn't that mean that the Party would be willing to do the same with my issues?
I believe in solidarity because I think it is going to produce results. No, not a "litmus test." Solidarity. There is a difference ... Maybe there was a fine line that Langevin could have tread here. Did he try?
2) This is a good example of why I think contested primaries should be encouraged and not discouraged by entities like the DSCC and DCCC. Why not let Rhode Island voters figure out for themselves how they want to work with different kinds of Democrats in a race like this one?
If Party leaders buckled under pressure by women's groups and made it happen that Langevin would not run ... This is not so great either. Not so great at all.
And ... moving forward ...
The way to win a seat in Rhode Island is not to attack Democrats. The way to win is to attack the Republican incumbent. We need to look at all of the Republican Senators from blue states and make sure that their constituents know who they are voting for when they go to the polls.
If Rhode Islanders are going to the polls under the mistaken impression that Chafee is some sort of "moderate," they need to be informed that voting for him means voting for the Bush Administration agenda.