I've noted that there's a great deal of lingering anger in the Democratic Party. A lot of divisiveness, a lot of people searching for someone to blame for our lack of unity.
Some blame Dean, some blame Kerry, some blame the DLC, some blame Clark...and always the refrain of "You're the one dividing the party with your support of Kerry, of Dean, of Clark. If you'd just shut up and sit down, everything would be better".
Everyone has it wrong.
The source of the problem is simple: The Iraq War. That was the Democratic Party's tipping point. That was where it all started to go wrong.
The Iraq War.
That's what divided the party. Not between the hawks and the doves...we've always had that tension. No, it was more fundamental than that.
The Iraq War was a con job. It was a fake bill of goods. It was obvious from the beginning that Bush wanted his war and was -- at the very least -- stretching the truth to the breaking point to get it. Their statements stretched the boundaries of believability, and as renewed inspections brought more and more information to light, their statements moved from "laughable" to downright ludicrous.
When Bush's march to war became obvious -- when the thin pretext it was based upon became obvious -- millions took to the streets. There were protests (in America and worldwide) that made the Vietnam protests look tame.
This wasn't a march of pacifists and hippies, but US citizens appalled that our President would go to war so blithly...that he would ignore real threats in favor of knocking off some tinpot dictator for no good reason. Appalled that even then it was obvious that Iraq would almost certainly turn out for the worst, that in the end thousands or tens of thousands would die and for nothing at all.
We were pissed. Appalled. Angry. And no one stood up for us. We watched our leaders -- men and women elected for their principles and intelligence -- throw it all to the wind. We watched them jump on the war bandwagon in a frenzy. They voted based on polls rather than principle. They sold out their ideals for potential political game.
They didn't buy it anymore than we did. They weren't stupid, after all. Nope. They voted to support this war in the fond hopes it wouldn't become a club in 2006. They sold out their principles. They sold out American soldiers and Iraqi civilians for Congressional gain. (Which they didn't even get, of course. Unprincipled AND incompetent. Joy).
And that's when the party split. A good number of us wanted leaders, not followers. We knew that politicians compromise. We know they can't always take the principled stand. But goddammit, this was life or death. This was war. If there was ever a time to stand on principle, to stand up for what you believe -- this was it.
And they rolled over to the Bush juggernaut.
And we were disgusted. We were betrayed. And we were angry.
Poor Dean. It must have come as a shock to him when we first started pouring into his ranks. He wasn't exactly a dove (not even close) and "The Iraq War" wasn't even on his issue list. He just wanted to talk healthcare, to inject that into the Presidential debate.
And he found himself, by sheer virtue of being honest about the Iraq war at the point of some very pissed off Democrats.
Dean didn't split the party. Kerry didn't split the party. It's not Deanies, it's not the rank-and-file that split the party: It was the lack of leadership.
Dean was just a symbol. He was the first Democrat to come along and even vaguely mirror our feelings. The only one to seem as outraged as we were by the vast sellout of liberal principles. We're not talking compromise -- that's a fact of governance. No, we're talking even a refusal to contradict the worst excesses of the other side -- unless it was "safe" politically.
We wanted leaders, and he was the first to show up.
I watched Clark enter the race with a sinking suspicion that the "Powers that Be" of the Democratic Party were still appeasing. I watched Lieberman and Kerry get pushed by other big players and realized that no one saw the campaign as a chance to lead....just to neutralize some "Bush advantage". I saw Edwards and realized that "leadership" wasn't important anymore. It was all about the polls.
Don't get me wrong: Clark, Kerry, Edwards, even Lieberman are all good men. But none of them were running -- openly at least -- for the right reasons. "Edwards is a southerner, and we need one!". "Kerry is a war-hero, Bush can't attack that!". "Clark's a general, no one can claim he's weak on national security!".
I saw image exalted as the end all and be all of the Democratic party. Leadership, principle, vision....it was all an afterthought. Something tacked onto the end.
Less than two years after the biggest abdication of principle and leadership in the Democratic party, and the subject still didn't rate attention during the Presidential campaign.
The divide in the party is the result of a lack of leadership. No Dean, not Kerry, not Clark, not any one politician. We're hungry for real leaders. We're hungry for candidates who stand firm on principle, who do something more than merely watch the polls and trim their sails accordingly.
We want substance over image. It took a literal life-and-death vote to make it clear, but there's no denying it: Right now, the Democratic party squashes or marginalizes everyone who dares to lead. They are ignored, insulted, pushed down, blacklisted, and barred from the discourse...unless they're lucky enough to have a powerbase outside the party.
The Iraq vote was a failure of leadership. Too few Democrats stood on principle. Too many sold out.
And as Iraq continues to deteriorate, as George Bush continues to show us the price of cooperation with his agenda, we just become angrier and angrier. Because not only was taking a principled stand the morally right thing to do, it turns out it was the pragmatic thing to do as well.
I think nothing is as emblematic of the disconnect, of the lack of leadership, than Dean's statement on Saddam's capture...and the rest of the party's response. He said that while it was a good thing Saddam was captured, it would ultimately make no difference in Iraq. Lieberman claimed -- and the others quickly piled on -- that Dean must be in a "spider-hole of denial".
But he was right. And Lieberman et al knew it, even then. They placed politics ahead of principle, ahead of reality....they refused to lead and chose to follow.
And we're sick of it. We want leaders. Real leaders. We want substance over image. We want policy over polls. We want principles, dammit.
We're willing to compromise. We always have been. We get called idealists, hippies, pacifists...all sorts of nasty names (and not just by the GOP, but by fellow Democrats). We fell in line behind a very centrist Dean. (Kuninich is where those unwilling to compromise went).
We're not idealists. We accept pragmatism and compromise. We just ask that you lead us there, and don't simply drift along behind the polls.