The politick thing for smarmy pundits and wannabe peacemakers alike to spout off sanctimoniously these days is, "Well, Democrats have the poverty of riches -- two superlative candidates!" Most often, this is offered up as an apologia for the protracted bloodletting or the vicious, personal attacks emanating from the spin machine of a particular camp. Not only is this an insidious, if not downright cheeky, argument which is most often proffered gratuitously by those with a material interest in maintaining the status quo, but it is simply wrong-headed.
The current conflict in our Party is not about policy and it is not about personality. It is more profound than that.
Are we Democrats to be held captive by Blue Dogs and pragmatists who insist that "winning is the only thing, by any means, by all costs", or do we experience a reformation and a revival of the idealistic Progressive spirit which brought us the New Deal and the Roosevelt Coalition?
We know, and the record indicates, that the Clinton faction is very adept at gaming the system for their own personal ends. What they have always failed miserably to demonstrate, however, is any kind of governing vision. What replaces it, in their stead, is a nomenclatura of Begalas, McAuliffes and Lewises, apparatchiks who claim all of the privileges and prerogatives of power based solely on patronage and irrespective of platform or constituency.
Well, I say Enough! Hillary's supporters may indeed be good people, but Hillary herself is a painted sepulcher whose time has come and gone. We simply cannot, as a Party or a Nation, afford the luxury of another four-year deferment from resolution of our pressing issues.
This much is certain: If HRC is nominated and elected (which is a bigh "if"), four years from now we will still be crusading for national health insurance, rollback of troops from Iraq, and protection of American workers. Nothing will change...ever.
And the Democratic Party, which stands on the very precipice of regaining its status as the majoritarian national party (which a good many of us have worked for thirty years to realize), will toss away the thousands of young people who cast their first votes as Democrats, swept up in a grassroots movement which had the potential for a once-in-a-lifetime electoral realignment, for the sake of a Restoration administration with little potential for growth or greatness.
One has only to remember the 90s. It is only in contrast to the absolute collapse of our institutions under the Bush Administration that this storybook nostalgia for the 90s has been allowed to propagate unchallenged. It was a time of economic displacement for many, troublesome conflicts abroad, stifling political gridlock at home, and no resolution of fundamental institutional problems like Social Security solvency, national health insurance, or civil rights protection for gays and women in uniform.
As John Edwards put it so aptly:
"The trouble with nostalgia is that you tend to remember what you liked and forget what you didn't," Edwards continued. "It's not just that the answers of the past aren't up to the job today -- it's that the system that produced them was corrupt."
Oh, it were a regular freakin' Camelot, it were.
Hillary begins her morning devotion with the divine ejaculation, "Thank God for George W. Bush." Without him, she'd be having difficult holding a seat on the Chappaqua city council.
So many times winning is cited as the exclusive criterion for success. But politics is not football and Vince Lombardi has been dead for forty years. There are some things much more important than winning a single election, especially if that election is won at the cost of a generation or at the expense of integrity and truth.
But I am not ready to concede either this election or the next generation of elections. Times have changed and America is ready for something different.
So, don't give me that Party Unity pep talk. For some of us, this is about the soul of the Party and its return to the people it was created to represent.