Two days ago, I wrote a well-received diary here compairing the passionate intensity of Dave From Queens,with thatof other famous stormy petrels from Queens: Republicans David Horowitz, the John Sununus, father and son, Governor and Senator, Justice John Scalia, and Democrats Mario and Andrew Cuomo, Governor and Attorney General, and Geraldine Ferraro.
I have since learned that Attorney General Eric Holder also comes from Queens, and that Dave's biggest media hit was generating a national controversy of sorts over whether or not ESPN dubbed in applause when President George W. Bush showed up at a sporting event, and received the usual reaction towards politicians at such events: loud boos. Dave's single-handed creation of what might be called Applausegate places him among the great political pranksters of modern times, right up there with Richard Nixon's nemesis Dick Tuck.
Dave's death of a heart attack at the age of 37 will hopefully be taken by some here as a caution to lose weight, to exercise carefully, and be tested by stress tests and other measurements if one, at any age, is overweight and overstressed. The Facebook tribute to him says that Dave would be happy if his premature death led some others to avoid their own premature deaths.
Dave worked for compensation as much as seven days a week as a lawyer and as a teacher of gifted children, and his prodigous political output helped keep him busy when he was not working.
He was clearly a man who straddled many worlds: from Queens, he grew up in more upscale Long Island; he first taught underprivileged city kids, and then shifted to teaching the gifted; he went to law school while teaching full time; he clearly resisted the seductions that law school offers to serve the powerful at high hourly fees and annual income.
While he enjoyed the give and take of national politics, his occupational preferences were in the area of serving others as a lawyer or teacher.
Dave's exemplification of political passion is at once similar to, and different from, the passion shown by many others here. He clearly strove to be a public figure of sorts, and set the ambitious goal of totally marginalizing the Republican right, confronting both its advocates and those like Joe Lieberman and Harold Ford whose nuanced positions accorded some legitimacy to the radical right.
About 60 years ago, Eric Hoffer, a self-proclaimed longshoreman with a library card, wrote the classic political science bestseller The True Believer. Hoffer's True Believer seems to be found today on Republican websites rather than here, because The True Believer was someone who echoed the thoughts of others much more than he or she generated new thoughts. Dave clearly always had his thinking cap on.
Political passion, like romantic passion, can wax and wane over time, and shift its target in different directions. Vivian Gornick, a sympathetic oberserver, wrote a book entitled The Romance of American Communism in which she tried to capture the political love affair of her subject's lives. Dave clearly loved politics and loved both the communities that engaged in it and the people who needed the political system's help; his mainstream progressive politics had all of the romance of the attraction to Communism of Gornick's subjects.
Some observers of the blogosphere will one day seek to monitor all of Dave's writings, to try to get a clearer sense of the man behind the flood of words. They will likely find a man who considered himself an underdog, and worked and wrote in the interests of all underdogs. They certainly will find a man whose hatreds of the center-right mainstream in which he found himself led to his bold determination to create a new mainstream.
Political passion does not guarantee one wealth, health, love or a good life. It can, however, change the direction of our country. So much of the rituals of our politics--deference, politeness, friendly conversation even among political foes, selection of leaders by seniority, selection of candidates by name recognition, etc.--is designed to take the edge out of politics, to make the political choices we face seem less urgent and less compelling than they often are.
Dave was an antidote to the superficial consensus building of friendship, deference, and mutual accomodation. His strong passions cried out for help and justice. He was part prophet, part prankster, part fighter, part friend.
His spirit was encapsulated by men who lived far before his birth. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that "A man must take part in the action and passion of his times, at the risk of having been judged not to have lived." And Theodore Roosevelt said, "It is not the critic who counts, but the man in the arena, who knows the great passions, the great enthusiasms, who errs and falls short again and again, but who is never found in the ranks of those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
The Daily Kos has served as a great bridge between the world of criticism and the world of the arena. Thanks to Dave and so many others, that bridge gets stronger and stronger with time and works to transform both the Democratic Party and the country.
The political passions of others may tire us, frustrate us or infuriate us, but hopefully they spur us to think and act with better intelligence and greater understanding than we would otherwise have had. Political passions can produce odd couples, taking opposite sides on obscure or contoversial issues, but united against the outside world in the belief that the battleground on which they fight is of vital importantance.
Political passion may be high volume of low volume. One of my favorite low volume men of political passion was my friend and colleague Emil Mrkonic, who cast a key vote in getting me first elected to the House Democratic Pennsylvania legislative leadership more than 19 years ago.
Emil gladly accepted dinner invitations from lobbyists if they would go to "my favorite restaurant," McDonald's. Disturbed at the the number of barren lawns in his working class district, Emil bought up seeds for flowers to give to constituents,shunned open events, but was in his McKeesport office seven days a week to meet with constituents. He avoided popular culture, not even knowing who the Beatles were. The local party machine tried to oust him, and was joined by the business community, organized labor, and both of the major newspapers serving his district.
"How can you possibly win Emil?" a colleage asked him. "Even groups that fight each other are united against you!" "I will win because the people are for me," Emil said defiantly and prophetically.
Dave From Queens never ran for office, but the people he knew here and the people he knew in law school and the people he befriended throughout his life were for him. They recognized the essential goodness in his extravagant passion, and took pride in knowing a man who cared about them, and cared about increasing the amount of sanity in an all too often mad, mad world.