peacocks and lilies

If you wish to know of your past, look to your present circumstances; if you wish to know of your future, look to your present actions. ~Buddhist Proverb

Reforming the Democratic Party

We now know the Democratic Party is sexist, and that they’re currently appealing to constituencies that agree with and practice that sexism with them. They can get away with this sexism, or so they think, because women fractured under the weight of the backlash, instead of unifying. We cannot make that mistake again.

After about 1980, it was perfectly okay for young women to denigrate the term “feminist,” to claim they never wanted to be one, even as they reaped the rewards that identified them as such. We allowed these young women to lie to themselves, and we need to stop doing that. Choice being a primary value of the liberal, they may ultimately choose to continue to refute and criticize feminism, but we can challenge them every time they parrot the words of sexist culture. We are still free to tell the truth.

But of course sexism is not the only corruption that needs to be addressed in the Democratic Party. And it doesn’t begin or stop with what happened during this primary season, either-Michigan, Florida, Caucus corruption, the RBC, the media and the whole ugly spring and summer, the sham roll call, or the sham coronation-as much and enough as all of that is.

We have been misled for a long time now, because of assumptions we made in the wake of the Civil Rights era and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and because rhetoric from Democratic leadership has reinforced these hasty assumptions. Democrats did do a very brave thing by embracing and legislating Civil Rights for black folks. I applaud their courage 44 years ago in doing so. I don’t think anyone, save a true racist, would deny that it was the ethical thing to do.

But in typical American fashion, we hastily assumed that meant all their values had changed, when that wasn’t the case at all (a glut of young, naïve boomers did not help there, either). They were just trading constituencies even then: Blacks for Southern whites. (And there were reasons for that, too, and another miscalculation based on bad rhetoric.) What happened after that is that other minorities saw what happened, and tried to petition the Democrats for relief too. Word got out, as they say in out here in the Midwest.

But in many ways the Democratic Party remained and continues to be the Party of Tammany Hall, Mayor Daley, and Dixiecrats. They’re still about financial rackets, electoral corruption, and demonizing “the other.” Only now, “the other” is the entire conservative sphere, a much more palatable judgment to make in a politically correct climate. The financial rackets are K-Street, which they took over after gaining power in 2006 (lobbyist threw big parties for Democrats the night after they won, and continue to throw them). In some ways, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have become a two-headed Tom Delay. But lobbying was a cash cow they fed on throughout the 70s and 80s too, if you’re willing to do the research (Remember the Post Office Scandal of the 80s?), in addition to going along with Reagan’s deficits because of the earmarks it won them. Sound familiar?

If you have any doubt, just look up any random Democrat at OpenSecrets. Then ask yourself why they haven’t done anything with all of those promises they made in 2006 when they were asking for your vote. Look up their records, both individually and collectively. They will say they tried, that Bush wouldn’t allow it, but that is a lie, a novel, as Somerby would say. They never even tried for important things like re-crafting or revoking the Patriot Act, restoring FISA, or to stop funding the war, and they took impeachment of war criminals off the table before they ever took power. There’s a word for what Democrats have been these last 8 years: complicit.

Do not mistake your affection for the Clinton years to be an actual reflection of the party leadership at any time in the last 40 years. William Jefferson Clinton was an anomaly in the Democratic Party because he was an outsider who won. As I’ve said before, the only way Clinton won in 1992 was by taking on and smashing to pieces the major power players (mostly corrupt; Biden, Kerry, Casey Sr. etc included.) They hated him for his pedigree (or lack thereof) before they ever met him. But he fought them because he cared about the American people, and he knew he could govern better than Republicans at the time, or any contemporaneous Democrat standing. Judging by his results, he was right.

If you’re like me, you feel as if you have new eyes and ears after all that has happened this year. We should use them. I bought the Democrats’ rhetoric for years. I believed it was the party of equality, of justice, of good ole American values, as our forefathers understood them. But I was wrong. I was trained in sloppy rhetoric all my life, so I could not immediately recognize the lies. It took the curtain being pulled back this year to expose all the chicanery behind the scenes. When you begin to dig, you find that the sexism and corruption have always been there. You begin to see how Democrats even now use Tammany Hall-style rhetoric to instill fear in their constituencies-they just no longer use butcher knives or guns or gangs of threatening thugs. Instead they use gangs of threatening words. What the Obama campaign did to long-serving black congresspersons this year is just one example of such Tammany Hall-style bullying.

The New York Times, for example, opened its front page on February 15th to report an utterly inaccurate and possibly wishful story that Representative John Lewis of Georgia–a genuine hero of the civil rights movement, a courageous voice for integration, and a stalwart Clinton supporter–had announced that he had decided that, in his role as superdelegate, he would vote for Obama. Lewis quickly called the story false, although he added that he was wrestling with his conscience over whether to switch. Meanwhile, the press generally ignored a report, confirmed by all involved, that Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., had warned one of Clinton’s unshakable black supporters, Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, that he’d better line up behind Obama. Jackson, once again playing the role of the Obama campaign’s “race man” enforcer, posed a leading question: “Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House?” Black congressmen were threatened to fall or line or face primary challenges. “So you wake up without the carpet under your feet. You might find some young primary challenger placing you in a difficult position,” Jackson said. Yet for the Obama-inspired press corps, it was the Clintons who were playing the race card. “The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up,” wrote Frank Rich, Obama’s vehement advocate in the New York Times.

If you were to think about it, I’m sure you could identify other examples.

Reforming the Republican Party

If you haven’t already, right about now you’re saying to yourself, “Bu…But Anna Belle, it’s the Republicans that have been corrupt these last 8 years, beginning with a stolen election, and culminating in a war of choice and the loss of Civil Liberties.” I won’t deny you’re right. You are. The people currently in power are and have been very corrupt motherfuckers. And they call themselves Republicans, and Republicans elected them. All true.

But my argument relies on the Constitution, observation, and reflections on reality while considering history. The considered conclusion I have come to is that the parties are, ultimately, no different. You don’t honesty think Bush could have done so much evil if it weren’t for perfectly compliant Democrats, Hillary Clinton originally among them, do you? It’s not like Republicans had a lock on Congress. Democrats did exist. Did they form a tight block to prevent any of the malfeasance that has happened the last 8 years? No. Did they often vote in favor of legislation that we, the people, screamed for them to oppose? Yes, they did.

But what about that election in 2000? Well, we now have a stolen primary in 2008 on the Democratic side, so what to do, right? How should you structure your criteria in order to determine how to vote in that case? This is more complicated than it sounds. If I may, I’d like to play gadfly here for a minute.

Consider this: Many Hillary Clinton supporters like to play apologist for her AUMF vote, based on the political climate at the time. (By the way, check out all the Democrats on that “yea” list. Memory refreshment is good.) If I had a nickel for every time I heard some Hillary supporter say, Well, she had to vote for the AUMF. Her constituency is of New York, and besides! Consider the political climate at the time! Have you forgotten 9/11? I wouldn’t have had to fundraise for Denver. (Thank you donors!)

And I do understand her situation. But so do I understand John McCain in that same context. His record prior to Bush coming into office was one of bipartisanship. He bucked his party often, and was roundly considered to be of the old-school of conservative thought. If I am to have sympathy for Democrats because of that climate, I must also consider if a Republican deserves that same sympathy. The climate was one of ruthlessness toward and on all sides, and it really doesn’t matter in the end who started it. So to offer or not offer that sympathy to both sides are the only intellectually consistent positions to take.

Ultimately, though, reform doesn’t happen in a vacuum. All of this partisanship has only caused rancor among the voters while the power players rob the country blind. Maybe we have been short-sighted about it all. Maybe change happens more effectively and more rapidly from the inside. (Not that I’m going to register Republican or anything. I’m maintaining my Independent status.) It will certainly happen more quickly if we aren’t vilifying each other.

I realize I am making a bet, but please know that any voter is making a bet voting for either McCain or Obama. The truth is, politicians no longer campaign on how they’ll govern, because they have found more effective ways to win, and because there are no ethics in Washington. The two Parties wield absolute power, and it has corrupted absolutely. So we really have no idea how either of them will govern, though we have more to go on with McCain because he has an actual record.

Furthermore, because I’ve shed the orthodoxy of the left, I do not think all Republicans, even all elected Republicans, are evil. One of my Senators, Senator Lugar, is a prime example of un-evil Republican Senator. Weak? Maybe. Evil? No. His co-Senator? Evan Bayh. You tell me the difference, other than age, between those two.

IF the parties are not to be trusted at this time, then the only acceptable solution is divided government, and populist reform in the meantime.

We will not move any closer to party alternatives until we have more diversity in power. White males always have so much to protect (sorry white guys) that they will never govern effectively for other constituencies. Everybody (being human) governs from their own limited point of view. Until we get significant numbers of women and minorities in office, a third party vote is a waste. The white power structure will always find a way to defeat any 3^rd party that comes close to breaking through.

Finally, I want to comment that, unlike many PUMAs/DCSs, this is not about Hillary in 2012 for me. It’s okay if it is for you, though. It’s not about that for me because I’m interested in the radical idea of shedding orthodoxy in the political realm, so I’m perfectly okay if Palin runs before or against Hillary. I will make my choice based on the way the candidates have governed, just like I made my Democratic primary choice on that same criterion. I also don’t think Clinton will run in 2012, though I have no magic crystal ball or anything. Just a gut feeling. I think she’s well into Al Gore territory by now.

Other posts in this series:

Voting for the Republican Ticket, Part 1