Things to bear in mind as the Electoral Season starts to heat up

Molly Ivins wrote a column on Friday (available at http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1304) that details why she can't support Hillary Clinton in 2008 (or ever, for that matter) for president. And it's not for any of the popular reasons; the most often cited being that she's too divisive and would never be able to win a national election. No, instead she withholds her support because Hillary is, in her mind (and quite correctly so, in my opinion), not a liberal.

I've been saying a lot of these things going back to 2002, if not earlier. I got so sick and tired of listening to people talk about how you have to pander to the "center", that "radical hippie" ideas like national health care and environmental protection wouldn't win for the Democrats. That we have to accept mealy-mouthed mushy-middle politicians in the key of bland, like John Kerry, because they're "electable".

And that was the crime of the 2004 campaign; the last two or three weeks leading up to Iowa, when the party establishment trucked in Kerry's swift-boat mates and had them talk about what a great leader Kerry was under fire, while the party's establishment was putting out stories about Dean being "crazy", "unhinged", "too radical" and "unelectable". The kingmakers made the king they wanted, and did it at the last possible moment. The "Scream Heard Everywhere Except In The Room Where It Occured" only cemented the image that the machine was laying out. But sane, deliberate politicians like Tom Harkin don't endorse loose cannons as a matter of course.

In 2002 many Democrats who were up for re-election were faced with a choice in the month before the elections. The choice was whether or not to support the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Of those Democrats who faced re-election to the Senate that fall, only one, Paul Wellstone, voted against the resolution. Senator Wellstone delivered impassioned words in the well in opposition to the resolution. When he cast his vote against, many pundits were calling it "political suicide". But a funny thing happened in the week between that vote and Wellstone's tragic death. He soared in the polls! The people of Minnesota saw their senator taking a strong stand against war in Iraq, and he was being rewarded. Other senators in tightly contested seats who supported the resolution, such as Jean Carnahan of Missouri, lost their chairs. One would think that the clear message of the 2002 election was that when faced with two options that so closely mirror one another, there is no reward in making yourself more like the other guy; instead you should be making yourself more distinct.

Ivins has captured the precise problem with the Democrats; the struggle for the party's soul that has been waged for the last 22 years, since Fritz got trounced by a Reagan who was so capable of mystifying the people with lies about welfare queens popping bonbons while watching their stories and collecting thousands of dollars of government money every month that they are only now awakening to the reality. A reality where now seniors and disabled people are suddenly finding themselves unable to refill their prescriptions for January because the "automatic enrollment" they were promised by the government never happened, or their drug cards don't get delivered because the Medicare computers don't have a proper address for them.

People are dying at home and abroad because of Bush. And we have a faction in the party who believes that the only way to win is to become more like him??? Are you insane? I'd like to think that Americans aren't ready to throw their grandparents under the wheels of the bus just so they can get theirs. I'd like to think that we prize all of our citizens, regardless of ability. And I think that the majority of Americans are nothing like Bush. And that the majority would like to actually have a choice. A choice who inspires hope, and a belief that things will get better for more than just those at the top.

It's unfortunate that we utterly destroyed the one person who provided that vision in 2004, and that we relegated the next best option to a role that would have earned him less than a bucket of warm spit. It's unfortunate that Al Gore waited until 2002 to find the tone and the message that he needed in 2000. It's unfortunate that when Hillary makes her annual radical comment on MLK Day that the right manipulates the media into treating her like she's some unshaven Vassar co-ed rallying for a Marxist-Leninist state in America.

I understand that some of you who read this are truly centrist. That you don't believe in the social agenda of the far right, but don't want the "rampant" taxing and social spending that is supported by the left. And perhaps we need a strong centrist party, though a three-party system will never succeed for long in a system like ours. It's too thoroughly rigged to support only two parties, either fer or agin a particular course. So for those in the centre, that means that you have to make a choice as to what is more distasteful in your mind; government interference in the private lives of private citizens, limiting the contracts they may enter into on the basis of something as silly as sexual orientation (and I'm not just talking marriage here; I'm also talking about renting apartments, getting jobs, adopting children, etc.; all of which have "sexual orientation" as a legitimate grounds for discrimination in some states), or are higher taxes and social spending that may be exploited by 1 in every 10,000 people who receive it? That is the essence of being in the middle, you have to make hard decisions about which of the extremes is least distasteful; the lesser of two evils, if you will.

It was very encouraging to read this morning about Reverend Sharpton speaking to a gathering of black religious leaders and telling them that it's their responsibility to support gay rights. That it is a matter of civil rights, no matter how much they want to hide from that fact. That the erosion of civil rights for one group can lead to the erosion of civil rights for all. It is a shame that Sharpton had hitched his wagon to Tawana Brawley. Certainly he may not have the national public stature he does today if he had not, but too many people are willing to remember that sin against him 20+ years later. He really is the greatest social crusader on the left at this point in time, and most people still hold Tawana against him in the same what that the Right likes to dredge up Sen. Robert Byrd's Klan involvement, and his votes against the Civil Rights Act, even though these things are buried well in his past. It's as if you cannot grow as a person, learn from your mistakes, and be a worthy public service because of your past mistakes. This attitude has cost the Democrats a strong, authoritative voice on the social ills of this country.

With regards to the Democrats, it's long since time that the left took the party back, and the country as well. Unfortunately, I think that the left are too busy working two jobs just to make ends meet. They don't have time for the effort necessary to win the day. And this is the insidious outcome of Reaganism; backing the working class into a position of work-weary inaction.