Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Now in one sense it's easy to see the flaw in this logic. To use my favorite analogy, it's as if you were fighting off two thugs who are trying to mug you and also trying to do each other out of the spoils. It would be silly to reproach you, every time you land a punch on one of them, by saying you're helping the other one.

But that's hardly the end of the story. What's interesting to me is why people would choose to live under conditions of such sharp intellectual confinement -- a mental walnut shell in which the entire infinite space of political possibilities reduces to a modulo-two remainder, For The Democrats or For The Republicans.

In fact the larger space is not only uninhabitable, it's un-mappable. The structural symbiosis of the two parties in keeping the rich rich and the poor poor, can't be discussed, because that might suggest that one ought to do something other than just sing one's appointed part in the Decani or Cantoris choir -- bray like a donkey or bellow like an elephant, da capo ad infinitum.

It's an end-of-history theory, in a way: there are Republicans and there are Democrats, there is nothing else and there can never be anything else. No end to this state of affairs can be envisioned, because no steps that might end it can be entertained. You can put your chips on Red or Black. You can't kick over the table or even walk away from it, and you certainly can't keep your chips in your pocket. Change is ruled out of order and historical contingency has become immanent necessity.

Now I can imagine why a person might fail to realize that things could be different than they are. But what I can't quite grasp is how a person could be uncomfortable with things as they are and yet indignantly reject the idea that they could be otherwise.

Usually I think it's a little unfair to write a post arguing with a comment -- it's like a guy with a megaphone arguing with somebody without one. But I'll make an exception for our energetic commenter John, who writes:

Income for the poorest of the poor DID go up under Clinton.

Clinton DID reverse the gag order.

Bush DID reinstate the gag order.

Incomes for the poorest DID go down under Reagan, Bush the first, and Bush the 2nd.

Bush DID appoint Alito and Roberts and the Republicans DID approve them 100%, just like they SAID they would.

What John is doing here is what I call "scorecarding." He's totting up what the Republicans have done and what the Democrats have done, and not surprisingly, he finds that the Republicans are way, way ahead in the loathesomeness derby; the Democrats are a furlong behind and it's all they can do just to stay there. Well, of course. No one doubts that the Republicans have been leading the charge for quite a while, and the Democrats meekly trailing along behind them.

Where John goes wrong, I think, is in thinking that the scorecard tells us all we need to know. To me, this is like noticing that there is a cinderblock six feet over your head, without also registering that fact that it's falling. In other words, if you eliminate the element of motion from your picture of reality, you are apt to make some bad decisions.

So one of the things I think we need to ask ourselves is, what's the direction of motion. And if we decide that the direction is a bad one then we have to ask whether our participation isn't helping to move it along. As I've argued elsewhere, I do think that "lesser-evil" votes for the Democrats help propel this this Alfonse-and-Gaston rightward staggerdance the two parties have been doing for the last thirty-odd years.

John's "scorecarding" view of politics also excludes, I think, considerations of structure and function. We've all seen those tables of what substances a human body contains -- so many cents' worth of water, of salt, of calcium, of iron, etc. But of course just tabulating the ingredients doesn't tell you much about how a human body is built, or how it functions. Similarly, the scorecard doesn't tell you how the Democratic Party is controlled or operated, or to what ends it works.

Like the modulo-two view of political space, discussed in a previous post, the scorecarding technique represents, I think, an odd kind of wilful blindness to aspects of reality that are in fact supremely important.

My refusal to vote for a Democrat reflects my assessment of what the party is about, what it's engaged in doing, who it's answerable to. Yeah, the Democrats may be Wilmer to the Republicans' Fat Man -- but they're both after the bird, and they're both thugs.

The wider public .... clearly aren't buying "John Kerry" or "Al Gore" at this point. A recent New York Times poll has both of them ranking below the worst president in history. Kerry is at 26 percent, and former vice president and presidential candidate Gore is at 28 percent. George W. Bush is pulling in at 31 percent.

The Democrats … don't want to be anything other than better caretakers.... They don't try to imagine a fundamentally better world, because they actually believe that there isn't one. They're buffoons straight out of Voltaire, running on a platform of "Our mild improvements to this best of all possible worlds."

All this said, I still want to be pragmatic. And remember, I expect to remain a Democratic Party cheerleader. I know it will be good if there's a Democratic House majority decided on the eve of this Nov. 2, even if it's clear they don't have the capacity to do more than whisper in the graveyard. Because even a President Hillary Clinton still could mean health care -- for millions who don't have it.

... I'm sure that Billmon's a nice guy. I'd probably even like Kos if I hadn't been privy to his bullshit anti-choice sexism elsewhere. That's the worst of it. They are nice people, and being nice (and solvent) enough to placate the Reids and Deans and so forth is what it's all about for these folks. This is what they think winning is.

Sure, the top Dems manage to shaft them over and over again even when they do win-- despite the usual rancid mix of cowardice, malice, cluelessness and ineptitude. ("Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes," as J. Alva would probably say if he were here.) But who cares ? It's like a bizarro universe full of rabid sports fans who genuinely think they *are* the team;Who love the team owners more and more every time they fuck things up; Who excuse every nasty peccadillo the top player avoids legal trouble over; Who snap up and proudly display every useless, shoddy, ugly piece of merchandise with the team logo on it. Anything to avoid acknowledging that ticket prices are outrageous, the team sucks eggs, and while the stadium looks as imposing and glitzy as ever, the neighborhood around it is falling apart.

If Gore was president, money and candy would rain down from the sky while happy frou-frou elves go door-to-door delivering free Ben & Jerry's and trees would sprout ipods and Tommy brand jeans and fruit snacks! Palistinians and Israelis would lay down their arms and start forming ultra-cool ska bands!

Then Al would raise John Lennon and George Harrison from the dead, re-unite The Beatles and they'd all go on a world tour together performing all new songs John wrote while he was dead. And we'd all get free tickets and there'd be complimentary champagne and Doritos and...and...fruit snacks and stuff!

Cars would run on grass clippings and get 6,000 miles to the Hefty Super-Strong Lawn & Garden bag! MTV would start running music videos again! The Giants would win the pennant! Acne, hives and the heartbreak of psorisis would all be things of the past, if only Al Gore had been elected.

But noooooo! Thanks to that evil bastard Ralph Nader, terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon! Then he started the war in Iraq and sent his evil 3rd party minions to murder babies in the streets of Bagdad! And he stole all of John Kerry's votes and hid them deep beneath the ocean in his super-secret underwater lair! It's all true! I read it on the Daily Kos!

Not only that, but I found out that Ralph Nader is an...an arab! It's true! And Nader makes TV stations broadcast crappy reality shows! And he makes me wear a seatbelt and brush my teeth and take out the garbage in Hefty Super-Duper Strong Kitchen bags!

And that's why I vote democrat!

Money quote:

"Enter 'the colonel.' At least that's what Weaver's aides always call him. In addition to his military record -- the Weaver Web site says he knows "what it means to defend our freedom on foreign soil" -- he prominently mentions his faith (Roman Catholic) and his family (11 grandchildren). In a campaign headquarters a stone's throw from a mobile-home dealership where doublewides are on sale, Weaver looks fit and angry enough to jump back into the trenches at any moment. He boasts that Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Weaver is the only Democratic candidate who intimidates him."

Saints preserve us....

I don't think so. Oh, they'd love to wield power if it fell into their laps -- as they hope it will do next month, thanks to the almost incredible blundering of the other side. And if there were some risk-free way of gaining power -- some Big Red Button they could push -- of course they'd push it.

But these are daydreams. The real, workaday, nine-to-five job of any Democrat is to hold on to what he's got, and risk it as little as possible. And I think that once we really take this idea in, it has some pretty important implications.

The conventional poli-sci picture of parties as vote-maximizing enterprises is deeply rooted in our brains. Reportage on what passes for "politics" in this country concentrates on who's getting votes and how they're getting 'em. Politics seems to be as much about votes as basketball is about baskets.

The difference, of course, is that in basketball, if you lose, you lose. But in our Byzantine, oligarchic political system, the losing party doesn't really lose -- and in fact, even the losing candidates often enough don't really lose either. They may have to play second fiddle for a while, but they're still in the orchestra -- and still getting paid, one way or another. The losing party may have to content itself with a smaller share of the goodies, and less distinguished tables in their favorite restaurants, but they're still in the game. Losing candidates may have to drop back to a cushy civilian job provided by some corporate patron -- don't throw me in that briar patch, Brer Fox -- or, horrors, serve a term in a think tank. But they're still employed.

They'd rather be congressmen, or senators, of course -- and once they become congressmen, or senators, or governors, or state legislators, or mayors, they'll do almost anything to stay in office.

In other words, they're structurally risk-averse. They won't bet their jobs on a strategy that might help the party gain power. Party, schmarty -- as long as the party stands behind me, I could care less about a majority in the House. And since the party's General Will is little more than the arithmetic sum of these individual wills, then the party's drive for power is feeble at best. The party is its individual time-serving careerists writ large, a Leviathan aggregated from a myriad of nonentities, like Hobbes' famous allegory.

If the party were about taking power, you'd think they would figure out that what they're doing is not working -- that they're failures. But they don't see it in that light. Every incumbent occupies his seat because his strategy worked for him; every incumbent is in fact a success story, and you don't change a successful formula.

That's why the only way to make them change is to make the strategy stop working. As long as they get a pellet when they press the triangulation lever, they'll keep pressing it. If they get an electric shock instead, they'll stop. A donkey is at least as smart as a lab rat.

Which brings me to my point: defeat is the only electric shock that will get the donkey's attention. And I mean defeat in the general election, caused by a "spoiler" third party, which is the only effectual kind.

Primary defeats, like Lieberman's, while satisfying, are more difficult to accomplish. Typically there is only one "progressive" challenger, so it's a head-to-head race -- no three-way splits. And then, of course, the only people who come out for primaries are the party faithful. And usually, the challenger is not a millionaire like Ned Lamont.

Moreover, even when primary challenges are successful, they don't necessarily succeed, as in the Connecticut debacle, where in spite of his primary defeat, Lieberman appears to be on his way back to Washington.

But when a third party really makes a long-standing party strategy stop working, then something has got to give.

Consider the fate of New York state's Republican party:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=ahhmzMvGwvfk

The seeds of the Republicans' current malaise were sown under [governor Nelson] Rockefeller, observers say. With Tammany's demise, state politics shifted from issues of reform versus machine to a more ideological focus. Rockefeller's brand of liberal Republicanism, increasingly out of step with a national party turning more conservative, began drawing more criticism even in New York.

The tensions boiled over in 1970, when Republican U.S. Senator Charles Goodell, appointed by Rockefeller after the assassination of Democrat Robert F. Kennedy, was defeated by James Buckley, who ran on the third-party Conservative ticket....

Since 1974, a year after Rockefeller left Albany, no Republican has won statewide without the support of the tiny Conservative Party, whose power lies in its ability to split the conservative vote if Republicans nominate someone not to its liking.

As I've said before, I personally would prefer to see the Democratic Party vanish as an institution. But even if you're not willing to go quite that far -- if your goal is to turn the Democratic Party into a real, "progressive" party, rather than to destroy it -- then your immediate strategy has to be the same as mine. You've got to shock the donkey, not reward it for plodding on in its well-trodden path.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20061019-122140-2701r.htm

Conservative voters likely to stay home
By Ralph Z. Hallow

The Republican Party can stave off defeat with a strong turnout on Nov. 7, party leaders are telling the faithful -- but they are finding it tough to sell that message to some disillusioned conservative voters.

"The message hasn't gotten across because a lot of people are sick and tired of thinking the only reason for going to the polls is to vote for the Republicans because they are lesser of two evils," said Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council (FRC), a leading social conservative group.

"Conservatives aren't motivated to come out, is what I'm finding," said conservative campaign consultant Rick Shaftan, who is based in Sparta, N.J. "They see no reason to re-elect the people who are in office."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15712.htm

The Cumulative Effect of Lesser Evils
By Charles Sullivan

...during the 2006 mid term elections... a wave of euphoria swept across the nation and lively celebrations ensued. Millions of naïve voters actually believe that something resembling revolution was accomplished in a bloodless coup by replacing Republicans with Democrats in the House and Senate. Conservatives foolishly thought the same with the so called Gingrich revolution of the 90s....

Meanwhile, the system rolls on, and the people are left feeling that something significant was accomplished, and that they made it happen by voting. There will be no need for further action until the next election cycle....

Both the House and Senate Dem caucuses right now preserve an artificial unity, for the sake of the party's institutional predominance. But the only way the "peace now" Democrats can ever make themselves heard is to bolt -- or at least, credibly threaten to bolt, and undermine that predominance.

All this blather on their part, about sticking together for the sake of the common domestic agenda, is pure pittle-pattle the great issue, the make-or-break issue, is the occupation of Iraq. The Peace Dems just flat-out don't mean it unless they're willing to say: "No, I will not caucus with killers and warmongers."

http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/002815.html

...This voting for the lesser evil is getting pretty old, but the Dems definitely are the lesser evil.
synykyl | 01.31.07 - 12:19 am

....I will usefully remind you it was Clinton and Mad Albright who instituted sanctions against Iraq and affirmed the acceptability of the resulting hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent Iraqi children.

Today the litmus test of an anti-war candidate and the "netroots" is where they stand on attacking Iran."

I do not view the Dems as equally culpable. Not even Clinton. But judging Dems by comparison to Republicans implies a very low standard.
Miracle Max | Homepage | 01.30.07 - 7:01 pm |

The real problem here is guys who want to do some good. It's like diluting strychnine with spring water and then telling us it's not as bad as the full-strength poison.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/29/141840/584

The progressive political world is wailing and gnashing its teeth over the failure of Congressional Democrats to stand up to President Bush on the war supplemental....

But before everybody else packs their bags and heads for the hills, consider this. Guess who voted no on the war supplemental?

Ellen Tauscher.

Why is that significant?

Because Ellen Tauscher is a Congressional Democrat who was targeted by activists for failing to vote Democratic in Congress.

Naiman cites an even burblier Nation piece by the ineffable Ari Melber:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/melber

[Tauscher] was branded a "top offender" on the website of Working For Us, a new political action committee.... founded by, among others, veteran labor strategist Steve Rosenthal, and backed by unions.... The strategy is set by two boards made up of traditional labor leaders like SEIU secretary-treasurer Anna Burger and pioneers from the Internet left like MoveOn.org heads and Markos Moulitsas, founder of the top Democratic blog Daily Kos.

Naiman continues:

How many more such victories do we need? ...

[T]he McGovern timetable for withdrawal bill got 171 votes in the House. 218 would be a majority, so that means we need to move 47 Members - 11% of the House - into the "firm support for a real timetable for withdrawal" camp.

[T]hreatening incumbents with primaries has been shown to be effective. This means that some folks are going to have to be willing to run for office, and some people are going to have to circulate some nominating petitions, and some people are going to have to donate some money.

Of all these things, donating money is the easiest.... Make your anger productive for humanity - and pony up.

Pony up? Huh, dude. Don't you mean "Donkey Up"?

Victory, huh? Ph'waahh ha ha ha haaah.

Democrats Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.

After short-circuiting consideration of votes on some bipartisan proposals on Iraq before the August break, senior Democrats now say they are willing to rethink their push to establish a withdrawal deadline of next spring if doing so will attract the 60 Senate votes needed to prevail.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said, “If we have to make the spring part a goal, rather than something that is binding, and if that is able to produce some additional votes to get us over the filibuster, my own inclination would be to consider that.”

This word 'compromise' has an interesting meaning in American political discourse. If ordinary people used the word in the same way, you'd get conversations like this:

Mugger: Your money or your life!
Muggee: Can't we compromise?
Mugger: Okay. You give me your money, and I won't kill you.
Muggee: Deal!

So they're not getting mugged, any more than a pro wrestler is really getting beaten up. It's all part of the act.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Kucinich_sorta_endorses_Obama.html

Kucinich Urges Supporters to
Back Obama on Second Iowa Ballot

For Immediate Release - Tuesday, January 01, 2008

DES MOINES, IA - Democratic Presidential candidate and Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich opened the New Year by publicly asking his Iowa supporters to vote for him in the caucuses this Thursday, and suggesting that if he did not make the 15% threshold, their second ballot should be for Senator Barack Obama. "This is obviously an 'Iowa-only' recommendation, as Sen. Obama and I are competing in the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday where I want to be the first choice of New Hampshire voters.

"I hope Iowans will caucus for me as their first choice this Thursday, because of my singular positions on the war, on health care, and trade. This is an opportunity for people to stand up for themselves. But in those caucus locations where my support doesn't reach the necessary threshold, I strongly encourage all of my supporters to make Barack Obama their second choice. Sen. Obama and I have one thing in common: Change."

UPDATE: Obama responds:

"I have a lot of respect for Congressman Kucinich, and I’m honored that he has done this because we both believe deeply in the need for fundamental change....”

Isn't it remarkable, too, much self-hypnosis can be achieved just by repeating the word "change" over and over again? It's like a meditation technique: Oooommm... Oooommm... Chaaaaange.... Chaaaange....

Of course this follows on yesterday's sad news:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7647.html

Nader throws support to Edwards

MUSCATINE, Iowa — Ralph Nader unleashed on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Monday ... and expressed his strong support for John Edwards.... [i]n an eleventh hour effort to encourage liberal Iowans to "recognize" the former North Carolina senator by "giving him a victory."

... Nader, a four-time presidential candidate, called Edwards a Democratic "glimmer of hope.... It's the only time I've heard a Democrat talk that way in a long time"....

But hey, I've been wrong before. I certainly hope I'm not wrong this time, though -- not because I expect anything of Barack except warmed-over Clintonism, but because if Barack is defeated, all these formerly disillusioned Democrats whom Barack has snake-charmed back into the fold will have no opportunity to get disillusioned again. Lost in a wonderful wilderness of if-only's, many of them will remain dedicated DP cultists for the rest of their lives, utterly lost to reason and enlightenment.

I haven't paid sufficient attention to the paradox of the Beautiful Loser -- the candidate you have really persuaded yourself to believe in, and can still believe in because he lost and never got the chance to sell you down the river. The Beautiful Loser is one of the main ways the Democratic Party keeps hope alive, to borrow a phrase.

Win by losing. Quite a trick, really. Get their hopes up. Then lose. And the experience of having hoped will keep 'em coming back, until the memory goes dim and the hapless souls who shared it have all died off.

Here's hoping that Barack wins in November, and gets a chance to show us unmistakably what he's really all about.

A few days ago I posted some thoughts about a recent conversation with a highly intelligent and sophisticated woman -- let's call her Diotima -- who is completely mesmerized by Barack Obama. I keep recurring, in my mind, to this chat. It was very rich in matter for reflection. I wish I had recorded it.

At some point she mentioned how "exciting" Barack is, and asked, Don't you think so? Don't you sense it?

I had to confess that I just didn't hear the music. All the way back to his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Gulag -- er, Convention; the speech that had everybody so worked up -- the only response I had was to look at the flushed faces of people talking about it and wonder, What on earth has gotten into them? They're on the brink of orgasm over a tissue of unmeaning platitudes.

Perhaps I developed this theme, talking to Diotima, with more eloquence than tact. She snapped, "Well, I suppose you're just much purer than I am." Which set off a train of rumination about this incessantly-recurring theme of "purity", always a reproach from Democrats.

It's amazing how much subtext a single word can carry. There's a whole little movielet that obligingly unreels in the mental Bijou at the mere mention of the word. It goes something like this:

We have the "purist" -- let's call him Diogenes. Diogenes is so concerned with keeping his moral skirts clean that he has withdrawn from the battle, and looks upon it with snide, sanctimonious detachment.

And then we have the Diotimas -- represented, in this story, as folk like Teddy Roosevelt's famous

... man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day....

But I digress. Whether Diotima had this particular passage of YMCA homiletics in mind, who knows? But it's the canonical statement -- from a very suitable source -- of the "purity" trope's underlying argument: the difference between Diotima, struggling, though impurely, to "do something, at least", and prissy, pure Diogenes, absenting himself from the "dust and sweat and blood" of the arena, and sneering at earnest Diotima from the safety of his tub.

The Diotimas love to congratulate themselves on the Promethean sacrifices they make -- including, of course, the sacrifice of their purity, such as it may be (and few who grow to adulthood have much left to sacrifice, in my experience). But in what do these sacrifices actually consist?

My Diotima will vote for Obama -- and will no doubt go home, or on to her job, feeling thoroughly imbrued with the dust and sweat and blood et cetera. Perhaps she will even contribute to the campaign, and feel as impurely, glorily gory afterwards as Genghis Khan after a long day of rape and pillage.

Maybe it's a failure of imagination, but this doesn't seem very, erm, gladiatorial. In fact, it's difficult to see that Diotima has sacrificed anything except a temporarily disquieting intimation of reality.

It's a little like that snide remark of Bertrand Russell's about Immanuel Kant. Russell quotes Kant saying that "It was Hume who first awakened me from my dogmatical slumbers" -- then Russell adds, "but he soon found a soporific that enabled him to sleep once more."