By Kelly Jean Cogswell
The Democratic tradition in New York City is to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. So, up against George W. Bush, I voted first for Gore, then for Kerry, despite my discomfort with their relatively conservative social stances (literally posed in front of stained glass windows).
As my reward, the Democrats have swung more and more to the right. In Election 2008, the Democrats are almost more Republican than the Republicans I wouldn't vote for in '88 or '92, '96 or '00.
They are promising, for example, to dump way more money than Bush into faith-based programs which will not only erode the Church-State divide, but strengthen anti-choice, anti-gay forces. In a careful and deliberate campaign strategy to court conservatives, LGBT folk have already been shoved to the back of the bus in favor of highlighting homo-hating evangelicals. Positive statements about abortion have reportedly been withdrawn from the websites of many Democratic candidates.
Obama, the supposedly anti-establishment candidate flip-flopped from promising campaign finance reform to sticking his head in whatever trough presented itself leaving him beholden to a multitude of special interests. Under his leadership, Democrats are presenting bills to drill in protected land. And in another reversal, Mr. Obama, a lawyer specializing in constitutional issues, reneged on campaign promises, and voted for the FISA bill which further broadens the powers of "Homeland Security" and chews away at our civil liberties. Forget the misogyny surrounding his campaign.
Except for the considerable symbolic value of supporting the first African American nominee for president, the only reason any member of the left would vote for the Democrats is because they're up against the party of Abu Ghraib, the Iraq War, Pat Robertson, overt abortion bans, overt social control, and disastrous financial deregulation that McCain promises to introduce into health care, dismantling even the employer-based coverage most Americans rely on.
The Democrat's rightward acceleration may well be the fault of people like me, deluding ourselves into believing we weren't voting "for" one candidate, but "against" another. To politicians, a vote is a vote. A sign of approval, an implicit endorsement that's embedded in the language itself. You always vote "for" somebody. That seeming consent not only helps select a candidate, but shapes the trajectory of a party for years, win or lose.
After years of voting for increasingly right-wing knuckleheads, it's not surprising I'm stuck with a party that not only isn't in sync with my values, but in practice actually contradicts them. Winning will confirm Democratic tactics. Losing may send them even further right. Either way, I quit. As they say, "If all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got." And sometimes less.
I can't be blackmailed any more that a certain candidate will spell the actual end of the world. Admit it. The Bush administration wouldn't have been so destructive if not for the Congress members of both parties that were complicit at every step. And two years ago, when Democrats claimed the majority in both Houses, they could have brought the Bush administration to a complete standstill. The Republicans did it to Bill Clinton. But with the Democrats, it was pretty much business for Bush as usual.
We'll only get more of the same if we continue to vote for them, however reluctantly.
I spent a while this week trying to figure out my personal responsibility in this election. In purely statistical terms, my one vote is less than toilet paper. There has never been an election decided by a single vote. Even when Bush won Florida, and hence the 2000 election, political scientist James Fowler noted "the best a single voter could do would be to change the margin to 536 or to 538, neither of which would have changed the outcome."
On the other hand, Fowler pointed out that in reality people cluster together. There's a kind of "voter cascade" in which one person can literally bring several dozen like-minded people to the polls. This is a pretty good argument to persuade people to hold their nose and vote in a swing state. One person really can have an influence on an election. And that influence means you have actual leverage with the candidate and party.
The story's different in the solidly Democratic New York State. My vote could start a major cascade and still be ignored by national Democrats. If my vote doesn't count, withholding it won't have much of an impact either. The only votes that count in New York have dollar signs attached.
With nothing to lose or gain, I'm sadly free to disapprove any candidate from any party that courts evangelicals and conservatives at the expense of women and queers, the working class of all races, and especially and always our civil liberties, which are the basis of whatever freedoms we have left or hope to win.
Showing posts with label election 2000. Show all posts
Showing posts with label election 2000. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Democrats Court Disaster with Sneer Campaign
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
In the distant presidential campaign of 2000, when the Democrats could have touted the flourishing economy and budget surplus of the Clinton administration, they preferred to focus instead on more important issues. Like how George W. Bush pronounced "nucular."
We also heard about W.'s cowboy hats, ridiculous big ears, terrible grades at Yale, drunkenness, and cheerleading activities, while Democratic and left-wing pundits sneered at the idea that running a baseball team, especially a losing one, could be considered "experience," and asserted that if George W. Bush wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he would have been lucky to be the bat boy. Likewise, he wouldn't have been governor of Texas if he weren't a member of the Bush royal family. Nobody'd be enough of an idiot to vote for a loser like him.
Having been so successful with their sneer tactics in 2000, Democrats repeated them in 2004. And having failed yet again, the Dems have sunk their 2008 energy into a similar campaign calling attention to McCain's white hair, internet illiteracy, and obviously senile fits of rage. His running mate, that crazy nobody, Sarah Palin, has been dismissed as a cosmetics saleswoman at Macy's, beauty queen, and white trash, fundamentalist baby-making machine that pauses just long enough between births to skin a moose alive.
The problem with sneer campaigns, is that while they're supposed to make the target look stupid and inept, what they actually do is reveal the values of the sneerer. And in this campaign, what the Democrats are revealing is that they think old people, poor and working class people, and women are too stupid and ridiculous to consider for any top job. Yeah, that'll win them the election.
My advice is to just drop the sneers. If the Democrats want to make the Republicans look ridiculous, they only have to stick to the issues. Like McCain's role in getting us into the mess in Iraq. McCain repeatedly insisted that Iraq played a major role in 9/11, even after the theory was totally disproved by U.S. intelligence services. He also insisted on the imaginary WMD's in Iraq, and even blamed Suddam Hussein for the anthrax attacks in the U.S. And it was the veteran warrior McCain, in his own sneering arrogance, who backed up the Bush administration in vastly underestimating how many soldiers would be needed to handle the whole invasion.
McCain has also supported Bush's economic policy, and his Republican cronies have repeatedly said that the economy is fine, and characterized suffering Americans as a bunch of whiners, even as the federal government has been forced to step in and essentially nationalize two gigantic loan programs to keep the economy from totally collapsing. Long live socialist Republicans!
To undercut Palin's effectiveness as a symbol of change, especially in the pork barrel area of Washington politics, all you have to do is point out Palin's pig dinners as Alaskan governor, where the subsidy per citizen is several times the national average. According to the Washington Post, Palin herself has apparently billed Alaskan taxpayers for travel expenses when she was sitting at home.
And when Palin sneers at Obama's foreign policy, "He's worried that someone won't read them their rights," it should be enough to point out that the top of her ticket was himself tortured during war and didn't much like it.
If they want to win, Democrats should forget the cheap shots about senior citizens, moose shoots, and beauty queens, and stick to the issues. Sure, the late days of a campaign are supposed to be all about character, but isn't that what the issues often reveal?
Which is why the attacks dismissing Sarah Palin as one more crazy evangelist only chosen as VP for her vagina and abortion stance, have been particularly disturbing. Not just because of their misogyny. But because they show just how much the left continues to underestimate American fundamentalists, especially the new wave. They're creationists, but no morons.
Sarah Palin is just the vanguard. As I said last week, yes, she wears go-go boots and has a bunch of kids. She didn't go to Harvard and get straight A's. But she's a formidable politician. She's intelligent, scrappy, and flexible with an extraordinary learning curve.
She was a town council member of Wasilla, Alaska in 1992 at 28. She took office as mayor at the ripe old age of 32, tried to bull-doze her way into establishing a fundamentalist Christian town including censoring books, but met so much opposition they tried to recall her. The difference between her and the old guard is that she then moderated her positions enough, at least publicly, to get re-elected by a fat margin.
Barely a decade later, she was governor of Alaska. Now, still anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-queer she's on the road to the White House. Sneer at your own risk.
In the distant presidential campaign of 2000, when the Democrats could have touted the flourishing economy and budget surplus of the Clinton administration, they preferred to focus instead on more important issues. Like how George W. Bush pronounced "nucular."
We also heard about W.'s cowboy hats, ridiculous big ears, terrible grades at Yale, drunkenness, and cheerleading activities, while Democratic and left-wing pundits sneered at the idea that running a baseball team, especially a losing one, could be considered "experience," and asserted that if George W. Bush wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he would have been lucky to be the bat boy. Likewise, he wouldn't have been governor of Texas if he weren't a member of the Bush royal family. Nobody'd be enough of an idiot to vote for a loser like him.
Having been so successful with their sneer tactics in 2000, Democrats repeated them in 2004. And having failed yet again, the Dems have sunk their 2008 energy into a similar campaign calling attention to McCain's white hair, internet illiteracy, and obviously senile fits of rage. His running mate, that crazy nobody, Sarah Palin, has been dismissed as a cosmetics saleswoman at Macy's, beauty queen, and white trash, fundamentalist baby-making machine that pauses just long enough between births to skin a moose alive.
The problem with sneer campaigns, is that while they're supposed to make the target look stupid and inept, what they actually do is reveal the values of the sneerer. And in this campaign, what the Democrats are revealing is that they think old people, poor and working class people, and women are too stupid and ridiculous to consider for any top job. Yeah, that'll win them the election.
My advice is to just drop the sneers. If the Democrats want to make the Republicans look ridiculous, they only have to stick to the issues. Like McCain's role in getting us into the mess in Iraq. McCain repeatedly insisted that Iraq played a major role in 9/11, even after the theory was totally disproved by U.S. intelligence services. He also insisted on the imaginary WMD's in Iraq, and even blamed Suddam Hussein for the anthrax attacks in the U.S. And it was the veteran warrior McCain, in his own sneering arrogance, who backed up the Bush administration in vastly underestimating how many soldiers would be needed to handle the whole invasion.
McCain has also supported Bush's economic policy, and his Republican cronies have repeatedly said that the economy is fine, and characterized suffering Americans as a bunch of whiners, even as the federal government has been forced to step in and essentially nationalize two gigantic loan programs to keep the economy from totally collapsing. Long live socialist Republicans!
To undercut Palin's effectiveness as a symbol of change, especially in the pork barrel area of Washington politics, all you have to do is point out Palin's pig dinners as Alaskan governor, where the subsidy per citizen is several times the national average. According to the Washington Post, Palin herself has apparently billed Alaskan taxpayers for travel expenses when she was sitting at home.
And when Palin sneers at Obama's foreign policy, "He's worried that someone won't read them their rights," it should be enough to point out that the top of her ticket was himself tortured during war and didn't much like it.
If they want to win, Democrats should forget the cheap shots about senior citizens, moose shoots, and beauty queens, and stick to the issues. Sure, the late days of a campaign are supposed to be all about character, but isn't that what the issues often reveal?
Which is why the attacks dismissing Sarah Palin as one more crazy evangelist only chosen as VP for her vagina and abortion stance, have been particularly disturbing. Not just because of their misogyny. But because they show just how much the left continues to underestimate American fundamentalists, especially the new wave. They're creationists, but no morons.
Sarah Palin is just the vanguard. As I said last week, yes, she wears go-go boots and has a bunch of kids. She didn't go to Harvard and get straight A's. But she's a formidable politician. She's intelligent, scrappy, and flexible with an extraordinary learning curve.
She was a town council member of Wasilla, Alaska in 1992 at 28. She took office as mayor at the ripe old age of 32, tried to bull-doze her way into establishing a fundamentalist Christian town including censoring books, but met so much opposition they tried to recall her. The difference between her and the old guard is that she then moderated her positions enough, at least publicly, to get re-elected by a fat margin.
Barely a decade later, she was governor of Alaska. Now, still anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-queer she's on the road to the White House. Sneer at your own risk.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
National Amnesia & the Bum's Rush For Hillary
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
It's not just an ignorance of history, but serial amnesia that's destroying the U.S. One Viet Nam isn't enough? Let's give Iraq a try. Nostalgic for McCarthy? We can unleash that delicious invention of Homeland Security. Too young to remember the cool breadlines of the Depression? No worries. We can arrange some, along with bank runs, lost homes, and suicides.
It's deja vu all over again with Obama and Hillary. Every paper this week has some pundit exhorting Hillary to back out immediately, concede, disappear, get lost, evaporate. The pressure is worse inside the Democratic Party itself where the good ole boys are sneering, "C'mon sweetheart, baby, doll, be a good sport."
Even if I didn't think Obama was a pig-in-waiting, I'd be up in arms, having flashbacks to Election 2000 when Al Gore literally handed Bush the election with a tap of his gavel.
Blame the Supreme Court if you want, but in the final analysis it was Gore himself presiding over the Senate who quashed the objections of the Congressional Black Caucus to Florida's electoral vote, offering a grin and shrug to Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who had just denounced fraud and black voter disenfranchisement, saying, "The chair thanks the gentleman from Illinois, but, hey..."
"Don't you know, that's not the way the game is played?" Al seemed to mean. He wanted to get home, lick his wounds, and maybe Tipper. Other members of Congress had schedules to keep, an inauguration to hold, committees to jockey for. So what if they had to pretend that the Republicans hadn't already changed the rules to the game getting the Supreme Court to intervene on their behalf? Just concede, already. Get off the stage like a good loser.
Nobody could have predicted what would follow, especially after 9/11, but that concession smelled bad to most of us. As I wrote in The Gully at the time, "This is the little tableau that should haunt our new American century -- a smiling, smug Al Gore tapping his gavel to silence the protests of twenty Democratic, mostly black Representatives, while in the background white Republicans shout 'out of order.'"
And it has haunted us, whether we remember the source of the specter or not. Al's retreat not only enabled a Bush presidency, but reinforced the tone leading to eight years of a jovial partisanship that enabled the headlong rush to the Iraq War, greedy deregulation and disastrous economic collapse, the burgeoning national deficit, and by instituting a policy of unilateral action on an international stage, the deterioration of democracy in all corners of the globe. All was done under the watch of spineless career politicians who wanted to make things easy on themselves, who cut deals, and squashed dissent.
Now, knocked head over heels by the Obama candidacy, the formerly irate Democratic faithful have forgotten that demanding premature concessions can have ugly consequences. Oh, quit sneering at the comparison. Sure, Hillary's uncertain bid for November is not exactly the same as Bush taking the White House. And yes, Hillary may not make it to the finish line, but trying to silence her now raises that same little matter of democracy, of representation, of diversity, which is not just a matter of skin, but of voices.
Shutting her up buries the 94 percent of El Paso County, Texas that supports her. It buries me. The only thing worse is when we do it to ourselves, like Democrats under Bush.
Meanwhile, her perseverance makes her something we haven't seen in a long time and need to reconsider: either an idealist, or bad loser. Shouldn't we have more of both? People that hold their positions to the bitter end? Fighters who refuse to retreat smiling from the ring, who are impolite enough to bleed on the carpet of their enemies?
No matter who wins in November, we desperately need that capacity to dig in our heels and resist. Civil liberties have gone to hell. The Constitution has unraveled. There's a ton of rebuilding to do, and activists demobilized during two "friendly" Clinton administrations and stream-rolled under Bush's bipartisanship must prepare to constantly hector the next President, even a Democratic one. Because without us, I guarantee they'll find it easier to leave things as they are in the midst of putting out new political and economic fires.
Like biological diversity, the key is dissent. The more voices and ideas, the better our odds of survival. As for dissent, Hillary's persistence is the only model we've had for ages.
As I did after Gore gave his "Aw, shucks" concession in the Senate, I call once again for a return to a garden variety, even fundamentalist, democracy in which we value every voice, and don't give candidates the bum's rush until we've counted every single vote.
It's not just an ignorance of history, but serial amnesia that's destroying the U.S. One Viet Nam isn't enough? Let's give Iraq a try. Nostalgic for McCarthy? We can unleash that delicious invention of Homeland Security. Too young to remember the cool breadlines of the Depression? No worries. We can arrange some, along with bank runs, lost homes, and suicides.
It's deja vu all over again with Obama and Hillary. Every paper this week has some pundit exhorting Hillary to back out immediately, concede, disappear, get lost, evaporate. The pressure is worse inside the Democratic Party itself where the good ole boys are sneering, "C'mon sweetheart, baby, doll, be a good sport."
Even if I didn't think Obama was a pig-in-waiting, I'd be up in arms, having flashbacks to Election 2000 when Al Gore literally handed Bush the election with a tap of his gavel.
Blame the Supreme Court if you want, but in the final analysis it was Gore himself presiding over the Senate who quashed the objections of the Congressional Black Caucus to Florida's electoral vote, offering a grin and shrug to Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who had just denounced fraud and black voter disenfranchisement, saying, "The chair thanks the gentleman from Illinois, but, hey..."
"Don't you know, that's not the way the game is played?" Al seemed to mean. He wanted to get home, lick his wounds, and maybe Tipper. Other members of Congress had schedules to keep, an inauguration to hold, committees to jockey for. So what if they had to pretend that the Republicans hadn't already changed the rules to the game getting the Supreme Court to intervene on their behalf? Just concede, already. Get off the stage like a good loser.
Nobody could have predicted what would follow, especially after 9/11, but that concession smelled bad to most of us. As I wrote in The Gully at the time, "This is the little tableau that should haunt our new American century -- a smiling, smug Al Gore tapping his gavel to silence the protests of twenty Democratic, mostly black Representatives, while in the background white Republicans shout 'out of order.'"
And it has haunted us, whether we remember the source of the specter or not. Al's retreat not only enabled a Bush presidency, but reinforced the tone leading to eight years of a jovial partisanship that enabled the headlong rush to the Iraq War, greedy deregulation and disastrous economic collapse, the burgeoning national deficit, and by instituting a policy of unilateral action on an international stage, the deterioration of democracy in all corners of the globe. All was done under the watch of spineless career politicians who wanted to make things easy on themselves, who cut deals, and squashed dissent.
Now, knocked head over heels by the Obama candidacy, the formerly irate Democratic faithful have forgotten that demanding premature concessions can have ugly consequences. Oh, quit sneering at the comparison. Sure, Hillary's uncertain bid for November is not exactly the same as Bush taking the White House. And yes, Hillary may not make it to the finish line, but trying to silence her now raises that same little matter of democracy, of representation, of diversity, which is not just a matter of skin, but of voices.
Shutting her up buries the 94 percent of El Paso County, Texas that supports her. It buries me. The only thing worse is when we do it to ourselves, like Democrats under Bush.
Meanwhile, her perseverance makes her something we haven't seen in a long time and need to reconsider: either an idealist, or bad loser. Shouldn't we have more of both? People that hold their positions to the bitter end? Fighters who refuse to retreat smiling from the ring, who are impolite enough to bleed on the carpet of their enemies?
No matter who wins in November, we desperately need that capacity to dig in our heels and resist. Civil liberties have gone to hell. The Constitution has unraveled. There's a ton of rebuilding to do, and activists demobilized during two "friendly" Clinton administrations and stream-rolled under Bush's bipartisanship must prepare to constantly hector the next President, even a Democratic one. Because without us, I guarantee they'll find it easier to leave things as they are in the midst of putting out new political and economic fires.
Like biological diversity, the key is dissent. The more voices and ideas, the better our odds of survival. As for dissent, Hillary's persistence is the only model we've had for ages.
As I did after Gore gave his "Aw, shucks" concession in the Senate, I call once again for a return to a garden variety, even fundamentalist, democracy in which we value every voice, and don't give candidates the bum's rush until we've counted every single vote.
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