Two years ago, at about this time on election night, there was a lot of cryin' in our beer. And recriminations out the wazoo. People in droves said they were leaving Daily Kos, the Democratic Party, politics, even the country. It was grim. Since then, as we've all watched another 735 excruciating days of the Bush Regime unfold - in all its criminality, cruelty and vainglory - just
how grim has engraved itself deeply in our brains.
Last night was way different than 2004. We won.
Some people are already saying no big deal. Indeed, Charles Krauthammer, who, along with Dr. Laura, pretends to be the nation's psychiatrist, issued a pre-emptive strike last Friday with A Duel, but Not Decisive. Nothing to see here folks, just a blip, totally expected.
There will be a lot of the-Dems-didn't-really-win stuff. Whistling in the dark. Ignore it. The Republican Party came in second last night. The Democrats won. Savor it for a couple of days. Don't buy into the idea that the party's success doesn't mean anything.
Yes, yes, we haven't entered paradise. Did anybody really think that one winning election meant that? We still have a terrible war going on in Iraq, and a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, while Osama has been brought back neither dead nor alive. And there are rumors of other wars. Although the widespread and absolutely-certain predictions of an October-November surprise attack on Iran didn't pan out, and North Korea's Bomb was at least half a dud, the foreign policy of this Administration remains reckless, imperiling, counterproductive, incompetent, corrupt, wrongheaded and immoral. This won't change tomorrow.
But, as the cliché has it, a journey starts with a single step. That step was taken yesterday. For a couple of days, try to avoid getting tied up in knots about how not every Democrat who won is exactly who you want her or him to be. Don't get caught up in the knowledge that after a few months of putting up a mostly unified front, we'll soon be doing what Democrats do best, sniping at each other. For now, savor the victory.
Because it is a victory. And we can build on that victory. For the first time in 12 years - or 25, if your prefer - we can at least think about the possibility of doing something besides fighting a rearguard action against the theocrats and oligarchs and the plain, old corrupt pols who have taken over the Republican Party, dismantled a piece of the Constitution and made Abu Ghraib, Katrina and Fallujah names that will live in infamy. Our victory means we can begin the process of dismantling them.
As I said, begin. While the Republicans will spin it that last night's wasn't much of a victory, many on our own side will also claim it's not much of one. OK, sure. Winning at the ballot box in so many races doesn't, of course, mean activists won't have to hold Democrats' feet to the fire. Or run some primaries against a few of them in '08. Or push the Democratic MAJORITY leadership not to quickly forget how firmly Republicans behaved when they had the helm. Then, too, we'll have to engage actively outside the electoral process to win battles for gay rights and reproductive rights and against war. Why? Because that's the only way social progress has ever been made.
Our victory at the polls makes success in that activism just a little big more likely.
I've been a Popular Front Democrat all my adult life. Scratch that. I probably became a PFD on my grandfather's knee. He was a United Mine Workers organizer in the 1920s and `30s, the UMW's first Indian regional organizer, back in the days when organizing unions, especially coal-miners' unions, was almost as perilous as digging out the coal. He was a terrific storyteller and had some harrowing tales to relate. And although 11 years underground turned him into a socialist, and a vigorous, lifelong critic of the Democrats, Frank Delano Roosevelt made him a PFD until the day he died.
He instilled that in me. Yes, I was tempted by Dick Gregory in 1968, and Barry Commoner in 1980, and even thought about going with the Greens from 1998 through early 2000. Gawd knows the Democratic Party has at times made me want to gouge out my eyes and grind the enamel off my molars.
So, I'd be a liar if I said that my elation last night made me 100% optimistic about the future. Like many here, there are quite a few Democrats I'm not a big fan of. In fact, some of them make me want to puke. I suspect that will be true of some of the new ones, too. But any of us here who believes war should be a last resort (and on those rare, rare occasions when they go, our soldiers should be equipped for their mission), that torture should never be resorted to, that habeas corpus is nothing to bite chunks out of, that junkpolitics should stop dictating science policy, that theocrats should stop dictating social policy, that insurance companies should stop dictating health policy, that out-sourcers should stop dictating economic policy and that Rapturists should have no say in environmental policy are better off than we were 24 hours ago. Because now, whatever may come, for the first time in a long time, there is again a glimmer of hope.
Some will argue that yesterday's was a Pyrrhic victory. A loss, in effect, because so many Democrats who ran this year are self-described moderates or conservatives, Republicans Lite. These critics seem to have forgotten a time when a whole cabal of segregationist Southern Dems controlled congressional committees and held the Democratic Party hostage to racism. They were conservative. Show me of those new winners who comes close to matching any of them.
We Popular Front Democrats know we'll have a lot of arm-twisting to do in the 110th Congress. And we'll no doubt be disappointed on occasion, maybe many occasions. Sometimes, we'll probably be infuriated. But the 110th will be a Congress where arm-twisting might actually have a positive effect.
We won. Don't downplay it. Savor our victory. The perfect often is the enemy of the good. And yesterday's victory was good. Very, very good.