I don't think I've ever expanded a portion of one diary into a full new diary by request before, but I'm doing so tonight. Yesterday, I wrote a diary tracing the history of the term "More and Better Democrats". It turns out that Meteor Blades coined it, Atrios began popularizing it a year ago yesterday (when the Senate passed the Military Commissions Act), and it really flowered after Darcy Burner took it on as a slogan.
Towards the end of the diary I included what would in music composition would have been considered a bridge: a sidebar on the new theme why one's belief in the rightness of the premise -- that we need both more Democrats and better ones as the only foreseeable decent solution to our current political problems -- is all the more important in trying times like ours when it doesn't seem that the Democrats can deliver.
MB thought that that was actually the important part of diary, buried under paragraphs on another theme as it was, and that it deserved its own emphasis. And so, by request:
more
This diary is not associated with any candidate or campaign.
When the Senate, and then the House, passed the Military Commissions Act a year ago yesterday, I was royally pissed off at how badly they had been outmanuevered, and even more pissed than that at the eleven Democrats who voted for the bill. But I was also intent on nothing knocking us off track five weeks before the election. That would be a double victory for Republicans: enacting a repugnant policy and driving away the Democratic base would increase the likelihood that they would hold the Senate.
And so I defended the Democrats here, using "More and Better Democrats" as a battle cry. It was not because I like to win arguments. It is because, at our moment in history, I honestly believe it's true: the well-being of our citizenry, our nation, and even the world depends on our electing more Democrats (enough to control Congress and the Presidency, largely to keep them out of Republican hands) and better ones, ones who will listen to great ideas such as those that motivate the progressive blogosphere and have the fortitude to either convince their colleagues to go along or steamroll them if they won't. There's no shortcut. More and better, more of better, enough to win.
And I have defended the Democrats over the past year, even when I cannot believe how badly they play the political game, how easily they get rolled. I have defended them even as I have complained bitterly about what I see as their failures -- primarily, over the past year, their failure to assert their rightful powers to challenge executive branch overreach, from the refusal to impeach Dick Cheney to the refusal to ensure that there will be legal consequences for the crimes of the Bush Administration after he is gone, even if not before. Challenging them on their mistakes is fine. Saying "to hell with them" is not.
I have defended the Democrats in bad times for one reason only: there is no better option. I don't enjoy it, I don't seek it out, but I do it for one simple reason: I believe, as an article of political faith, that there is no better alternative now and probably for the rest of my lifetime. Not a third party, not letting things get worse so that they will get better, not cherry-picking issues on which Democrats aren't likely to be part of a solution to claim that there's no difference between the parties, not somehow taking a superior position to those getting their hands dirty and disavowing responsibility for being part of the solution. There is simply no better solution.
If you believe this, then that belief motivates all of your participation here. If you believe it as an article of faith, you believe it no matter what the world throws at you. You believe it like Job believed in God, even while grumbling and complaining about God's torments. You believe it because it's the truth, and you can't blink the truth away.
This was my thesis statement yesterday:
I see support for the motivating principle of "More and Better Democrats" as being a lot like the commitment to freedom of speech: it is most important when it is hardest to justify. (I'm going to add "opposition to the death penalty" to this discussion to make it clear that the analogy is not to freedom of speech itself, but to the imperviousness of belief.)
It's easy to support free speech when things are going your way, when nothing offensive is being said, etc. Most people can do it, across the political spectrum. It's easy to profess because it's meaningless, it's ineffectual, it's cheap words. What matters is how much you support free speech when it's hard, when it means being confronted with something offensive. That's when you find out whether or not you're really a supporter. (We've seen a lot of people fail that test this week with Ahmedinejad.)
Similarly, it is easy to oppose the death penalty when the person facing execution is a child, someone mentally defective, someone who might actually be innocent, someone being railroaded, someone who had not had sufficient legal representation. Most people can muster that much opposition. But if you really believe that the state should not be in the business of "tinkering with the machinery of death," to paraphase Justice Blackmun, then you oppose it when the person facing execution is a neo-Nazi rapist who attacked and murdered minority children to terrorize the community.
You oppose it, in other words, not because it's easy in a given case, but despite the facts of the case at hand. You oppose it because you really, truly, believe that the practice is wrong. (If, like me, you're not actually a death penalty absolutist, you can substitute opposing torture, modern-day slavery, or whatever else you truly believe in.)
And I really believe that any position other than "More and Better Democrats" is wrong.
The difficulty of supporting the principle of "More and Better Democrats" when the Democrats we have can't muster a filibuster on the Military Commissions Act, or when they get rooked on FISA, is a lot like the difficulty of supporting free speech when Ahmedinejad comes to Columbia, or when the Nazis march on Skokie. That is when free speech is most in danger; that is when you just have to take a breath, buckle down, and do it.
The difficulty of supporting the principle of "More and Better Democrats or when they cave in on funding Iraq, or when the worse among them approve a Justice Alito, is a lot like opposing the death penalty when the person facing execution is Jeffrey Dahmer or Osama bin Laden. Give in on the hard cases, and your position is no longer principled, but pragmatic. Frankly, it deserves and gets less weight.
If one has principles, it's important to believe them in the worst of times -- to believe that when we get tackled we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get back to work -- because it is at that exact moment when support for the principle is in greatest danger. It's when people are screwing us over, acting like the "Republicrat Party," that we have to tell them that there is nothing they can do to keep us from making sure that, ultimately, we will not only have enough Democrats to keep the other side out of power, but enough good Democrats to enact our own agenda.
In Mozambique's drive for political independence from South Africa, the slogan was was "A Luta Continua" ("the struggle continues.") In the Spanish Civil War, it was "¡No pasarán! (they shall not pass)" Of course, often they do pass, and the struggle often continues for decades or more. But the battle cry -- for us, "More and Better Democrats," meaning "we will keep on doing what we are doing until we defeat you" -- sustains the movement. Yes, it involves a willful suspension of disbelief, it involves the prospect of complicity with those who fail us. But those, I submit, are better than ironic detachment or self-immolation, because in our world there is nowhere else to go. We need more and more people on our side. Better and better ones. Enough in quality and quantity to change the world.