Pssst. You want to hear a secret? I'm not counting on Barack Obama to keep me going. Never have. I know I'm a big supporter of his, but should he go down in 2012, and everything go to hell on the Congressional side of things, I'm not going to stop voting for Democrats, for Liberal politics, and against the GOP.
See, I never got into this because some particular candidate charmed me. I got into this because of what I saw happening in the world around me, and I decided that what was happening could not be allowed to continue. It had to be stopped.
But it wasn't about getting the opposite outcomes. It never was. It was about doing things right.
In a world of possibilities, nobody knows them all, but there are some things that are right, and some things that aren't, and often one's opinion doesn't make a difference between what is right, and what is wrong.
But in addition to that, there's the fact that nothing gets done perfectly, completely, without friction, and in this political environment, without a shitload of opposition. If you stake your enthusiasm, your motivation on things getting better immediately, getting done just like you want them to be done, then your feelings, your motivations are going to become pretty fickle, and pretty volatile. How else could things go, when the other side does their absolute best to abuse their power in order to block things?
You guys expected everything to just get better in the first two years, and now you're expecting Democrats to suddenly become like the Republicans have been, lockstep and everything.
Never mind that this state of affairs didn't just happen in the Republican Party. ALEC, which people are just hearing about now, was founded in the early seventies by Paul Weyrich. Or put another way, it's been around almost forty years. So many of the organizations and initiative date back a long way, and they can sit on their fat asses now and demand fealty because there's few Republicans out there not jammed right into their establishment.
Additionally, Conservatives constitute sixty-nine percent of the Republican Party. Those who don't follow that line stand a good chance of going down in flames. We would like to be that indispensible. We would like to get listened to in that way.
But we are hell and gone away from actually being in that position, so all we're effectively doing is beating our heads against the wall. We can't afford to think of power as if we're the Republicans. The Republicans can take for granted that their members will have a certain set of dogmas drilled in.
Our expectations have to match a reasonable analysis of the actual situation. Otherwise we are going to beat our morale to death with a tire iron trying to effect the same sort of desperate need to conform in our politicians that Republicans have right now.
The plain fact is that our media is saturated with conservative figures, and scared to present any kind of fair discussion of our ideas. What do we do then, mourn this? No, strategize. Figure out ways to get the media's attention, and to force a fair shake. Hell, start calling them on their conservative bias. Don't simply assume in that wounded kind of way that they should have been paying attention to you, and all is lost now because they won't listen. There are always ways to get people's attention, and reward them for it.
The plain fact is, even with a majority, we don't have leaders used to playing hardball, used to pushing our ideas. That doesn't mean we despair and run away from politics. That means we lead instead of them, and when the time comes, we put ourselves up for election, so we can change the makeup of the party to reflect our ideals. We don't expect the leopard to just change his spots. Instead, we put greater amounts of pressure on those already there, and through multiple primary seasons, we replace the old guard with our people.
The plain fact is, The Republicans are using constitutional and congressional rules in an abusive fashion to attempt an absolute blockade of Liberal legislation, and with a lockstep minority in one house capable of filibustering votes, and a lockstep majority in the other, both of which are narrowly circumscribed by their party's dogma in negotiations, nothing will come easy as long as that power is theirs. And the real danger, as far as I can tell here is that the Democrats who had the good sense to feel as if they could change things in 2008 now have adopted a much more fatalistic and cynical view of their abilities to bring the change they want.
To be honest with you, I think that is much of the point of what the Republicans are doing. People are taking to heart all the frustrations, the compromises given in ranson, the political principles diluted by things, and they're directing their anger not at the monolithic Republican blockade, but at their own people.
And who does that serve?
I know we want all kinds of things out of our government, and it makes us sick that we've moved forward, and it hasn't. But if we let the frustrations, setbacks, and compromises eat away at us, reduce us to emotional basketcases, we are going to lose. Why? Because then Republicans can wait out this period of idealism, of activism, and then go back to business as usual, or worse, when we decide to quit, when our leaders, finding us volatile and unagreeable, simply give up on us and move back towards the center.
If we accept that we're screwed, betrayed, stuck like chuck, that all our ideals are dead, then of course the self-fulfilling prophecy comes true, and we end up quitting, and our movement dies before it's born. We become like our parents, who imagined a greater world, but then found the politicians weren't going their way, and just decided to drop out.
And you know what? It's damn tempting. It surely relieves you of a hell of a lot of heartache, frustration, and anger, in the near term, locally. And in the face of a deal like this, that we just used to ransom our nation's full faith and credit away from the Republicans, God does it seem like we've hit rock bottom. It may not get that much better for some time. This may not be the great time to be a liberal. The nation may have to go through decades of pain, and we might just be lost in shuffle for a long time.
Hahahahaha. Yeah. I figure that if I'm going to be stressed, I'd rather put up with that stress right now, and continue taking the fight to the Republicans, continue getting our message out, continue getting out the vote among the millions of dissatisfied Americans, then live the rest of my life with the constant unending stress of what our doing nothing will be bring about.
We have to have the courage, the fortitude, and the plain jackass stubbornness necessary to be the ones who break last rather than break first in a confrontation with the Republicans, and at this point, our people, our rank and file voters and activists out there have to be the true leaders of the party, even as the President, and Congress hold the reins. There is a change in America that only we can truly bring about, the change that happens at the dining table, the change that happens when we talk to a friend, the change that happens when people see that people like us will stand up for and stand firm on our beliefs, and not quit.
I mean, some folks pooh-pooh demonstrations, but what I think demonstrations will be about is giving people permission in that social part of their mind to follow us in spirit, even if they don't follow us in footprints on the street.
We can't be passive, simply sniping critiques from the peanut gallery. We can't be fickle or inconstant, and we sure as hell can't let the Republican antics get us down or wear us down. We have to get that burning look in our eye, and decide that we really want something here, and that if the first attempt doesn't get it, there will be a second attempt, and a third, and a fourth until it is done.
And the reason will be that the Democrat Party of old, the one that existed before Republicans took over is dead. It really is. It was hollowed out, stuffed, and mounted as a trophy. But that's no reason to sit around and mope. America needs a new Democratic Party now, but it won't come from us waiting for the right leaders, it will come from people like us becoming the leaders, becoming the Americans in our political environment who set the tone.
That is why I posted what I posted a day or two ago. That is why I have posted all the intense, sometimes angry, always opinionated articles that I have. I believe in the old Emerson notion of speaking in hard words what I believe today, and what I believe tomorrow in equally hard words, though it may be a change from what I thought before. I believe that if you think something to be right, you are obligated in the name of your own integrity to seek that no matter what the obstacles are. Seek it reasonably of course, in a productive, rather than counterproductive way, but seek it nonetheless.
We need to present a face to the Republican party that will scare it into submission, a stubborn persistence that will wear it's fading energy out, and strain its brittle, fracturing lockstep coalitions. We need to be stronger then the Republicans ourselves, rather than wait for Obama or anybody else in our Washington delegations to be so, because to be frank with you all, they can't really help us if the Republicans can drag the public back from supporting them, if Republicans can saturate the atmosphere they breathe with their lies, their threats, their hostage taking and everything. Our President and our Congressmen and women are only human.
We need to change the way the defaults and paradigms in Washington work, so that the pressures there work in our favor rather than against. Until that happens, be prepared for a long, difficult, but necessary political war for the soul of this country. Do not give up, if you truly believe what you do, and do not forget what it is you're truly up against. Do not forget that at the end of the day, we need majorities to implement our policies, to repair this country and bring it back from the edge of the cliff that Republicans have it on.
It's time to become an implacable political force, unbeholden to any politician, not needing a leader to point it in the right direction, only needing itself. It's time to stop reacting, and start acting, time to strategize, rather than run down lists of desperate tactics we think might work in our defense.