Don't bet farm on Democratic win in November

The fall elections are nearly six months away and the Democratic Party is sounding like it has everything in the bag, at least as far as winning back the US House.

Don’t mind me if I sound a discordant note, but I do mean to be pessimistic. In the political time of the United States, six months is an eternity and, as the old saying goes, “there’s many a slip 'twix the cup and the lip.” So, oh, yes, gentle reader, the Democrats still have time to fuck things up.

Let’s look at the possible pitfalls, which may be fall our “party of the people.”

First is the Republican generated fear that a Democratic House majority might impeach our glorious leader. Yesterday I just heard the shar-pei of Republican attack bitches, Bay Buchanan, sister of wing nut Pat and head hose-queen for Congressman Tom “Tommy the Wop” Tancredo’s Team America PAC, say that current Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was playing right into GOP hands with talk of impeaching our mildly retarded president. Yes, you read that right, Democrats calling for President Bush’s impeachment will energize Republican voters who fear “liberals” running America.

Don’t believe me? Here’s what “journalist” Jim Roberts of the reactionary-leaning National Ledger Web site has to say:

“[Karl] Rove has his work cut out for him. Communication between this White House and its base has been abysmal on the war in Iraq, opportunities have been missed in the gas price hikes and on illegal immigration - they are on the complete opposite side of the conservative base.
Turn out is key and Rove believes he's up to the task.

Using the idea that the Dems first action would be to impeach a war-time leader may be his best bet.”

Look, I think Bush deserves impeachment. I feel that John Dean, former Nixon era White House counsel and Watergate defendant, has lain out the case for impeachment as clearly as anyone, it only takes political will to pull it off. The question is: Do the Democrats have the political will power?

And sadly, thus far, the answer is no.

The Democrats are betting the farm that the American people will respond to changing the “culture of corruption” in Washington, D.C. Well, that’s a fairly nebulous platform, while true to a large extent, it’s not the attention grabber like “illegal aliens taking our jobs” or a “bird flu epidemic,” not to mention the never ending “war on terror.” Nor does it address the root problem, which is the prevalence of corporation money that translates into lobbying influence that, in turn, produces laws designed to line the pockets of America’ s upper one percent while leaving scraps for the rest of us.

I hate to admit it, but Ralph Nader and Gore Vidal were right, this is a one-party nation. We have our choice between the “Nice” Nazis and the “Nasty” Nazis.

And the biggest difference I can see between the “Nasty” Nazis, read Republicans, and the “Nice” Nazis, read Democrats, is that the Nasty party listens to its base more. True the Republican base is ignorant, racist, selfish, and xenophobic, and white as newly fallen Vermont snow. But at the very least the Republican bosses pretend to listen to this narrow-minded lot, and at the very least give lip service to their, often bigoted, concerns. So anything that grabs the headlines, which echoes the Republican base’s inherent racism, greed or militarism, GOP leaders appear to leap into action.

Witness the stunt of Iowa’s Fifth Congressional District Representative Steve “The Blue-Eyed Tom Tancredo” King, “sitting on the U.S.-Mexico border, armed with night vision goggles to watch immigrants cross into Arizona illegally.” Now remember, this clown owns a scab construction company, but no one questions his hiring practices!

So Republican politicians jump around, chest thumping about “illegal immigrants,” who are taking “our” jobs and overcrowding our hospitals and schools and bring in diseases and on, and on, and on ad nauseam, getting the “base” fired up. The Republicans say they’re going to build a fence; they’re going to arrest and deport all 11 to 12 million workers in this country illegally. Oh, they say they are going to do a lot of things, except the right thing. And the only thing that just might work: a Marshall Plan for Mexico and Central America. But that wouldn’t be mean spirited enough and just might solve a problem. Heaven’s no, the Republican Party can never let that happen. Once they are back in their phony, baloney jobs safely retaining control of the US House the whole thing will be forgotten, for this election year at least.


So what does the Democratic base want? That’s a good question, with no easy answer. From my perspective the answer is campaign finance reform, publicly financed and free from corporate influence. I garner this information from my own experience, completely unscientific and anecdotal. At the Iowa Caucuses in January of this year, I volunteered for the local county platform committee and, got on the government and law sub-committee. Overwhelmingly, public campaign financing was the number one issue at this, in-your-face, grassroots level of participatory politics.

But campaign finance reform is merely a blip on the political radar. It’s an issue best left for the kooks, misfits, “the pitchforks and torches crowd,” not real Democrats. Real Democrats know the only way to win elections is to kiss the same rich asses the Republicans kiss.

So here, to me at least, is the essential difference between Democratic Party philosophy and the Republicans: The Republicans pay attention to kooks, misfits and “the pitchforks and torches crowd.” Sure, they stab the kooks, misfits and “pitchfork and torches” folks in the back at every turn, but the GOP always has a ready scapegoat for apparent policy failure: Liberals.

Democrats, on the other hand, tend to ridicule its party’s kooks and misfits. As a friend, who has been deeply involved with the local Democratic Party establishment for many years, explained: He did not know why the Party’s state convention even bothered with drawing up a platform because the candidates always ignored it. To me, this statement illustrates the essential difference between the parties.

Republican Party leadership listens to the fringe, nurtures the fringe and incorporates the often loony, kooky ideas of the fringe into its overall party policy and strategy. Democrats, on the other hand, merely tolerate its fringe elements, humor them and ultimately ignore them in its quixotic quest for the ever elusive center. New ideas, philosophies, religions, political movements, what have you, never develop in the comfortable, moderate center. That is where political rot begins.

Further reading:How to Keep Democrats From Blowing the November Election. An interesting read, however, I do not share writer Bernard Weiner's optomism.