America's Most Hysterically Enraged Homosexuals™ are aghast that Senate Democrats on the Intelligence Committee "supported" General Hayden's nomination as Inspector-General Clouseau of the No Such Agency. Money pull:
If the Democrats want support from their base, this vote is bullshit. If we wanted a rubber stamp for the millionth time, we'd just vote Republican or not vote at all.Again? Must we reply? Again?
There may be some minor truth in the "not vote at all" claim; I do expect that Democratic turnout will be depressed in the 2006 midterms, although to be fair, I don't expect Republicans in droves either, and in any event midterms, regardless of the crisis-mongering endemic to the professional political class, aren't exactly known for turnout at the polls.
But seriously, bolting the party?
I quit voting for national Democratic candidates entirely in the last election. I'd previously voted principally for Democrats not out of any particular attraction to the various and sundry quasi-thoughts cobbled together as a "platform", but simply because I judged Democrats to be slightly less venal than Republicans, slightly less corrupt, slightly more competent, and, since their principle quality in office is fecklessness, slightly less capable of defending their incumbencies in the next election--a big plus in my book. But post-AUMF-Afghanistan, post-Iraq-war-vote, post-PATRIOT Act, I quit. It gained me nothing; it preserved no liberty; it had no effect on any issue in which I had the slightest interest, except perhaps insofar as the Democrats' boneheaded obstruction of the Republicans' even more boneheaded Social Security schemes cut off any inchoate discussion of just why the hell the government is in the pension business anymore at all. I digress.
No one really believes that AmericaBloggers or Kossacks or Eschatonians or, as John Cole calls them, the Jane Hamshers of the Left are going to leave the Democratic Party, nor even withhold their votes in one measly midterm. This all has something to do with Ralph Nader, Patrick Buchanan, and Florida, but I'm not Joan Didion and haven't the guts to wade into the morass of Florida-2000 resentments, except to say that the conviction that a minor 3rd-Party candidate cost their boy his inheritance has driven contemporary Democrats to nigh six years of incoherency. "We hate Democrats, ergo we are Democrats." It's as if they're using the "Ballad of Reading Gaol" as an election stategem.
Their principle error isn't mistaken fidelity, however, but false expectations. It seems to me that many, many Democratic activists and bloggers hold onto the delusional belief that the next Congress, if Democratic, or the next President, if a Democrat, will swiftly, concisely, and uncompromisingly disavow the dictatorial tomfoolery of the current executive; that Hillary or whomever will head up to the Hill in early March of aught-nine to give some version of the Secret Speech. And in fact, s/he might.
Recall the blossoming of liberty in the USSR, post-1956 . . .
6 comments:
The secret speech was given in 2002. You can be excused for forgetting about it. Everyone else did. It was secret, after all. (More in the stealthy "covert" sense of the word than in the more deeply "concealed" sense.)
The punchline:
"In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out."
[Note: I wanted to add that I'm aware that it's not a perfect analogy. Kerry's speech was really more a pewling c.y.a. move than a principled disavowal, however I have faith that were he elected, the non-results would be as you describe.]
Anyway, three moral reasons to keep voting (though I'm aware of their relevance in the scheme of things): first, to deservedly remove the bums from office; second, to earn a license to bitch; third it fucks up their pandering calculus.
Although with respect to the second point, I suppose you could say "I didn't vote for Bush" with equal vigor if you didn't vote at all.
Keifus
(Brilliant catch as usual, by the way)
Hey K,
I don't actually advocate not voting. I just don't advocate voting for DEMOCRATS. The relentless, inexorable logic of our winner-takes-all system really fucks with people who'd otherwise be inclined to support third-party candidates (and consider what it says about out system that EVERY non-Major party is a third party!).
But I happen to believe there is a value in voting affirmitively for independent or small-party cadidates. The value is mostly personal, but what else is there, in the end?
IOZ, you undervalue, or at least leave unacknowledged, the importance of electoral structure in your voting/3rd party stance.
Having studied comparative electoral systems for a bit, it is impossible for this country to maintain a longstanding 3rd (or 4th, 5th...) party of any influence. Single member district plurality voting in a presidential system with high immigration and heterogeneity will always lead to a two party system.
Unless you change one of these factors (something I would vote for, but recongize will never happen, 98% re-election rate and all), voting for a third party candidate is pointless. Have a glass of warm milk instead.
la_rana is right.
But I'm no Naderite--not as a matter of ideology, obviously, but also not in the structural, institutional sense in which he and his supporters sturggle for 3% or 5% or whatever other negligible share of the vote will win them a "place at the table," a berth in the debates, automatic inclusion on the ballot, or any such thing.
But I'm not necessarily opposed to symbolic gestures, and I think that the exercise of your franchise for a guy or gal who stands against the grain is a valuable thing for you as a person, like giving the system the finger from the back of the school bus--you know it's just going to go on driving, and it probably didn't notice, but still.
Blizzard warnings were issued as a service to parts of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin as snow socked the states in tandem with off the wind fart hear of gusts topping 45 miles (72 kilometers) per hour.
The rainstorm -- 10 days anterior to the hit of winter -- took its greatest toll in Minnesota, where as much as two feet (61 centimeters) of snow had fallen in some locations, according to the Country-wide Ill Advantage (NWS).
The state's largest burg Minneapolis was directed a blanket of white 17 inches (43 cm) broad, the worst snowfall to bat the urban district in more than 19 years and the fifth-biggest on record.
As an indicator of the rage's hardness, Minneapolis-St. Paul Ecumenical Airport -- a motion focal point with know-how in contending with foetid seedy -- was shut down for the purpose the gold medal notwithstanding in years.
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