(Much, much more than) a dime's worth of difference

By Kathy G.

This obnoxious and patronizing comment to my last post reminds me of something I've been meaning to write about.

I've noticed that, as the election draws nearer, I've written a lot less critically about Barack Obama than I had previously. And, on a related note, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon on the liberal listservs I habituate. Earlier this year, those lists were torn apart by frequent angry, acrimonious exchanges between the supporters of Barack Obama and the supporters of Hillary Clinton. Or, just as frequently, between feminist Obama supporters (like myself) and outrageously sexist Hillary-phobes.

But now, those divisions have melted away. All the Hillary supporters I know have come around and are supporting Obama. Even some of the Obama skeptics sound a lot more enthusiastic about him these days. There are disagreements, of course, but much more there is bonding over how ugly, disgusting, and pathetic the McCain/Palin campaign is, and how excited we are at the prospect of a Democratic victory.

What's happened on the lists probably reflects what's happened among Democrats as a whole: we've stopped the bickering (for the time being, anyway) and are rallying behind our guy. As the race moves into its final weeks, this is an entirely natural dynamic. The stakes in this election couldn't be higher. And whatever our differences with Obama, and with each other, we're putting them aside for the moment. Our most important task is to get this guy elected, and we know it. We can fight about cabinet appointments and hash out the details of health care reform later.

By the same token, I'm not writing very much that is critical of Obama these days. It's not that I've changed my essential opinion of him, which is that, though he is talented and appealing in many ways, from the viewpoint of those of us on the left, Obama is deeply flawed. He has run an ideologically timid campaign, his has sold us out on some key issues (like FISA), and overall he does not really appear to be committed to bringing about the kind of deep, fundamental changes this country desperately needs.

So, I still have the same criticisms of Barack Obama I always did. But I haven't written about them much. It's not that I'm censoring myself, but emotionally I'm more interested in inflicting damage on McCain/Palin and doing my part, however small, to make sure those two sick fucks never get within miles of the White House. Also, my feelings about Obama are warmer these days (that will change soon enough once he takes office, I'm sure). I think it has to do with the natural dynamic of an election -- as election day looms larger, your partisan allegiances become stronger, and the differences you have with your chosen candidate, however significant, tend to fade into the background.

The comment I linked to earlier annoyed me because, apart from the belittling tone, the commenter  made an assumption I consider to be extremely dangerous and destructive: the  idea that it doesn't  matter which party is in power, because Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same,  and anyone who believes otherwise is some kind of deluded moron.

After the living hell of the last eight years, I cannot fathom that there are people who still believe that, but apparently there are.

Barack Obama is far from ideal, but on many issues the differences between him and McCain are like night  and day, and those differences have profound, life-and-death consequences. The allegedly "disgusting" post the commenter refers to is the one I did on the election and the courts, and what the consequences would be of four more years of Republican judiciary appointments. My post focused on the effect on choice, and that's scary enough, but there would be a huge impact on a whole lot of other vital issues as well: civil liberties, voting rights, labor rights, the power of the state to regulate businesses -- and on and on and on. McCain is beholden to the wingnut base (the Palin pick clearly shows that), and since he's likely to piss them off because he'll be forced to compromise on many issues with the Democratic Congress, he'll make it up to them by loading the courts chockful o' wingnuts. The idea of him doing so sends a chill down my spine.

But of course, the differences between the candidates go way beyond the courts. Obama will be 100% better on everything from foreign policy to the environment to the economic well-being of working people and the poor. Poor and working class folks fare far better under Democratic presidents than Republicans; there is clear and compelling evidence of this.

Obama will also do a far better job of staffing the government with competent appointees who carry out the job they're supposed to do and make sure government agencies run smoothly. Even if McCain were personally McWonderful (and Jesus tap-dancing Christ, we know he's not), he'd still have to hire people from his own party to fill jobs in the government bureaucracy. The problem is, the "professionals" in the Republican Party have become little more than a collection of corrupt hacks and wild-eyed Christian right ideologues. They believe government is the root of all evil, so they feel no incentive whatsoever to do their job competently. All they want to do is to prove that government fails -- that, and also enrich themselves and their cronies. How many more crises generated by "heckuva job Brownie" types can this country stand?

Look, though I'm unapologetically an extremely partisan Democrat, they disappoint me so frequently, and so severely, that if we had a parliamentary system, I'd happily support a third party. However, our constitutional system is such that we're pretty much handcuffed to a winner-take-all, two party system. Were it up to me, I'd prefer to rip up the Constitution and start all over again, but that ain't happening. In this country, there is only one way to create real change, and that is to work with the parties that exist. Working within the parties is difficult work, and the process of producing change is agonizingly slow, but it can be done. Look what the labor movement and the civil rights movement achieved by working within the Democratic Party, for example. Or, not so happily, what the conservative movement has done to the Republicans (hard as it is to believe, there was once a fair number of liberals in the Republican party).

Third parties are a complete waste of time and a tragic diversion of progressive energies. Commenter drip makes an interesting argument in favor of voting for the Green Party in his or her home state of Maryland (which is overwhelmingly pro-Obama), and while I respect what s/he has to say, I think s/he's dead wrong. I think progressives should cut off third parties at the knees. Starve them, deprive them of oxygen, let them die. Or better yet, let the conservatives waste their time with that shit. Because third parties are little more than a drain on resources and energies that could be channeled into far more productive political activities.

Clinton was never my cup of tea and I held my nose while voting for him, but he managed the economy well (many of those on the lower end of the income scale benefited), government agencies like FEMA showed much improvement, there were some small victories like the Family and Medical Leave Act, and he didn't start any crazy wars. If instead of him, we'd elected George the First in '92 or Dole in '96, we would have had a president with all of Clinton's policy shortcomings (like supporting welfare reform), but none of his virtues.

The bottom line with Obama is, he's someone those of us on the left can work with. Given the right circumstances -- a strong and revitalized liberal activist base, public sentiment moving to the left, bad economic conditions, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, or close to it -- we may be able to get some important things done.

With McCain, though, there is no hope whatsoever. This country will continue to go to hell domestically, and to sow destruction and hatred internationally.

Honestly, I think that only moral idiots think there's no important difference between McCain and Obama, or between the major parties. The bodies of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis is pretty stunning evidence to the contrary. (And if you want to argue that President Gore would have gone into Iraq, feel free to bite me. Al Gore has many faults, but he's not a bloodthirsty madman).

Don't get me wrong, I have my share of doubts about Obama. But right now, our country's most urgent task is defeating McPain/Palin and beating the Republicans into a bloody, lifeless pulp. As Brad DeLong likes to say, "raze the Republican Party to the ground. Plough it under. Scatter salt in the furrows so it can never grow back."

Even better is how James Wolcott put it:

I harbor no grand illusions about Obama, he isn't my messiah (I don't have a messiah, the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson supplying more than enough transcendence to last a lifetime), and I'm still not sure how much he comprehends how gravely this country has been gutted over the last decade. My rooting interest is less about Obama himself than about how big a hurt he can put to the Republican Party. I don't want the Republican Party simply defeated in November, I want to see it smashed beyond all recognition, in such wriggling, writhing, anguished disarray that it can barely reconstitute itself, so desperate for answers that it looks to Newt Gingrich for visionary guidance, his wisdom and insight providing the perfect cup of hemlock to finish off the conservative movement for good so that it can rot in the salted earth of memory unmissed and unmourned in toxic obscurity.

'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!

Comments

[arbitrista]

Well said. The idea that the 2 parties are identical is simply absurd, given that they're about as ideologically polarized as they've been since, well, maybe the civil war. No joke.

The persistent idiocy about 3rd parties has always driven me directly up a wall. I don't have time to dwell on all the problems in a comment, but I cared enough about the issue to make it one of the first things I ever wrote about - over four long years ago (http://third-estate.blogspot.com/2004/05/why-third-parties-are-bad-idea.html).

[Sara Anderson]

Who really expects a competitive Presidential candidate to be ideal? People act like they're making some kind of huge sacrifice by voting for someone with whom they don't agree about everything. I like Obama, but haven't made any bones about the fact that my favorite attribute of his is that he gets people excited and also to vote for him.

If progressives are so enamoured of collective action, why do they they let it fall apart at a level where it can make a difference?

[PL]

Kathy, I happen to agree with you about the current election, although I think that the Democratic Party has been more than willing to collude with neoliberal agenda of the past thirty years. But I think, to be intellectually honest, that it is important to point out that there are at least five hundred thousand deaths attributable to the sanction regime against Iraq during the nineties. This regime was fully supported by the Clinton administration. So while the Clinton administration isn't guilty of starting a war on the scale of Iraq, it's hands are hardly clean.

I don't see much hope in the Democratic Party, but I also think that third parties only address the symptom of the problem. What we need is root and branch constitutional reform as recommended by Sandy Levinson. I have to admit that this seems utopian at the moment...

[drip]

Your points are well taken. In my judgment there is way too much support for the monied class in the democratic party, but for a lot of reasons, there is not much to do about that for now. My frustration with what I see coming down the road leaves me in a state of depression as deep and as wide as my idea of what 700 billion and 900 billion is.

You have more confidence in Obama than I (the mere mention of Robert Rubin causes stroke-like symptoms, for example), but I noted and well remember your criticisms. You are fundamentally correct. How can a nation of 300 divese people find one or two folks to agree on? We can't and Obama is clearly different from and superior to the other guy. I wish there was a way to express my frustration without mentioning a third party. My short-lived wish for Hilary to win was based upon my certainty that she would, as I wrote once elsewhere, serve Mitch McConnell's still beating heart to David Broder and Sally Quinn at a White House dinner.

My participation in blog comments is to fly my half baked ideas and see if smart people can straighten me out. I'm not sure my mind is much changed much on this issue, but McCain is as stupid, crazy, deluded and arrogant as I've seen in my many years. Even in the Senate he stands out for these qualities and you certainly reminded me of that. So, once again, thanks for the fruits of your efforts.

[Karl Weber]

Kathy, I'm with you all the way. And I would add this: That electing Barack Obama, and having him serve as a good president (as successful as Clinton or more so) will be an important step toward racial equality and reconciliation in this country. A great side-benefit to look forward to from an Obama administration.

[Matt Weiner]

I agree with pretty much everything you say here, and I'm probably ordinarily much more of a Democratic Party apologist than you, but I think this may be overbroad:

"I think progressives should cut off third parties at the knees. Starve them, deprive them of oxygen, let them die."

Just because, here in Vermont, we have a third party/independent movement that actually seems to be kind of effective and progressive. Bernie Sanders you know, and there are other people around in the Progressive Party (or in many case independents) who seem to be kind of effective. I haven't been here long enough to know the ins and outs, but it seems that they've managed to find a niche -- possibly because the Democrats have a pretty overwhelming advantage in the state, so the independents can run without helping the GOP. (In contrast to the Greens, who I think should be frozen out completely.)

[Melinda]

The Bernie Sanders example is terrific.

I think it's pretty clear that the Democratic Party has not been progressive in any meaningful sense of the word for quite some time, and that Barack Obama is not a progressive candidate. Believing that to be the case doesn't imply that we also believe there's no difference between the parties. From huge issues like NAFTA, welfare "reform," and the 1996 Telecom Act to somewhat smaller ones like the Defense of Marriage Act, the Democratic Party sold traditional liberalism down the river during the Clinton administration. Saying that doesn't mean that Dole would have been pretty much the same, it just means that Clinton is not a liberal.

So, if you think that federal policies ought to be further to the left, you're stuck with the problem of how to help that happen. Right now the Democratic Party is not particularly accountable to the left because the left isn't asking them to be. We all know what economists say about incentives, right? So what are the incentives for Democratic politicians to support progressive policies at the same time that they're raking in big corporate donations?

I hope that there's consensus among people on the left that the idea of a McCain administration is intolerable. But still, that doesn't mean that we ought to be blindly voting for the Democrat - there's context to consider, and the context is going to vary from person to person and from district to district. I live in NY-24, a moderate conservative district in a liberal state. NY is safe for Obama and that's liberating for those of us who have qualms about voting for him. NY, however, has fusion voting, so in most districts we have the option of pulling the lever for Obama in a column other than Democratic, and my plan is to vote for him in the Working Families Party column, or possibly to vote third party completely if he manages to seriously piss me off between now and election day.

However, this being a basically Republican district I don't have the same liberty in Congressional and local elections, so I feel I have to vote for the Democratic candidate in those cases.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that while there's clearly a strong interest in keeping Republicans out of office, there's also an interest in keeping Democrats supporting progressive policies, and they really haven't been very good about that over the past several decades. I don't know what the answer is but I don't think it's to unconditionally vote for the Democrat under all circumstances.

[MattF]

In a NYT interview, Edgar Bronfman (Seagrams billionaire) said he'd vote for Mickey Mouse over McCain/Palin, and I can't disagree with that. There is no valid 'tactical' approach to defeating the current Republican party. They should just be beaten and buried. And then stabbed in the heart a few times, just to make sure.

[washerdreyer]

Melinda, thanks, I'd forgotten that WFP gets a ballot line at the Presidential level. I'll definitely vote for Obama through them.

[Matt Weiner]

Just to be clear, what I was saying is that I think Sanders shows that third parties can work in some circumstances, but they're pretty specialized circumstances in which they don't wind up helping the Republicans -- New York's fusion voting and Vermont's liberal dominance (and tiny size) create openings for third parties, but that doesn't necessarily generalize. In most cases I think the thing to do is to try to move the Democratic Party from the inside, with organization and primary challenges.