I was in Chicago, my onetime home, for the Women’s March on Saturday. With 250,000 new friends, we made quite a stir.
But it’s worth it to ask where this passion and energy was last fall.
I come reluctantly to the conclusion that the joy of organizing and rally and protest and expression, is a luxury of being out of power. But actual governing power is better — even if it’s only used on the drudgery of preventing a disaster, the finger in the dike. We are finding out now what it’s like to do without that: We are in a national security, climate, and health care free fall. I sometimes heard last year, How can it be worse than this? Well … it can always get worse. QED.
Marches are how we see each other, know each other and our numbers, and our commitment and enthusiasm. But if we don’t translate our energy into votes for viable candidates on November 6, 2018 — before that in some states and many municipalities — we’ll still be at sea, powerless to stop abuses and avoidable disasters.
And if you’re looking for viable candidates, that usually means voting for the Democratic Party.
Strangely, using the Democratic Party is kind of a way of not getting hung up on labels. The word “Democrat” does not define your conscience; it’s not your personal “brand”. The pre-existing party organization is a tool, a vehicle to get someplace. It is a coalition of people and groups with a variety of hopefully-compatible interests, who come together for mutual support. And it hopefully contains the expertise and experience of those who have actually won elections at some point or other.
The broader the coalition, the more electorally viable; but a coalition broad enough to win will find that its focus becomes messier and more diffuse. In addition , our government with its branches and check and balances, is structured for the necessity of compromise. It is designed to disappoint. You don’t have to like it … but count on it.
But by no means does it mean that engagement is useless. A major political party is set up for internal coherence: Because of the necessarily transactional ties of power-sharing, your voice will mean more even to sub-optimal Democrats, than it does to a Republican. Jill Progressive votes for Jack Moderate’s bill (disappointing!); but Jack votes for Jill’s as well.
Third-party voting is a temptation for those disappointed by the general disposition of the Democratic Party. Speaking as a 2000 Nader voter, this is a grave mistake. The Green Party peels off votes from disaffected leftists, and has once again proven itself the most effective anti-environmental group in the country. The product of the Wikileaks email hack was successfully aimed at exacerbating the already-existing rift on the left: Stein voters got played, by a murderous autocrat. (If Russia-loving, Fox News enabler Jill Stein is your conscience, your conscience has shit for brains. Sorry.)
Those on the left wish Democrats would shore up their left flank on environmental and social justice issues, and suggest they would win more elections that way. There’s some evidence to suggest this is the case. The Environmental Voter Project, for example, claims that there are many environmentally-inclined people who simply don’t show up to vote at all. Perhaps they’re not hearing a compelling case from many Democratic candidates. But in general, environmental protection is clearly stronger under Democrats — does it even need to be said? And there are many progressive champions within the party. Depending on where you live, you may get to vote for one. But even if you don’t, the mutual support within a party means that your vote for a sub-optimal Democrat helps the goals of the coalition.
Strength begets strength. It remains very unclear to me how voting Green moves the Democratic Party to the left. What is quite clear is that the Green “alternative” makes it easier for Republicans to win elections, and cripple the laws and regulations that protect us.
One’s conscience is too big to fit in the bubble of a fill-in ballot. I’m not arguing for voting mindlessly in lockstep. I’m arguing for voting (and acting) mindfully, in solidarity, for power. Know the results that you expect to happen with your vote.
The political party is the most obvious tool to turn our solidarity into power. We must be a movement of human beings, not of brittle agendas or ideologies. Only human beings, their happiness and comfort and justice, are ends in themselves. In Saturday’s marches we were able to see each other, to relate to each other personally and en masse. May we never let policy specifics or ideological jargon distract us from our real job: Looking out for each other, lifting each other up. The compass of solidarity will lead us to policies that work.
The governing of an inclusive coalition will inevitably feel like “muddling along”, and be disappointing to policy idealists. People want different things; they negotiate; and no one gets everything they want. In foreign relations this is called “diplomacy”; but another word for it is “peace”. It doesn’t seem so satisfying unless you compare it to its alternative: War; or its equivalent in domestic governance: obstruction, impasse, or outright vandalism as we’re seeing now.
I’ve sometimes heard from an adherent of one faction or another, “if you don’t get with us, we’ll just have to roll over you.” Within a maximum 53% coalition, this is generally an empty threat. And no one likes being “rolled over”, or dominated — we’re not dogs. This applies equally to high-handed bureaucratic exclusion practiced by party insiders, as to rowdy insurgent disruptions. Winning politics requires coalition-building, which precludes making people feel trampled, ignored, or excluded. A healthy coalition respects new and bold ideas, and acknowledges the circumstances from which they arise. It also maintains long-term relationships, skills, and institutional experience.
Unfortunately in the 2016 primary, we saw some of that institutional hostility towards a challenger; the Clinton’s complacent comfort with the moneyed lobbyist class; and its failure to shore up the left flank by accommodating and co-opting the Sanders vision. We also saw a short-sighted, self-spiting, often unreasoning hostility from the Sanders camp towards Clinton, long beyond when it was wise — under the circumstances.
The only lesson I can draw is this: We need each other. The weekend’s demonstrations were even more evidence that we could have, and should have won this past election; and that we will win the future — if we hold together. Love your neighbor. Solidarity is victory. Policy is malleable. Rigidity of belief is a ditch where they throw the bodies.
November 6, 2018 Is not that far away.
sco says
This bears repeating:
We need each other.
There has been way too much re-litigating the primary over since the morning of November 9th. A literal monster is in the White House. We don’t have the luxury of breaking into factions.
Charley on the MTA says
I’ve been holding on to these thoughts for a long time. I should have said it a long time ago. Kind of late now.
But November
jconway says
I particularly like your definition of the party as a vehicle for change rather than an identity. Most voters aren’t party line voters and aren’t loyal partisans. They don’t care about the Roosevelt or Reagan legacies, but want someone to deliver for their family and their needs today.
And we need an inclusive approach. One that welcomes disappointed Trump voters, which current polling indicates is already up to 10% of them. One that reaches out to non-voters. One that reaches out to working families of all stripes who have similar needs across the board and communities of color that have unique and particular needs all of us have ignored for too long. Time to get out of comfort zones, whether it’s canvassing the trucker with the MAGA hat or the Hispanic mother going back to school in her 50’s.
I grew up five miles away from Chelsea and didn’t get to know that community this year. I was down 2 from Fitchburg and consider the folks I met there my friends and I’m proud of the work they continue to do for their community. I’m still friends with the people I met on the bus in Iowa. And friends across the country made new friends at these marches. Politics is about connecting people as much as it’s about fighting for a cause.
petr says
… expecting a win for Hillary Clinton. We all were. The passion and the energy is a direct function of how shocked we all were the day after the election.
fredrichlariccia says
Excerpt from an earlier essay I wrote in 2012:
” Parties are a fact of political life, whether we like them or not. the great American historian Gary Wills put it well in an essay in the New York Review of Books, when he chastised a liberal friend for abandoning support for the President : ‘ Obama was never a prince. None of them are,’ he wrote. ‘The mistake behind all this is a misguided high-mindedness that boasts, ‘ I vote for the man, not the party.’ This momentarily lifts the hot-air balloon of self-esteem by divorcing the speaker from political taintedness and compromise. But the man being voted for, no matter what he says, dances with the party that brought him, dependent on its support, resources and clientele. That is why one should always vote on the party, instead of the candidate. the party has some continuity of commitment, no matter how compromised. What you are really voting for is the party’s constituency.”
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Charley on the MTA says
I wish I could write like that!
JimC says
I’m having difficulty reconciling this point with all your downrates of my comments in the 50-state thread. Perhaps you could enlighten me?
fredrichlariccia says
because he’s not a Democrat. I respectfully disagree.
The larger point I was trying to make in my essay continues : ” This, I believe, is the hard truth behind all democratic elections. It’s a tough one for those of us who value our independence to swallow.
Parties are vehicles for putting ideas into action. And ideas that drive public policy matter a great deal to millions of people at the margins of society – the poor, the sick, the unemployed. They matter to our soldiers and our veterans, to women, to our seniors and to our schoolchildren.
And I believe that for every one of those groups, Democratic ideas are better than Republican ones. By contrast, when I read the GOP platform, I don’t see myself, my community or my values reflected there.”
Fred Rich LaRiccia
JimC says
Bernie is not a Democrat. If we vote the party, not the man, we can’t vote for him.
jconway says
Charley and Wills wisely identify it as a group of people working towards common goals and common principles. Are there any principles or goals Bernie Sanders has advocated that do not find a comfortable home in the Democratic Party? I think the answer is no. I do not understand your fixation on Sen. Sanders and his party registration, an issue that bothers no one else on this forum and does not bother the Senate Minority Caucus which included him in leadership or President Obama who endorsed him for the US Senate.
JimC says
You guys are having it both ways. So is Bernie.
jconway says
The voters don’t, you think the Republican Party matters to Donald Trump or his voters or was it simply a vehicle to help him seize power?
What matters going forward is stopping this President and his agenda. A lot of Republican principles and conservative values are going to go out of the window to rebrand the Republican Party as a Trumpist Party. We would do well to make the Democratic Party as welcoming to independents and outsiders as possible.
JimC says
Parties matter. Period amen.
jconway says
We are talking past each other because we are using different definitions.
There is the definition of a party as the legal construct by which people compete on ballots for election to office and the definition of a party as a group of like minded people working in concert toward a shared policy agenda. By the first definition, Sanders is not a Democrat but Trump is. By the second definition, Sanders is a Democrat and Trump-a nationalist conservative far and away from anything Lincoln or Reagan would recognize as Republican-is not.
So yeah, having access to the legal and financial benefits a legal party offered Trump helped him win a general election. Like Trump, Sanders recognized that it is better to compete at the presidential level in one of the two national parties than waste time with a third party. It was better for Sanders to run in our primary, lose, and go back to being an independent than run as an independent candidate or try and create a third party.
Having had experience managing campaigns having access to the benefits of being one of the two parties and having run without, it is far better to run with. And you make that message a lot more welcoming if you aren’t fixated on who is legally in your party but instead who shares your values.
Parties matter as means to an end. Values matter far more as the end. I hope you can agree with that.
jconway says
By the first definition Trump is a Republican and Sanders is not a Democrat. By the second definition, Sanders is a Democrat and Trump is not a Republican.
jconway says
And nominates someone racist and/or patently unqualified to be President. You still vote for them or do you hold your nose for the other side like the honorable Republicans who endorsed Hillary did?
Parties matter as a means, the cannot and should not be the end. Viewing them is the end is what has gotten us in this mess. Principles matter more than party, and defining a party by it’s principles seems like a better strategy to me than defining it by the legal construct.
In my judgment, Strom Thurmond was never a good Democrat even when he had D next to his name. Ditto a more mild offender like Joe Lieberman. In my judgment, bernie is a better Democrat than either of them. Just like principled conservatives to this day deny that Trump is a real Republican. They are actually preserving their party far better than the sycophants rolling over for the sake of unity and power.
JimC says
I can certainly agree that values matter more than party.
However, your definitions don’t really marry well. For practical purposes, and to advance our values, we need a better Democratic Party. Hence this discussion.
jconway says
And making sure Republican incumbents in areas that haven’t seen a Democratic challenger in years is far more important than challenging an independent who helped write our party platform and fully endorses and abides by it. Capice?
jconway says
Good. Bernie can stay where he is, and let’s hold our Democratic incumbents accountable to our platform-starting with the ones here at home where our voices have the most impact. Then we can build party organizations in states, unlike Vermont, that don’t have a strong Democratic presence let alone two viable center-left parties.
jconway says
As did I. I praised the rest of that post and uprated all your other points. I think that limited backlash you saw here among friends shows how little traction that idea would have in the real world. I get the heirericslly point you were making and I think all of us agreed with it but made one old, Jewish socialist exception 😉
JimC says
None.
jconway says
Technically true, spiritually, he’s a far better Democrat than half the bozos with the D next to their name on Capital or Beacon Hill and you know it. Didn’t you vote for him?
JimC says
I preferred Bernie, but I think party loyalty should count for something. She stuck with Democrats throughout her career, so that swayed me to her.
johntmay says
it was a good post. But that one line:
coupled with
disqualifies it from being a great post.
That aside….
I was at the gym, talking to a fellow Democrat prior to the “Women’s March” and we shared the same opinion, that its very title is divisive ad diluting. We saw it as a protest where people will vent their anger and nothing will change. I said “It will like that protest on Wall Street where they camped out” and we both realized that we could not recall the name of that protest (Occupy Wall Street, as I later looked it up).
Amen to that. Sadly, I don’t think we’re at all close to becoming more than a movement of brittle agendas or ideologies. Too many people have their titles and positions within those ideologies and they are not going to give up on that.
jconway says
Particularly if you looked at the mirror when you were in the gym 😉
Applies to my mirrors too. I’m over the primary/let’s all resist Trump and fight for workers!
johntmay says
Yup. That’s all we need to be. It includes just about everyone in one way or another. We are all workers, or will be, or used to be, or depend on one.
So who does it exclude: People who inherit enough from their family to never, ever have to work. People who work for only a short time and have incredible luck, akin to a buying a lottery ticket, and never have to work again. In short, all the people that Trump is surrounded by, appointing to cabinet positions, befriending – without regard to their gender, nationality, or religion.
We need to do the same.
terrymcginty says
Eloquent.