Holding the Nose
A friend confided to me that he is so disillusioned with the Democratic Party that he would probably not vote for Obama in 2012. He says at this point there is no real difference between the parties, given the failure of the democrats to reform Wall Street. I have heard similar sentiments from others because of the failure to close gitmo, or cease renditions. Pick your issue and progressives are feeling as they did in 2000, and periodically since the sixties, that the choices in our two party system aren’t choices at all. I too am incredibly frustrated with Obama and the democrats. In 2000 I voted for Nader. I live in NY so this was a protest vote, but I didn’t then, and don’t now, think there is no difference between the parties. I did think there was little meaningful difference between Bush and Gore. That was a colossal mistake. I want to argue briefly here for the difference between the parties. I think everyone should, must, vote for Obama in 2012.
I have no hopes for a better second administration. Obama is a weak president because he is constitutionally incapable of exercising authority in the way strong politicians do. But it is useful to remember what the Republicans did under Bush, and before that under Clinton. The republican party is no longer a party that believes in democracy, democratic process, or the constitution of the united states. They are rather a coalition that would turn the united states into a dictatorship, slowly and over time. The alliance is between know-nothing populists, extreme religious nuts and corporate fascists. The democrats certainly serve corporate interests and do nothing to change the national security state we inherited from the cold war, but they do generally wish to govern, and to their detriment follow constitutional norms and procedures.
Bush wrecked the world economy, started two illegal wars, illegally detained and tortured prisoners, allowed a major American city to be destroyed by a hurricane, and sat by and watched an African genocide unfold. He also appointed two right wing supreme court justices who will serve for decades, turned the US attorney’s into political hacks, and used his executive power to undermine civil rights, environmental regulation and women’s rights to privacy. He made a bad educational system worse.
The republican party does not believe in evolution or global climate change. It is indifferent or, actually, hostile to the poor.
Democrats can be expected not to actively make things worse. Things will of course get worse because, as they say, the more things stay the same the worse they get. But four more years may mean one more centrist supreme court justice to balance out the lunatics. It may mean an EPA and interior department that don’t rape the land, even if they neglect to protect it. These are slim pickins, to be sure. But the president matters.
Consider what the left did in 1968, what it did in 1977, what it did in 1993. Were we really better off with Richard Nixon, or with severely weakened, ineffective democratic presidents?
The solution to our crisis probably doesn’t lie in the ballot box but on the streets. We aren’t there yet for some reason. Maybe we’ll never be there. Maybe we have to wait for them to die. I don’t know. But I will vote with my eyes open for a man who has disappointed me, because he doesn’t terrify me.
