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Edited on Wed Feb-18-04 03:52 PM by DuctapeFatwa
Ask the average party hack, and they'll tell you it's gotta be Sharpton. Or Kucinich. Fringe, they'll tell you. Too radical.
If this were a musical comedy, the party dude would now lean forward conspiratorially like Richard O'Brien in the Rocky Horror Picture Show and hiss "They would CHANGE things."
That's the cue for the Neo-Condescension Chorus to come in with the "but they're heart of the party, the sou-wo-wooouuul of the party" refrain, puncutated by a little spotlight on the basso-profundo "Surprised to learn that Al's so SMART" and the NCC goes all Gilbert & Sullivan - "He's surprised to learn..."
The Democrats are so shocked and awed by the bush regime that their efforts are focused on coming up with a candidate who will guarantee the status quo, but look better and talk better than Bush. Put the same policies into prettier words. They have become leftist neo-hawks, stuttering friable and tenuous arguments for imperialism, as studiedly oblivious to the horror and suffering as Old Granny Bush of the Beautiful Mind. Gotta beat Bush, they chant. Beat Bush.
Beat him at what?
The beatBush frenzy, born of their own distaste and loathing for policies that threaten not only the social fabric of the nation, but its very sovereignty, not to mention the future of the human species on earth, has turned on itself, devoured its placenta of logic and become an absurd single-minded conviction that the only way to "beat Bush" is to maintain those same policies under the apter and more metrosexual direction of a more telegenic piece of on-camera meat.
They even have their own Bible, a PNAC alternative, a much better-written document, whose authors clearly made better grades in composition class, and took lots of Rhetoric and Persuasion electives, because they care.
Its aim is ambitious: to make imperialism sound palatable to people who a year ago were engaged in assiduous letter-writing campaigns and organizing marches and demonstrations against it.
All the while, they shake their heads in worry. What if they don't beat Bush? What if the impeccably groomed silver-throated talent they have chosen does not move the NASCAR dads with their lofty messages, their precision-worded monologues wrapped like fine chocolate round the core promise that nothing will change?
Forty years ago, the Democratic party did flirt with change a little, and raised the hopes of millions upon millions of Americans that change IS possible. The party, however, quickly retreated, and the grandchildren of those hopeful people are now in jail, homeless, or too busy working 3 jobs to think much about grandma's stories about the Movement, much less the state of politics in America today.
And when they do think about it, their eyes are more likely to roll in derision than light up with enthusiasm.
If the poor, and ethnic minority poor in particular have learned anything about politics over the past forty years, it is that politics is a rich white man's game, and no politician is going to do anything that changes their lives, unless it changes them for the worse.
Voters tend to be the top 25% income tier. That leaves 75%. And the concerns of that 75% are not capital gains taxes, maintaining the status quo, or imperialist strategies to keep America's defense and energy industries strong.
Their concerns are a roof over their heads, earning enough money to pay for basic needs. Their concerns are child care, health care. Health care as in get sick, go to the doctor, get treatment, not health care as in keep the insurance companies happy and reduce what those lucky enough to have an HMO have to pay by $10 a month.
Even if there were a candidate who promised them a Living Wage, a Right to Housing, Health Care, who guaranteed it, by Executive order if necessary, within 14 days of taking office, many would just roll their eyes anyway. Fool me once.
But if that 75% is going to get excited enough about any candidate to risk their jobs by skipping a day of work to vote, to risk their lives by leaving their hovels and braving the gangbangers on the way to the polls, to put up with the annoying chirpiness of the clueless ride to the polls volunteers, it will not be for an affluent comfort candidate, it will not be for silver-throated trills of reassurance to the corporate oligarchy.
Affluent people love to hear rhetoric about the poor. It makes them feel better about themselves. "Something must be done!" wailed King Edward VIII, shortly before his abdication in favor of the arms of the woman he loved, and the English middle class loved him for wailing it.
The American affluent love hearing their candidates intone it solemnly, declare it passionately, and they nod approvingly, smiling on their way out at pepole whose paychecks are not enough to provide housing and food for one. Forget children, forget electricity and especially forget doctors.
There are so many of these people that even Diebold might have a tough time doing its job if they voted. Even before Diebold, the system was designed to make it unlikely that they would.
They are also a stick with several times as much bushBeating potential as a steaming dish of status quo with better reading skills and more skillfully applied hair gel. But they are not as gullible as their better-heeled brothers. They are not as easily seduced by airy prose-poems and charisma. They've been there, done that, still couldn't afford the t-shirt.
They do not share the obsession with beating bush, because unlike the brie and SUV denizens of the dated community meetups and precinct gatherings, they do not find that the status quo is really really different when you say it in a nicer way. No matter how nicely they explain to their landlords that they do not have the rent, even if they quote directly from shining candidate speeches, the eviction notice arrives at the appointed time.
The Democrats' greatest weakness, their weakest link, is their failure to realize that they cannot beat Bush at his own game. Combine that with their unwillingness to use the only weapons of mass destruction they have: the double whammy of the so-called "fringe" candidates and those masses of people who don't see it like that.
What you call fringe is what they call a baby step.
Changing the government has a better chance of beating Bush than imperialism with hope, feudalism that cares, or, with props and apologies to Arundhati Roy, reverent rape.
Disclaimer: I do not support any of the candidates
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