Edited re-posting of Journal essay dated May 8: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/WilliamPitt/456Screw the hand-wringers and the always-wrong punditry who want it to be damaging so they can be buzzards as usual. Their estimates of how damaging this race has been to the Democrats does not jibe with the numbers:
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/06/unity_1.phpThis has been one of the better things to happen in America in a long time. Both candidates deserve our gratitude, but Clinton moreso for staying in even after the numbers ran out of spinning space.
Think about it.
1. When was the last time you can remember so many people, so many usual non-voters, so many new voters, so many Black and Hispanic voters whose absence from the polls tends to directly affect their lives, almost always to their deficit, with much more immediacy than in other blocs of voters.
That right there is a coalition, shades of what Bobby Kennedy and later George McGovern were trying to pull together. Bobby had it, and maybe they laid him low exactly because he had it. McGovern tried, and did really well considering what he was up against in his own party. The party powers (explained by Hunter Thompson as "the Meany, Daley, Humphrey axis") fought him tooth and nail all the way to the convention, where he scrambled their eggs using the new convention rules he had written with his own hand after the '68 debacle (at the behest of M-D-H, ironically enough).
The Bobby/George (sorta Teddy) coalition still exists, and pretty much has to deal with the same shit their predecessors went through 36 years ago: shitass war, bastard president, fucked economy, contempt and violence from cops (less so now, but a groom did just take a pound of lead to his grave from four shooter cops who were declared guiltless...just sayin') and a general sense that rules don't apply to the political leadership, and the whole promise behind the idea of America looked a lot like some campy bullshit from the 50's. Thus began the 70s.
And:
2. I just LOVE that all these back-of-the-list states get a chance to decide the fate of the planet. Seriously. Remember last time in '04, all the bitching about so many states not getting to be involved after Super Tuesday. Well, be careful what you wish for. But it's magnificent. Give a citizen a shovel, tell them their digging will really make a difference and means they are totally involved, and they'll dig deep enough to be stopped by granite bedrock.
Indiana changed history. NC did, too. West Virginia was next to be the center of the world, then Kentucky and Oregon...and the last to come are Montana and South Dakota...freakin'
what? I don't think those states have ever swung electoral weight. Now they do. All of them bursting with Democratic voter interest, they're in this thing for real, they have two prime super-sharp rumble-ready yet historically distinctive candidates to follow. State after state has reported primary voters making choices in the booth, because they couldn't decide between this pair of ass-kickers, and when our voters are charged up to vote like they have been since February, when turnout and new voters skyrocket, we always always always win.
If this swings right in November, that enthusiasm might take root and stay a while...another midterm, a re-elected president...etc...
Democracy will be better for this campaign. I am grateful to Senator Clinton for staying in this long, though she is not my choice. Her staying in has given millions of Americans a piece of the best part of this national idea, which many had lost long ago in resigned surrender to the fact of their electoral irrelevance. She gave them back their participation and truest way to be a patriot actively involved to move things toward that better possibility we all know can be attained.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if that very ballot-borne blessing to voters, real involvement creating genuine influence, is maybe some part of the unspoken iron that has kept her on that bastard road. If so, she has done an amazing service to the country. If it is merely a consequence shaped by other motives, and not even a hidden idea anywhere in the campaign braintrust, well, it happened anyway, and she's pretty awesome for it, even by accident.
When Black voters turn out in monolithic numbers in every state (which they would most likely do for either candidate), it will checkmate the bloc of GOP base voters. Young voters, new voters, pissed Democrats, independents who want to shake shit up, and a large majority of erstwhile Clinton voters despite the volume of "no way" threats should Obama win through. They'll vote, most of them...and if only half vote, the slack will be picked up by a lot of folks on the Left who don't want McCain, and who see the larger social and historical context involved in a Black man becoming president.
It cannot be avoided, and if it is achieved, we will be just a little bit better as a nation for it. Ditto on many equally important yet different social/historical levels if Clinton wins through. The descendants of less equal Americans whose lineage has ancestors who lived fettered and powerless, literally and figuratively. Society, religious fundamentalism and black-letter law saw them as dumb beasts unfit to occupy the same space as decent people, or as petticoated chattel denied books and education and doomed to the empty existence of an inanimate decoration who could breed, had no legal defense against abuse, and usually kept quiet. Women have enjoyed the right to vote for less than 100 years, Black people less than 50, generally speaking. Think about that, and then consider those two again.
Yeah, this is good shit. This is big.
And when all that enthusiasm gets released come November (having been bottled since the primary vote they cast which shook the pillars of the Earth), when Black voters and young voters and independents combine with that large swath of Dem voters from our base (union members, teachers, smart people who don't resent paying taxes because they like roads and schools and garbage getting piked up and stuff) combine with the activist base who ALWAYS love to vote
...I do believe...
...we're gonna blow the fucking doors off McCain's bullshit bus tour. And pick up Senate seats, and House seats.
No promises, no sure thing, anything can happen and we're up against ghouls in blue suits who have power beyond reason or the protection of law. But when voters care, they can stand up next to a mountain and chop it down with the edge of their hand.
Behold this slightly improved democracy, new voters, psyched voters, and what was a hard choice between candidates. History made no matter what.
Look out, Johnny. Here we come.
:toast:
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
