'Missing in Inaction: Why an Opposition Party Matters' by David Michael Green

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Missing in Inaction: Why an Opposition Party Matters

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/04/6157/

by David Michael Green

America would be a lot better place if it had an opposition party. That’s how democracies are supposed to work, after all.

Oh. What’s that you say? We already have one, called the Democratic Party? Gosh, I didn’t notice. I’ve been watching them this last couple of decades and I long ago concluded that their job must be to assist the Republican Party in running the country into the ground. Guess I missed something, somewhere. Like maybe that whole opposition part of being the opposition party.

I have recently been engaged in the process of ‘debating’ politics online in a circle of email correspondents - some progressive, some regressive - that I fell into somehow. Boy, has that been an education, particularly concerning the tools employed by the Dark Side to fight their otherwise completely hopeless policy battles.

And I was reminded in the course of these rants about the real significance of an opposition party in a democracy.

There are many reasons why such parties might be important, but their most significant raison d’être is one which could be described as epistemological in nature - that is, concerned with the nature, foundations and presuppositions of ‘knowledge’. In short - what we ‘know’, and how we come to know it.

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But what if there is not an alternative vision? What if there is no legitimated alternative approach to an issue or to politics in general? And what if, in particular, this is the case during a moment when a nation feels itself under siege, and is encouraged to believe so?

Then it becomes much harder for an individual to find that vision on their own, and, even assuming that hurdle can be surmounted, a much scarier prospect to adopt it in the face of near universal societal disagreement and the resulting pressure of condemnation.

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This is why - among other reasons - the alternative vision of a bold opposition party is so crucial. For very many people, especially those who are politically disengaged, such organizations function to sketch the boundaries of the thinkable, and help to define the limits of the acceptable. And this is why, accordingly, the continued abdication by the Democratic party has been so dreadfully pernicious all these last years.

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It takes a little courage - a term not often found in the same sentence as the word Democrat these days - but one begins to see how crucial it is for legitimated, supposedly in-the-know leadership figures to articulate a counter-narrative if the public is to be engaged, and if the stakes are to be raised for bad policy choices. Most people can’t, or won’t, get there on their own, especially when doing so is not only lonely and unpopular, but also made out to be essentially treasonous.

In fact, however, during this disastrous epoch in American history, it was ultimately the public who led their ‘leadership’ in the Democratic Party, and continue to do so now. In almost every case the public is out front of the Democratic politicians, who nervously lick all ten of their fingers and stick them in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. Meanwhile, even gale-force hurricanes have already passed them by without their knowing.

That dynamic of followers leading ‘leaders’ means that progressive change is going to be slow to occur - or at least slower. But there is also a certain virtue to public-led policymaking, and a significant small-d democratic flavor to it.

If the American public is demanding enough of progressive change, we’ll ultimately be able to wrest it from the walking sheets of litmus paper (especially Madame Clinton) who call themselves the Democratic Party.

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