A foreigner meddling in American elections (my 1000th post)

[KitSileya]

After 5 years of membership, and 6 years of being on DU, I have finally gotten to my 1000th post. As you can surmise, I am not the most chatty, but I do spend at least a couple of hours a day on DU. So, I have had a long time to figure out what I want to say in my 1000th post.

A few weeks ago, a friend told me that he is planning to check out the opportunities to stand for election for the state legislature of his home state. When we're together, we often discuss politics, and even tho' I am a democratic socialist, and he decidedly is not, we respect each other. Our on-going joke is that when he's elected president in 2024, he'll appoint me as his Secretary of State. I told him I will support him and that I will help him get elected, because I believe he will do a much better job than those currently elected.

The catch? He's a republican. Granted, an old-school republican who voted for Kerry, and who holds to the values that Bush** has trampled on as surely as he has trampled on the Constitution, the respect, and the dignity of the USA - fiscal responsibility, small government, states' rights, non-interference abroad, the right of people to live unmeddled with. But still, a republican. And because I know him, and he's a friend, I will support him, all the while challenging him on the policies on which we disagree.

But, to my point. Here we have a republican, who has been marginalized in his own party, whose values are not upheld by his own party, and who has decided to do something about it by participating in the election process. I say it is decidedly the time for the progressives, the anti-war people, the leftwing, the socialists, the activists to do the same. You must start standing for election in each and every slot - from dog-catcher on upwards. The only way you will transform the election process is by participating in it. The Democratic party needs a pool of electable candidates from which the presidential candidate of 2024 will emerge. The more truly Democratic that pool, the less the chance of a DINO. That is the only way American politics can move back from the right, and start occupying the proper axis. If it is successful enough, it might even start moving America's political parties to the left.

Now, I know that it will be an enormous undertaking, especially as the American economy is on the brink of disaster, and those under economic attack are the very same as would be needed to implement such a plan (which is not a coincidence.) But it is necessary. Even in states where the people with a (D) after their name has a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected, there should not be one slot where the only candidate is the opposition's candidate. There needs to be a (D) on every local election paper. That doesn't mean you should give up the national efforts that you are doing, but it is imperative that the future presidential and Congressional candidates are from the grassroots rather than only the millionaires.

You may ask, why is this foreigner meddling in American politics? While you may not like it, you must realize that who you elect, do not only have consequences for you, in your districts, your counties, your states, your nation. It very much has consequences, often most dire consequences, for the rest of the world as well. In no other country in the world today, is the leadership of such importance to the rest of the world. Ahmadinejad, Kim, Mugabe, Chirac, Putin, Wen - none of them has as much to say over the rest of the world, simply because they do not have the power, the veneer of respectability, the willingness to throw away the rules as Bush** does. We, the rest of the world, must put this in your hands if we are to uphold the laws and principles that we wish you would follow. I hope you manage it.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

1. I hope we manage it before 2024.

You're correct in stating the importance of the involvement of candidates derived from a local venue. A stake in the local community -- a history of involvement in the community -- is essential in thwarting the callousness so predominant in today's political arena. From these roots spring the seeds of democracy. Truly, it is imperative to nurture these seeds and grow a better crop. Enough of the barons and lords. The people must reclaim their rights now, or forever forfeit them.

Thank you for expressing the need and urgency. It is felt by many here.

[KitSileya]

4. I hope you manage it before 2024 too.

But a Democratic president in 2008 will only be a stop-gap measure unless there is a change wrought from the grassroots up. We have seen the method work for the Republicans - it is how they've managed to grab and hold power so disastrously, and how they've managed to change the political landscape so terrifyingly. Imagine how different things would have been if the Democratic party had employed that strategy these past 37 years? Instead, we had to wait until Howard Dean - and you can see how step-motherly he's being treated by people in his own party. Unless the Democrats, and by Democrats I mean ordinary people, get involved and elected at every level, the US will always be in danger of a coup d'etat such as we saw in 2000.

[Laughing Mirror]

2. Whatever veneer of respectability Bush might have had when he first stole the presidency

Has been stripped away from him over the past 6 six years by his own despicable actions over the past 6 years. He has trashed the respect anybody might have for the presidency. He is a ridiculed laughing stock at every corner of the world.

That insane war criminal, capital criminal impostor has zero credibility on the world stage. Just ask the kings Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They won't even sit down to dinner with him anymore.

[Skittles]

3. "old-school republicans" suck too

ALL repukes suck

[KitSileya]

6. That may be.

But I come from a multi-party political environment. I believe that having just one party is not democracy at all. We've seen how stunted democracy gets when just one party has power or exists - not only under dictators, but the UK under Tatcher, Major, and Blair, and in the US these past couple of decades.

An opposition party is essential - even if you disagree with them on every thing, you need someone to ask the awkward questions. You need someone to challenge the ruling party. Without discourse, you cannot have a democracy.

I am a language teacher, and I usually say that you cannot know a language unless you speak at least two languages - you need to have something to compare, to bring awareness. If the Democrats were to become the only party in Congress, who would be there to check their excesses? Who would make them stand accountable for their decisions?

The US, unfortunately, only has two parties - it is what the electoral system rewards. One party is the Democrats, and the other is the Republicans. The question becomes then, would you rather have the current type of Republican, or would you rather have the Eisenhower type?

[Skittles]

7. having one party is no good but

it's high time we got rid of the party of fascists and bigots

[salin]

5. Great 1,000 post. Using the 2024 time frame is significant

in that implicit is getting a groundswell generation (s) of local, responsive and responsible elected officials who are more concerned with good policy and governing than the current power-hungry, get into govt in order to enrich self (self-dealing contracts, etc.) that seems to be the norm under bushco and with the talking head right (radio and tv) in this country.

[KitSileya]

8. 2024 is a good aim

It will take that much time to educate and train people in democracy, and then get them spread out like yeast in a bread dough. We need people in media, in schools, on school boards, work places, and elsewhere, who feel they have a stake in American democracy. The fight isn't just about the Democratic party, but about the US itself. And while there may be a course correction in 2008, the US is still headed for a spectacular fall unless the map itself is changed.

This year is the Heinlein Centennial - on 07/07-07 it's 100 years since his birth. He predicted that Americans would vote themselves into a theological dictatorship in 2012, after years of voting for bread and circuses. Now, the Americans are more inclined towards tax cuts and churches than bread and circuses, but while his timing was off, Heinlein did have a point. When one of his most famous characters were born - Woodrow Wilson Smith aka Lazarus Long - the comment in the birthroom was 'meet Woodrow Wilson Smith, president of the United States 1952'. How many births in the US today would such a comment not be simply a joke? How many children born in 2007 have a realistic opportunity to become the president of the United States?

I have no doubt that should I want to, I, a 31-year old high school teacher, would have a fair chance of one day becoming prime minister of Norway. Both my maternal and paternal great-grandparents were communists. My maternal grandfather was a union leader; practically all my family is working class. Yet my family and economic background would not stop me from reaching the highest electable office in my country. I doubt the same can realistically be said about the US.

[salin]

9. Some of my family in Norway

have risen to do pretty high level govt work (mostly medical or engineering fields). There is much more mobility (class-wise) in Norway than there is here in the US. While we tell ourselves we are a very mobile society - long-time Sociological studies looking at class mobility show that while there is some movement, that the Socioeconomic status and Educational level of the parents is the biggest predictor of the SES and education level of the child when s/he becomes an adult. There was some time in the last century where there was more mobility - but even by the nineties that had flattened out.

[KitSileya]

10. That sounds about right.

The US has a very class-divided society. The American Dream is a myth these days, and those that manage to crawl up from poverty to wealth are the exeptions that prove the rule. It's too bad that most Americans refuse to believe that the main purpose of everything the Republicans have done has been to kill every chance for those not in power and consolidate their own. The people in the USSR knew that what they were served was popaganda - the Americans believe it is the truth.