I come back to this site periodically, to observe the abused spouse like struggle against itself that the progressive left goes through in its relationship with the Democratic Party. It is risky to get between the partners in an abusive relationship, because the codependent victim will turn on you a lot quicker than they will on their real tormentor. During the good times, you are accused of slandering and insulting the beloved better half, while during the bad times you are berated for not understanding the complexity of the relationship and for making the situation worse, preventing any chance for improvement.
Obviously, there was no talking to anybody here after Obama's victory. The family were going to the Mall, and the Party would finally get us all those presents it promised us for all those years of toughing it out. The Afghanistan escalation was barely a blip on the radar, the progressives were prepared to trade any pretensions to anti militarism for another moment of watching Obama solemnly and manfully ordering the troops deployed and watching their returning caskets.
But now that you are black and blue after the beating the Dems gave you on health care, now that you're written to the President telling him how disappointed you are, I want to ask you, have you had enough?
The ultimate motivation for people staying in terrible relationships is often a selfish one – they do not want to be alone, they want somebody, and are prepared to make many sacrifices to keep a relationship alive. In political relationships the motivation is similar – the left doesn’t want to be alone, radical, denounced, marginalized. They want to belong, to be a valued wing of the Party, part of the mainstream, involved, influential, to have and wield power (for the good for once). The need to belong is very strong, I have had many of the old 60s activities who grew up to frequent this site and sit on various local councils and take part in most of the national campaigns, fundraising, going door to door selling tepid ideas which in the 60s they had denounced as counterrevolutionary. They tell me of the need for a United Front, because as a United Front, we participate in the debate, we are there when our coalition partners get what they, or more accurately the money interests behind them, want, and what those people want is closer to what the United Front former radical wants than what the Republicans want. So if you don’t give the Democratic money interests what they want, the Republican money interests will get what they want, and that would be worse. Instead of 3 divisions going to Afghanistan there would be 5, or 1, or some other even more wrong number. They wouldn’t be giving trillions of dollars in subsidies to the banking and health insurance industries at a time of crushing federal deficits. They would have given it to the oil companies! You don’t understand, they love us, even if they go sleep at that other woman’s house every night!
One such grizzled veteran of political collaboration told me he remembered times when he was in league with Southern Democrat segregations, and he doesn’t regret those days. Sure, America is still segregated and the reforms of the civil rights era were dramatically undermined over the last 30 years with a lot of Democratic collusion, Southern and otherwise, but at least he didn’t go the Ayers route and always stayed relevant and involved. And now look what we’ve accomplished, a black President who is selling out our interests as well as any white man every could have. We did that by staying patient. We sacrificed the inner cities to police brutality and neglect, but those blacks who live lives exactly like middle class whites are now accepted on a provisional basis, as long as they continue to shop the Gap and Abercrombie and went to a good school of course. We would have never accomplished that if we hadn’t sold out the cause at every turn!
But though I fully understand the motivation and the sick symbiotic relationship between the Democratic Party and the so called progressive collaborationist left, I can’t help feeling curious after having read all the recommended diaries by the disgruntled fundraisers who will never canvas again, by the campaign volunteers who have tossed down their markers and note pads in disgust. Mr. President, I’m writing you this letter as your biggest friend.... At least when he hits us we know he cares, but now he’s just ignoring us like we don’t even exist as he strokes the botoxed face and enhanced breasts of Big Pharma. But still many are not ready to give up. Organize better, fundraise more, make yourself so valuable, so servile, so accommodating that the Democrats will have to love you. Better yet, stay, but give them firm ultimatum.. Make them fear you, because you are powerful too, on the inside. R-E-S-P-E-C-T, sisters! And once again, what are you going to do, leave them, when the only other party in town is the Republicans?! During the next elections, will you field your own candidates in opposition to both Democrats and Republicans, and the conservatives are likely to do? The conservatives are crazy tea baggers of course, tea bagging all the time, so one could hardly expect the astute power players of the left to split the vote so childishly!
But still, allow me to make a suggestion, even though I know that you will denounce me for it. I know, I don’t understand the complexities of your beautiful relationship, I only focus on the bad sides, I’m just a negative nelly, and I weaken the chances of Harry Reid returning at Senate leader. Fuck Reid, fuck all these people, let them lose. I know it will mean no longer being associated with the power, but what has this association gotten you? None of your programs have been passed, you have for years contented yourself of periodic coincidences and honeyed words. President Obama is in Copenhagen. Copenhagen did not lead to any meaningful action on climate change. But he turned it into Hopenhagen and we were a part of it! We got the power too!
I know this means that there might be more Republican victories, although the way things are going, the right wing might get the balls to leave their abuse spouse before the left does. Turnout is already at 50 percent, what will they do when it drops to 25? How will the corporate interests mask their plutocracy as a popular republic then? The fiction of democratic participation is a better defense against revolutionary change than a blindly loyal professional standing army, which incidentally they also have and maintain with the left’s active support. Stopsupporti9ng the army, stop funding this military apparatus that in the end will be used to put down any guanine reform movement, should one gain momentum despite the efforts of the United Front elders.
Walk away. Until this system of two complementary parties, who complete each other’s sentences and steer the Republican on a course of militarism, authoritarianism, inhumanity and greed loses its legitimacy, it will continue on its inexorable course. Until people continue not only to show up for, but to volunteer to serve in, and to give their hard earned money to, elections in which two candidates with nearly identical views compete for the middle ground, these elections will continue offering us no choice for peace, for redistributive justice, for global cooperation, for any of the revolutionary values with which we started out our journey of collaboration.
How much longer will the people here continue to denounce Rahm Emmanuel, write letters of recrimination and guilt to Obama, make pledges not to fundraise, well, at least not on Mondays and Wednesdays and not for anybody named Lieberman, but for worthy causes like more armor for our poor troops. You can’t ask us to abandon our troops out there in the territories they occupy, you can leave the biggest war machine in history short on grease, and of course all the things our soldiers choose to do over there really messes them up when they get back there and can’t do those things anymore, so we’ll definitely need to give them more therapy and drugs to keep them from killing themselves and their loved ones. Oppose the war, not the people volunteering to take part in it and actually committing the atrocities we fervently denounce. We don’t want to be seen as peace activists here, come on, we need to be taken seriously. We might have ended the Vietnam War, but we hurt the troops feelings but not hailing them as conquering heroes when they got home, so this time we’ll keep their wars going and hail them at the same time, so our volunteer killers don’t get sad.
The reality is that nobody is leaving. Oh, they write their letters to the President, but come 2010, and even more so, 2012, and they’ll be back in the hunt. Can’t let the Republicans win, not the time for internal discord, no airing dirty laundry, let’s all close our ranks behind the Democratic candidates, a Blue Dog is better than a RINO, and a RINO is better than a regular Rathug. You don’t’ want the Rathugs to win, do you, so vote Democrat and we’ll hammer out the policy disagreements later. They’ll change, they promised, this new candidate they put up, he gave this one speech that made me cry! He knows all the progressive sounding words and is prepared to speak them in exchange for campaign contributions. Now that’s power and we got it!
People get the government they deserve, no more, no less. So don’t try to have it both ways, if you are going to be voting Democratic come next election, then don’t give me this dance of contrition and denouncement designed to show that at heart you are still the same radical you always were, and that you don’t’ really support the Democratic programs and politicians the money you fundraised is now financing and that they don’t’ speak in your name. Either you stop working with the Democrats and act to delegimate their party and the corrupt and monolithic two party system instead of running its elections and funding its operations, or you are another machine dem, and you need to start admitting that what Joe Lieberman is saying makes a lot of sense. He is so devoted to the troops, after all...