And about tomorrow, and tomorrow, and November

[womzilla]

The opponents on the ballot in November will not be "a good economy" and "a bad economy". They will be "the party that stopped the worst of the bleeding" and "the party that broke the economy in the first place". Any chance you get to frame the discussion in those terms is worth seizing.

That said:

Back on September 2, Glenn Greenwald put up a good mini-essay called "The profound mystery of the 'enthusiasm gap'". It's just a list of reasons why people might not be completely enthusiastic about the current leadership of the Democratic Party. My restatement, with some additional items not mentioned by Glenzilla:

• they're slow-walking the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and they're actually further right-wing than public opinion on gay marriage;


• they're fighting any attempt to end the War on Some Drugs;


• they are trying a juvenille as a war criminal, Guantanamo isn't closed, and the President has declared that he has the legal power to kill American citizens outside of a combat zone;


• there has been no progress on immigration reform;


• they're fighting very hard to preserve the "state secrets" protections against discovering was torture was done in our name;


• energy policy and carbon consumption policy have moved almost not at all;


• there are still 50,000 US military in Iraq and the US presence in Afghanistan has actually increased;


• they're plotting to sabotage Social Security and possibly even Medicare;


• they're still running abomination that is the HAMP Program;


• they lowballed the stimulus numbers and seem to be in no hurry to carry out any significant Keynesian intervention;


• and of course for the entire summer they allowed the right-wing maenads of religious genocide to dominate the discourse with only occasional tut-tutting condemnation from the left.

Now, even taken all together, these don't mean that the Democrats are "worse" than the Republicans, and they certainly aren't "the same": on each of these items, the Republican position even worse than the Democrats, and there are a lot of places, even on this list, where the Democrats are better. (If the Republicans were in charge, carbon consumption policy reform, the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and immigration reform wouldn't even be possibilities.)

But: The list of disappointments is so broad and wide-ranging that for any given person who might traditionally support the Democrats, there is at least one major issue on which that person feels betrayed. That rips the hell out of enthusiasm. It can leave one feeling that, yeah, really, there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the parties (even though, really, there is).

And all of that leaves aside the not-infrequent instances in which the Democratic Party indulges in punching its supporters in the face--Glen points to reports of Rahm Emmanuel saying, "Fuck the UAW"; Jonathan Zasloff at the RBC had a good post last week about an "unnamed Senior White House official" who referred to the primary campaign to oust Blanche Lincoln before she could face certain doom in her Senate race as "flush[ing] $10 million . . . down the toilet"; and there was press secretary Robert Gibbs last month, mouthing off about "the professional left"--aka, the people who support Obama the most.

One can forgive political compromises; one can even forgive political disagreements made in good faith. But it's really hard to work up enthusiasm when you're being told to your face that you're a chump.

I've quoted before the sentiment that I've long since resigned myself to voting for "better" rather than for "great". But I personally don't like being slapped in the face by the people that, under the circumstances, I'll be rooting for. Politics is not practiced by machines. Enthusiasm matters; tone matters; good will matters, sometimes as much as the actual substance.

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

And if you chose to vote for a third party (oh, I don't know, say the Green Party) the Dems and the Republicans would be at your door using whatever fear tactics they have at their command to keep you in a two-party system.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

No; given the structure of the American political system, if you vote for a third party in a general election, you are voting "no vote". Which has the same practical effect as not voting.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Keeping the two party structure safe for continued corruption?

[avram]

Yeah, that's pretty much how the system is set up.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

It's a shame that the US can't have a multi-party electoral system--I hear that they are free of all corruption and ideologic inflexibilty. Just like Iraq, Israel, and the UK.