I’ve really learned a great deal over the last couple of days from everyone who participated in SallyCat’s excellent diary “A Question”- Conversation Continuation yesterday and my diary From A Political novice; A Question from the day before.
I’m still a novice however, in the realm of grassroots political activism and awareness, and as such, I continue to have questions. One sort of large question, or perhaps more accurately, a large but perhaps important set of questions that have arisen in my mind out of all the great exploration and discussion in these two diaries has to do with how we variously view the Democratic Party and what we expect of it.
It seems to me there is wide divergence of perspective on the Party, and I think this is essentially a good thing, yet I sense that a joint exploration of our views on the Party, as we did in those other two threads on so many other aspects of the political calculus, might be very useful.
As I’ve been reflecting on my own perceptions of the Democratic Party, the more I think about it, the more complex, even contradictory, it all seems to get. As an acknowledged novice this makes sense; a sort of first plunge into the deeper teritory of familiairizing oneself and intensifying one’s understanding of things frequently entails lots of work resolving conundrums and perceptual ambiguities, often with surprising results. But it struck me that, in general, maybe most of us could gain more clarity in our own views through a productive discussion about all this party stuff, and with that in mind, I want to put forward some ideas and questions that might lead to fruitful discussion.
As regards the (Democratic) Party itself;
As regards the Party itself;
Who’s party is it?
Does the Party serve us or do we serve the party? (And if both are true, how can we help insure that it works to our advantage?)
Who runs the Party? Who’s responsible for defining the Party’s principles? (Do we get screwed when we let the elected offcials assume this responsibility? Do Al From and the DLC gang have any legitimate standing to define Democratic Party positions or are they usurpers who need to be ignored?)
What function do we expect the party to serve?
How do we determine when Party politics and mechanisms help us exercise our democratic freedoms and when the party hinders us from exercising those rights?
Can we make the money work better for us, rather than working against our own interests like it seems to do so often?
Can “we the people” wrest control of the Party from the various hijackers and blowhards who’ve claimed authority to speak for it? Can we differentiate between those who claim to represent the party from those who actually do represent and stand up for the ideals and principles we believe the party should represent? ( In other words, can we recognize that someone like Joe Biden represents the “Joe Biden Party”, and Lieberman the “Lieberman Party”, etc. Can we effectively separate these types out, disqualify them from claiming the capital “D” mantle as their rightful identifier?
My own expectations of the Democratic Party are quite small and low, and given the enormous threat posed to us all by the excesses and insanity of the Bush regime, I regard my low expectations as unfortunate, almost tragic. It just seems to me that we all should be able to expect more, that we should be able to use the party structure as a far more effective tool for stimulating and propagating honest and meaningful debate drumming up strong support for people who can challenge the lies and deceptions of the Repub juggernaut in a way that wil lead to us regaining control of the country. And, it seems to me that, (with the notable and important exception of Howard Dean), the people currently running the Democratic Party machine, along with the hordes of overpaid and failed strategists and consultants, the elected leadership of the party and the most prominent contenders for the ’08 elections, are our biggest obstacles to moving forward.
But I’m a novice always looking for new illumination.
Massachusetts politics was pretty clear cut, and I suspect it is pretty much the national paradigm. You had 3 kind of factions
regardless of which townie or which ivy faction of consultants and insiders is running the campaign, “grassroots” has really been about cleaning up databases to better pimp for money so those running the campaign can stay running more campaigns.(1.)Life is good jetting around to aspen and san fran and boston and manhattan and and and telling all the good folks how evil the thugs are and how money makes the world, and campaigns, go round.
(1.) there is LOTS of grassroots roots work that happens and that is probably useful, and IMHO just getting to know people in your communitty is invaluable.
In a close election, maybe all the poll watching etc etc got another 10 or 20 per precinct to remember to vote, and that adds up.
BUT, at the end of the day, the campaigns concentrate most of their grassroots effort into precincts and areas with income and activism, relatively little is done in new areas, AND a lot of the work ends up cleaning up databases to pimp fo rmoney from areas where people are active and have good incomes.
In all 3 groups are people who work really hard – some clearly work really hard at getting in charge and staying in charge.
given the lose lose lose of the last 25+ years, too little of that hard work is effective.
People get pissed when I say that, and they get defensive.
I am NOT saying you were lazy. The work wasn’t effective, cuz we keep losing.
It is hard work carrying 50 pounds of onions around the outside of the kitchen for 3 weeks – however, that hard work does NOT get the onions peeled, cut, and made into salads, chowder, stock or soup.
politics is a lot like religion – the more someone tells you that they care about the little guy over anything, the more likely they are to use your hard work for their self promotion.
rmm.
ooops – I forgot to mention.
I think it is worth working on campaigns just to meet the other good folks in the community who are trying to make a dent – to make a difference.
HOWEVER, I can’t allow myself to believe that all the busy work WILL create victory – I hope it does, I do NOT expect it. Some people find that grim – I find it good stress management.
AND, I keep the carrying onions around on my head work down to a minimum – I don’t get to stand around on election night and roll up my sleeves and compare door knocked on or phone calls made or envelopes licked or sore knuckles or cauliflowered ears or shredded tongues – but the parties are fun anyway.
And at the parties are the media people, I usually figure a way to insult some media person to his / her face for their slanted biased worthless coverage … that is fun.
rmm.
I’ve come to similar views as you based on experience. The degree of betrayal and dismissiveness, combined with lack of attention and self-promotion, have created a badly machine that I fear still has a long way to go in it’s process of deterioration before things might change in a way that make resurrection possible.
I of course won’t hold my breath, but in the meantime, I wrote this diary to see if there were any realistic ideas floating around out there where we might be able to make some use od this party apparatus if we could just tweak a whole bunch of stuff in it and throw out most of the bums controlling the cash drawer.
Lack of response seems to portend an answer. (even I didn’t even check this morning to see if anyone had come by and said anything, which is why I missed your post until now.
In any case, thanks for offering your perspective.