Originally posted at Liberal Street Fighter
There is a lot of blather going on about the coming primary in Connecticut between Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman. From Cokie Roberts proclaiming a “disaster” if Lieberman is tossed out on his ear, to the usual declarations that the ghosts of hippie peaceniks past will possess the Democratic Party, leading it to sure defeat. The loud-mouthed propagandists for faux-centrism over at the Big Orange Blog and it’s satellites are busy claiming that a new day has dawned, that the “netroots” will save the Union for technocrats and “libertarian democrats” and former workers tossed on their keisters by the popping tech bubble. God knows that daddy’s got to make a living, and flogging for Hillary, Schumer and Clinton keeps those blogads filled.
Since whoever wins will be just fine with our 51st State’s war of aggression, and presumably will also work hard to protect the defense industry in the Nutmeg state, what does it matter who wins?
Both claim to be pro-choice. Both claim to be pro-environment. Both are apparently pro-corporate. Holy Joe plainly needs to go, his fake-liberal act long since gone stale. His pandering to cultural reactionaries (oh, those damned evil records/videos/video games/hollywood movies!), Israel and jingoistic warhawks have served only to enable the Republican Right’s ascendence over the last couple of decades, a result no-doubt the hoped for result of his recruitment by William F Buckley to shove Lowell Weicker out of office when Lieberman was the relatively unknown challenger years ago. Will Ned Lamont be any more liberal, any better?
Time will tell, but merely elevating someone new to the Senate isn’t why I care about tomorrow. Lamont’s not, in the short term, very important. What matters is the small, halting signs that supine voters are picking themselves off of their beggar’s pallets and taking their first tentative steps to impose themselves back into the political process in this country. What a Lieberman loss could mean, maybe, is a revival of the kind of populism that arose from the Depression, that flooded the streets after the First World War, that demanded the vote for women and for the descendents of slaves. A populism that was betrayed by the party-of-the-people when that party pursued a war on the impoverished in Southeast Asia at the same time it claimed to be waging a War on Poverty here in America. Neverending war and imperialism continues onward, pursued by both parties, leaving schools unbuilt, homes un-provided, cures un-delivered. Perhaps the people, the populace, are realizing once again that they have a stake, that they needn’t be mere beggars hoping for crumbs in the gutter.
Populism … a crippled shadow of its former self, shaky, held aloft by rickety crutches and anxious people searching for new ways to build old connections. It isn’t in business ventures like dailyKos that those real connections will be made. It was local bloggers who helped local activists get the ball rolling against Lieberman, often attacked at the Big Boy Blogs for badmouthing a “good Democrat”. As kos and the others try to claim the thunder for themselves, remember that it is LOCAL, motivated activists, voters and writers who called down the lightning. Like pampleteers in the past, like union organizers and community activists working door-to-door, meeting hall-to-meeting hall, change will be built up slowly, locally.
It is in tomorrow’s hoped-for rejection of Lieberman (and it’s in no way assured … don’t underestimate the probability of wingers and righty-zionists registering as Democrats in an attempt to save Lieberman) that we may be seeing the return of the supine voter to her feet. A victory here may provide the strength to enable the casting aside of crutches, the fear of standing up, the hesitation that years and generations of agitprop from the rabid right and the lazy corporate media have instilled in average people, average people who know in their heart of hearts that we’re better off if government really is of and by and for the people, not in service of big money and rigid business plans.
It is in voters who hope for a better Connecticut, and for a better United States, that I look with a shakey smile at on August 8th. Lamont will only be good for Connecticut, good for the country, if he’s held to account in his new office. Here is a plea for those voters who pull the lever for Lamont tomorrow that they will demand that he help them end wasteful war, help them pry healthcare out of the greedy paws of the insurance and hospital industries and back into the commonweal, help them call for cleaner energy and a redirection of our precious resources to making life in this country better, NOT just toward making the rich richer.
Cast aside those crutches and lift your heads voters … you CAN fight city hall, but you have to do it together. A choir joined in song can drown out the amplified jingoists and exploiters. THAT is why tomorrow matters, not the personalities involved. Perhaps I look east toward New England in a vain hope, but in these dark days, flickering hopes are the only way to keep looking toward the future.
Image is Beggar on His Crutches, from Behind, by Jacques Callot