This will be the dirtiest election on record, of that I am certain. The media will harp on the Conservative/Radical Right/Bush narrative of Terror! Terror! Terror! all Fall long. Well funded and organized campaigns to suppress voter turnout in Democratic precincts are already in high gear. In many states, as Street Kid points out in her diary (S)election Software? Hardware? hmmm…, we will be voting on electronic voting machines which are highly suspect and leave no paper trail to show whether they have accurately recorded your vote or mine.
Nonetheless, the American electorate’s disgust with 6 years of Republican misrule, lawbreaking, corruption, pre-emptive war and homeland insecurity may be so high that Republicans will find themselves unable to steal enough votes to prevent the Democrats from recapturing a majority of seats in one or both houses of Congress this November. If that happens many on the left end of the dial may feel giddy.
Well, I am here to tell you don’t get your hopes up.
More on the flip …
If the Democrats win this Fall, we of the netroots may experience such joy and relief that little “d” democracy has finally prevailed against the forces of the Radical Right that temporary irrationality may prevail, and some may even go so far as to declare victory and head home from the fight, certain that with Democrats back in power good times will start to roll once more:
Bush and Cheney investigated and then impeached, say, or the Iraq catastrophe ended and our troops brought home. National health insurance for all! And end to torture, and a return to a saner foreign policy that relies on all our strengths, not just the now blunted edge of our military might. And, most important of all, no more pre-emptive wars fought for oil or Neocon delusions of grandeur.
However, even if the Democrats do succeed beyond my (and your) wildest imagination this November. and Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha is elected Speaker of the House, we will not have gained anything like victory. All we will have done is fired the first salvo in what is likely to be a long and protracted battle to reclaim our government of the people, by the people and for the people from the forces of tyranny, bigotry and ignorance.
Now, many of you may be thinking to yourself (or speaking out loud to your computer screen) …
Just hold on a minute Steven. No one is claiming the democrats regaining Congress will bring on the New Millenium or create a liberal utopia, but surely we can claim some small manner of victory this Fall should Democrats win the election. Control of only one house will mean control of Congressional committees, and with that the power to investigate and issue subpoenas. It will mean Democrats can set the legislative agenda in at least one house, and can cut of funding for Bush’s war of choice in Iraq. It will mean the media will have to take Democratic spokespersons seriously and give them and their message more airtime. It will mean the neutering of President Bush Puppet and the man behind curtain, Cardinal Richelieu Vice President Cheney. It may, indeed even mean impeachment. At the very least it will mean an end to the Conservative agenda being crammed down our throats by the wingnut members of Congress.
To which I can only say, yes indeed. I plead guilty to no small measure of hyperbole. But it was hyperbole employed in a good cause. For we should not delude ourselves that the Democratic Party, as it is presently constituted, is a friend to liberals and their progressive causes. Far from it.
Many of those who are in positions of power in the Democratic Party, the Senators and Representatives, candidates and consultants, and lobbyists and “liberal” pundits of the DC Beltway crowd will not immediately put an end to the status quo and adopt the agenda of the netroots. On the contrary, many of them would just as soon keep our current system of corporately funded beneficence to the political classes in place, only this time with themselves as the principle recipients of that amoral largesse.
They will be quick to proclaim (even if they do not believe it themselves) that any electoral victory for Democrats validates their brand of politics, one in which old line Clintonistas and DLC members are entitled to assume the mantle stripped away from Tom DeLay, the Heritage Foundation and David Brooks. They will line their pockets with corporate cash, fund their own circle jerk think tanks and glory in getting asked the first question by Tim Russert on Meet the Press rather than being an after thought in a sea of republican faces Sunday morning.
Those, like Hillary, Biden, and Warner, who are already running for the Presidency will go into full campaign mode, carefully measuring each word they say, and being careful not to make the least little noise that might get them labeled soft on terrorism, or too socialistic or too dismissive of the wonders of an untrammeled free enterprise system of capitalism. They may even seek to put themselves to the right of George Bush on the issue of the war on terror, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see any number of them come out in support of a “surgical strike” against Iran. In short, they will remain focused on what politicians are always focused upon: keeping their campaign chests full to the brim, and fostering their own personal ambitions.
This is not to say that other Democrats will not speak out for a new paradigm in political life, one that is based on the real concerns and needs of ordinary Americans. We will have our John Edwards, Wes Clarks, Al Gores and Russ Feingolds making their own clarion call for the progressive ideals we support: diplomacy before war, labor before management, the environment before corporate profit, national health care for all before a bloated insurance industry, renewable and clean energy before oil. But their voices will not receive the same attention, nor merit the same praise from the mainstream media (especially the televised version) that the Clintons, the Bidens and even the Liebermans of the Democratic Party, those mythical moderate centrists who just happen to support 95% of the goals of Corporate America, will so generously receive.
In short, what we may (and I stress may) see in November, should democrats win is the first battle in a long struggle to reclaim the soul and heart and guts of the Democratic party and reorient it toward the needs, dreams and beliefs of most Americans. In the meantime, we cannot expect the Bush administration and the radical right wing of the Republican Party (which I suppose at this point is the “Republican Party”) to submit meekly to any setbacks they incur this Fall. We will witness from them a propaganda assault against Democrats, liberals and progressives the likes of which will make the Clinton impeachment feeding frenzy look like an attack of minnows in comparison. If you think the country is polarized now, just wait until Republicans actually lose a little of their power to control our lives.
Nor can we expect the most lawless administration in history, one that revels in its defiance of both Congress and the Courts to submit weakly to the will of the people. The Bushistas will continue to push their agenda for eliminating our civil liberties, increasing miltary spending, tax cuts for the wealthiest of the wealthy, more war in the Middle East (this time Syria or Iran), and more degradation of our democracy. They will continue to abuse the rule of law, including unlawful detentions, illegal spying, and the aplication of torture as official American policy. They won’t stop what they are doing now just because democrats regain control of the House of Representatives. And they have the means and the will to manipulate public opinion, and to deny access to all those dirty little secrets that in any other democracy would long ago have sent many of them to prison. In brief, they will continue to rule as authoritarian regimes always do: through fear and the willful rejection of our nation’s laws.
A Democratic win in November will only be the first baby step on the path to taking back our country. Do we celebrate when a baby takes its first steps? Sure we do. But we don’t stop pushing that baby to take the next step and the next and the next, until it can walk and then run. If we are fortunate, if we are very fortunate, November will only be a beginning. And like all beginnings it doesn’t assure that the end goals we seek will be realized. It will merely give us the hope that someday those goals it may be achieved, if we keep fighting to reach them.
