The Reality of the Democratic Party
One of the funnier and more accurate comments I have read in a long time.
Written by "Faux Facsimile" on the "Blame Nader" post at Ezra Klein:
The fact of the matter is simple: As active citizens in a democracy, and that means all of us who blog or otherwise involve ourselves in politics, we must support candidates who represent our point of view. If there are none, we should run ourselves.
Nader stepped up as a progressive candidate in two elections where there were no other progressive options. His actions were those of a true patriot – he stood up for the beliefs most important to him in the face of never-ending scrutiny and endless guilt. But when history books are written on our era, it will be his name remembered as the man who fought for a living wage, peace, and the environment. Al Gore will be remembered as the guy who botched a gimme election to our worst president ever.
The critic will say that my views are oversimplistic. I say voting party-line Democratic, whether they put up Dennis Kucinich from the left or Joe Lieberman from further right (or perhaps a piece of chalk), is an incredibly simplistic political philosophy that boxes up otherwise intelligent people.
If you consider yourself a progressive and pull the lever for an Al Gore when there is someone who better represents what you as an American stand for - you have truly wasted your vote. It's really that simple.
Written by "Faux Facsimile" on the "Blame Nader" post at Ezra Klein:
Finally, I'm glad that we've gone back to blaming everything on Ralph. Because lord knows, it wasn't Gore's piss-poor campaign that lost him the presidency... Nor the choices of the 49 million folks who voted for Bush. Oh, no.
The Democrats could nominate a piece of chalk, and most Democrats would vote for it. As opposed to Bush, I'd agree with them. But that neither means that the Democrats are somehow back to being a real party, nor that they've adopted progressive politics. It means that Bush is a disaster. And that's all.
The fact of the matter is simple: As active citizens in a democracy, and that means all of us who blog or otherwise involve ourselves in politics, we must support candidates who represent our point of view. If there are none, we should run ourselves.
Nader stepped up as a progressive candidate in two elections where there were no other progressive options. His actions were those of a true patriot – he stood up for the beliefs most important to him in the face of never-ending scrutiny and endless guilt. But when history books are written on our era, it will be his name remembered as the man who fought for a living wage, peace, and the environment. Al Gore will be remembered as the guy who botched a gimme election to our worst president ever.
The critic will say that my views are oversimplistic. I say voting party-line Democratic, whether they put up Dennis Kucinich from the left or Joe Lieberman from further right (or perhaps a piece of chalk), is an incredibly simplistic political philosophy that boxes up otherwise intelligent people.
If you consider yourself a progressive and pull the lever for an Al Gore when there is someone who better represents what you as an American stand for - you have truly wasted your vote. It's really that simple.
I think you have very eloquently expressed the new blogger ideology that has the potential to transform politics.
And that's what scares me.
The problem - and I suppose it's a problem that a lot of young people have - is that we place a premium on ideas over experience.
To take your philosophy to the extreme, if I disagree with how the sheriff is locking up criminals, I should run for sheriff myself. Unfortunately, I've never so much as fired a gun in my life. I'm not qualified to be sheriff. And so I wouldn't vote for myself, even though I agree with everything I say.
Same thing for governor. I don't know much about this Fitrakis fellow, but something tells me that he doesn't have the resume to be governor. He's been an international elections observer, you say? Great. He should run for Secretary of State.
What about a legislative job, like City Council, the General Assembly, or Congress? Looks easy enough. But certainly, legislating is a skill, just like an elected executive position is. I don't agree with Bill Seitz on everything, but I'll tell you he's one savvy lawmaker. Ditto John Cranley and Rob Portman. Mark Mallory had great legislative skills, but I'm not sure they're translating well to the mayor's office. (That's a topic for another day.) Christopher Smitherman and Jean Schmidt got a lot of criticism from the other side of the spectrum, and a lot of it was ideologically driven. But the fact that they were pounded from inside their own political parties suggests that they were viewed as ineffective legislators.
I know you understand this, Andrew. Didn't you drop out of the City Council race last year because you knew you couldn't win - and were underqualified for the position? (Don't misunderstand me. I'm not qualified either.) When you went to work for Nick Spencer, did you agree with everything he said? Of course not.
Al Gore was more qualified to be president than Ralph Nader. That point is hardly debateable. As screwed up as things are now in the world, could you even begin to imagine Nader on September 11, 2001?
Politics is about compromise. Democracy is about consensus. If we followed your plan, we would have 311,000 candidates for Cincinnati City Council every year, instead of 27.
Isn't City Hall screwy enough?
Posted by Poli Sci Guy | 12:54 AM
"Experience" is a tricky thing in politics. Whatever the office you happen to run for, you have to start somewhere and you're certainly not going to be an expert in the field.
Let's say you want to start out with city council: in Cincinnati that is a pretty big position. If you're a freshman you're not going to know what to do your first day, but you're going to learn quick or get embarassed out of office.
And does working in the legislative body of a city qualify you to run the executive branch of the same city (subsitute city with state or country)? Not necessarily. It's two different jobs entirely. You have to bring ideas into office and then learn how to execute them. Reading "running a city for dummies" isn't going to prepare you more than doing the job (as is the case with any occupation).
Nader is more qualified than Gore. He has the respect of the world, he has written legislation, and run organizations in the public interest. These are resume points I would like to see in a President. If we continue to elect your experts we will ignore those things and look at these things: Religion, attractiveness, money raised, charisma, and political party. Am I missing any of your areas of expertise?
Sadly, the idea of "experience" in politics, a concept you seem to treasure, equates primarily to dirt and wealth. How is Gore more experienced than Nader? He has more money connections and has spent more time on the phone raising capital for his campaigns.
The ability to stuff a bank account (what our system is based on) should not qualify people for office, but it does. If we had more visionary citizen leaders we wouldn't have to rely on our legacy Ivy League graduates to lead our country. We could run it ourselves.
As far as your of over-democracizing America, we would never have 300,000+ candidates. There are many people who feel that our elected officials represent them just fine. With a field of thirty council candidates there is probably something there for everyone (maybe). But those who don't see a candidate they are passionate about should absolutely take a long hard look at running themselves (I regret dropping out myself).
In our two-way party races for other offices there is seldom a decent choice.
Your speech about qualifications is just too flawed for me to accept. President Bush is far from being qualified to run our country, let alone Govern a state, or hold any other position of leadership. There are millions in the country who understand foreign policy, economics, and the Constitution better than he. I am sure they also get better grades, etc. In our system, "measurable qualifications" mean jack.
Just consider an idiot who is Christian (Bush) versus a foreign policy guru atheist. Who is more qualified? Who will win?
Active citizens should stop bowing down to the "experts" who stopped caring about the people long ago. That is how we have cut ourselves out of the system to begin with. Instead, we should seek to become experts ourselves. We should seek to run government ourselves (our city council is supposed to be comprised of "citizen legislators," right?)
Most importantly, we should applaud people who run for office, not demonize them.
Posted by Andrew Warner | 1:24 AM
"Al Gore was more qualified to be president than Ralph Nader. That point is hardly debateable."
That point is very debateable! Nader was behind the Freedom of Information Act,Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, OHSHA (worker safety), Safety standards in cars (like the seatbelt), Safer food.
He accomplished more in bipartisan efforts than any Democrat. You could add up all the Democrats work and it wouldn't compare to Nader's work, not to mention his organizations that continue to fight for the public interest. You are simply uninformed.
"As screwed up as things are now in the world, could you even begin to imagine Nader on September 11, 2001?"
It was Clinton and Gore that contunied the failed policies that got us in to that. Having a Labanese American, consumer advocate that is respected (not feared) around the world, that was changing the course of the US would've brought great optimism to the world.
Nader wouldn't have bombed countries that didn't have anything to do with it. Don't forget the Dems voted for those quagmires. He wouldn't continued the funding of Israel's terorrism over there, forcing peace through diplomocy, not US cluster bombs.
Posted by Anonymous | 11:55 AM