krebscycle

There are two reasons I am an enthusiastic and proud Democrat:

1. The Democratic Party does a lot of good and includes many wonderful, hard working, brilliant people. The Stimulus saved America from a massive depression. The Democratic US President got America out of a brutal and hopeless war in Iraq, is getting us out of Afghanistan, and struck down the guy who blew up the World Trade Center. The only hope for the world, clean energy, has been revived and grown dramatically by Democrats in the White House and Congress. Our local Democrats here in Texas stand up for justice and freedom against superstition and deep meanness on a regular basis. Sonia Sotomayor is a great Supreme Court Justice. And so many other things – it’s a long list. Those good things help millions and millions of real people. If you don’t care about those people, I’m not interested in your pretensions to morality and grand ideas.
2. The Republicans and Conservatives are so bad, so mean spirited, so corrupt, so deeply immoral and unethical, so reckless in foreign policy and careless with lives of our soldiers and the rest of the population, so crazy – that even if the Democrats were much much worse I’d be morally committed to support them as the only actual alternative. The “moderate” and “responsible” wing of the Republican Party is personified by a guy who sang “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” as a suggested foreign policy and picked Sarah Palin to be Vice-President. The powerful extreme wing is lead by Ted Cruz, whose Dominianist father believes was annointed by God to rule.  They are the party of gunning down children for being African-American, of laughing at hungry babies, of killing women with coat hangers and shocking and awing defenceless villagers. Keeping those people out of power is a moral imperative. If you don’t have a better way than the Democrats of keeping the crazies from controlling the world, please don’t come to me with your pissy concerns about how the Democrats are not shiny enough for your tender feelings.

The Democrats are a big tent by necessity. We include everyone from people well to the “left” of Mayor deBlasio of New York and Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland to Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Wendy Davis of Texas (who is pretty conservative). We often disagree, but Mary Landrieu, who is a lot more conservative than  I am, votes at the start of every Congressional Session to keep a really vile corrupt climate change denier from being the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and she supports things like a jobs bill and infrastructure bank.  We strongly disagree with each other on many issues, but we need each other and I am grateful that people who disagree with me on so many things, agree on the big stuff.  Again, please don’t tell me how you hate having to put up with conservative Democrats if you don’t have an alternative working majority.

Democrats are far from perfect – very far. And there are a number of Democrats whose politics I really dislike. I’m hard pressed to say anything good about Andrew Cuomo, for example. Even the good ones, even the best ones, are playing a game in which unpleasant trade-offs are unavoidable and work within a system that is often very ugly. Hello, do you think us Democrats don’t get that? That we are shocked and horrified to find out that an elected official or other leader sometimes has to make decision that causes horrible pain and suffering or that they often have to bow to the demands of powerful groups, like bankers?

Many liberals appear to believe that those kinds of ugly or demeaning tradeoffs are not necessary. Some “backbone” or effort of will or strong speech will somehow mean that the President does not have to bargain with a Congressional House Tea Party Majority or that legislators will not have to care about well funded/organized police unions. Some of that wishful thinking is based on a shallow, celebrity centered idea of politics in which power structures don’t exist, only TV protagonists who stride triumphantly through stage rooms full of applauding fans. Some of it is based on wishful thinking about the public. Some magic trumpet will sound and the 99% of earnest, salt-of-the-earth, working people will unite and chase the 1% from the temple with their indignant pitchforks. Somehow all those members of the 99% who hate some combination of blacks, women, foreigners, gays, who listen to Hate Radio 24/7, who obsessively buy guns, wave Confederate flags, smirk at Trayvon Martin’s corpse, and have self-worth tied to the oppression of others will, miraculously, cure themselves, put down their dog-eared copies of Turner’s diary, stop fantasizing about killing, and cheer for a speaker explaining Keynesianism and the virtues of the public option?

That second class of wishful thinking strikes me as suicidal. A large percentage of the American public would gladly put liberals to the torch and a larger percentage just does not give a damn either way.  Michael Dunn and George Zimmerman’s fan clubs number in the millions. I used to marvel at the delusional compartmentalization of Log Cabin Republicans, people who thought they were immune from the violent homophobic rhetoric of their right wing masters. But then I realized that many liberals and progressives and “leftists” are at least as delusional -apparently imagining that people who deeply detest them will either conveniently disappear or turn into supporters when at long last  “Democrats”(that mysterious other that none of them are involved in ) just “show some backbone” or something.  Or maybe they just think it can’t happen here  – that their privileged position in a relatively orderly, prosperous, tolerant section of society is solid ground. That it’s impossible for a well organized modern nation to spiral down into chaos and madness. I understand why people want to believe that: there were German Jews who believed it all the way to the end. But I don’t think there is some law of nature that will keep Ted Cruz out of power or make his supporters care about constitutional rights. I don’t believe that once those people grip the levers of power they will give a damn about law or precedent or basic decency.

So lacking a sense of invulnerability(or a rocketship)  but owning a keen appreciation of how much good has been done, I have no choice but to be a Democrat and an enthusiastic one. I will go into the polling place, after volunteering and donating and doing what else I can and cheerfully vote Democratic for someone good or someone mediocre or worse, because I’m going to keep bailing the lifeboat. Get out and swim if you prefer but stay the hell out of my way.