Wednesday, November 06, 2002

A Day Later After a day at work and a chance for the results to sink in, I feel numb.  Instead of going to our weekly anti-war vigil tonight, I am going to a movie—the refurbished version of Lawrence of Arabia.   Would that the democrats had a T.E. Lawrence.   The best comments I’ve read are from Joe Conason at Salon.  “A party that will not criticize the incumbent president cannot defeat him, now or two years from now. A party that has nothing to say about unfair tax breaks, a vanishing surplus and a looted economy cannot expect anyone to listen when it asks for votes. A party without passion or vision is hardly a political party at all.”   The conventional wisdom is that the democrats lost because they did not turn out their base—and in areas where that base is among black voters, they did not turn out either.  I think this is a very fair analysis.  In New Hampshire, Jean Shaheen could barely carry Manchester.  In Massachusetts, O’Brien barely carried working class towns like Lowell and Brockton.   I don’t think it’s the end of the world to have Republicans in complete control—this is a big country, with long traditions and a lot of inertia, and I don’t think Karl Rove can remake it in his image overnight.  Also, being in the opposition and figuring out what happened to the democrats can energize and renew the progressive movement.    I guess we will have to get used to being a minority.  We have less money, little access to power in this country, and few visible leaders.  Conservative democrats such as Lieberman and Gephardt have been irrevocably compromised by this election, since their only claim to support was that they could prevent a Republican takeover.  Now that they cannot do that, what good are they?   We have to organize about issues that really affect us directly.  Part of the problem with our vision is that there is a disconnect between what we care about, i.e. support for teachers, no punitive English immersion, ending irrational drug laws, no detentions without trial, no war on Iraq to name a few, and our actual day to day lives.    I don’t think Americans are stupid or irrational, and I certainly don’t think those voting Republican are somehow “brainwashed”.  Instead, we have failed to organize around the issues that most directly affect us.  Such issues could be quality of life issues, environmental degradation, lack of time for children and family activities, lack of meaningful work.  In the 1960’s everything we cared about was directly part of our day to day lives, and we have become too removed from acting on what really matters to us.   This election went to the Republicans because most people in this country are quite satisfied with their lives, regardless of things like a bad economy and budget deficits or war.   The democrats have done nothing to suggest they can make most people’s lives better in a real way, and until we organize and build coalitions around those issues, the democrats will not be a majority party again. 6:10:59 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2002 Toby Sackton. Last update: 12/26/2002; 9:30:58 PM.