After all the angry websites, all the angry movies, all the angry books, all the get-out-the-vote drives, and all the giddy chatter on liberal weblogs this past week about a potential landslide, it’s all come down to the near-exact opposite of the 2000 situation. Depending on the outcome of some late counts and/or recounts, we just might end up with an Electoral College victor who didn’t win the popular vote.
Lesson One: Internet-based electioneering is still not ready for prime time.
Lesson Two: No matter the outcome of the electoral-vote challenges, Bush’s popular-vote lead is quite likely to stand. Those of us who wished a different outcome simply failed to effectively convince enough citizens toward our position.
The progressive movement’s made a lot of progress in the past three years. But it still has a ways to go.
We need to be on the ground in all 50 states, all 52 weeks of the year.
We need to prove we can do better than the radical right in re: fiscal responsibility, economic equity, affordable health care, personal freedoms, sound foreign policy, and reducing the odds of any more terrorist nonsense.
Sure, the radical right has huge media vehicles, lavishly funded think tanks, corporate lobbyists, highly emotive preachers, and a few rather virulent web-writers with which to spread its ideas. But people-power has overcome worse odds.
The previous was written at around 1:45 this morning. Since then, I’ve had a dream.
I dreamt that I was stone-sober, but found myself listing and stumbling about, everywhere I went. My brother the naturopath showed up on the scene, but ordered me to go to a regular clinic for X-rays. There, his suspicions proved correct. My left calf bone was missing two inches in the middle. My left kneecap was shattered, with tiny fragments scattered about, even into blood vessels. How and when it all happened, I couldn’t remember. Fortunately, modern technology could repair or replace all the broken or missing pieces, and herbal concoctions could dissolve the scattered fragments.
But soon, another problem emerged. My left hand was decaying, and falling off my wrist like a dangling broken fingernail. But a new hand was already spontaneously generating itself from that wrist. With a good stretch and some piano fingering exercises, it was ready to go.
You needn’t be a professional dream analyst to figure what my subconscious was getting at.
The body (as in the body politic, or the nation as a body) cannot fully function, or even stand, without a strong “left.” Otherwise, it reels about, making a stumbling fool of itself, encouraging others to mistake it for a drugged-out idiot. But the left can be renewed, using a combo of modern tech (those “Internets”) and organic renewal (grassroots “organ”-izing).
We’ve already come a long way since the days of “embedded” war reporters and Democratic Senators cowed into supporting the Patriot Act.
The Dem leadership now knows it can’t limp along on the strength of its old-time constituencies alone (blue-collar unions, civil servants, aging boomers). Nor can it go far with the New Republic‘s near-right ideology, with policy wonks, or with attempted compromises with the neocons.
The Democratic Party now knows it needs us progressive populists. And, at least on the national level, we still need it, or something like it.
The Republicans only win when their anti-populist actions are cloaked in populist rhetoric. We can outdo them on the rhetoric, and back it with actions that actually help people. We can do more for seniors, for family farms, for small business owners, and for working families than the other party can even promise.
And as for that trumped-up “culture war” nonsense: We’re the advocates of diversity and personal choice. If you’re strongly attached to your religion, your family structure, and your lifestyle, we’ll help you preserve your right to them, just as we’ll help preserve other folks’ rights to their religions and lifestyles.
