Guys, I know it’s depressing for a lot of you that Bush got re-elected last week. For many of us, Bush’s policies are downright scary. If I hear one more whiny brat threaten to leave the country over this election, though, I am afraid I’m going to have to start handing out the bitch slaps.
Leaving the country, or even joking about leaving, belies a sense of entitlement and there are clear comparisons I could draw to a spoiled child stomping up a flight of stairs and slamming her door.
Yes, Bush stands for everything that a young, educated person should be suspicious of. We’re trained to appreciate complexity and to approach problems critically, avoiding ideology; Bush’s views are reductive and flow from ideology. And under Bush’s watch, it’s gotten harder to get a job: tax breaks favor the rich and the U.S. has lost jobs. That’s just a sample of criticisms I could offer against Bush and his party. The neo-cons suck. Eff the neo-cons, seriously. You should be angry if you voted for Kerry. You got your ass handed to you. You got screwed.
So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to lay down and die? Are you going to quit your job and live in a cave? Are you going to poop in your diaper? Are you going to leave, and let neo-conservatives reshape your country according to their fascist vision? The country that invented the first amendment and rock and roll? I am tempted to join the conservatives in saying “good riddance.” I don’t want to be associated with quitters. Quitters don’t win. In its darkest day, the last thing the left needs right now is quitters.
I think we have a lot to learn from the Republican party and this election. And it’s clear exactly what you need to do, fellow progressive, over the next four years, if you want things to go better.
The Republican party has amazing solidarity. It seems easier to organize around a conservative base than a progressive one. The right has a clear agenda, shaped by religious documents and tradition. It is a clear set of priorities that a whole slew of people can buy into. Even moderate republicans are glad to fall in line behind the extremely right-leaning Bush. In business terms, it’s a “shared vision.”
Meanwhile, progressives have no single vision. Those you might describe as “liberals” are a mixed bag of Democrats, greens and independents as well as free-thinking radicals who loathe any political affiliation. And that is precisely the problem: there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
While the Republicans are led by their base, the Democratic leadership is moderate. That means that for voters deep in the left, which should be the Democratic party’s bread and butter, Kerry doesn’t look much different than Bush. When Miguel Camejo, Ralph Nader’s running mate, came to USM several weeks ago, he handily dismissed the Democratic and Republican Parties as a two-headed mono-party. The result: a huge swath of the American public is essentially not represented in the presidential election.
What the left needs to do over the next four years is to form some kind of voting bloc. On the political spectrum from, say, Bill Clinton to the left, we need a candidate that everyone will vote for.
I don’t know exactly what needs to be done to make this happen. A lot of it needs to be done by people with clout in the Democratic Party. What the rest of us need to do is keep a good head and keep up a respectful dialogue so that we’ll persuade more people toward our way of seeing things. Talking about leaving the country, by the way, is neither keeping a good head, nor is it very persuasive. If Bush’s policies turn out as disastrous as people are saying they will, this shouldn’t be too hard. If it sounds like too much work, if you think you’re entitled to getting the president you want without fighting for it, well, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.