For years now, I've been trying to figure out the Democratic Party and why it operates the way that it does. I've given a great deal of time and study to this quandary. I was especially vexed, as are so many of us, when time after time the Democrats had the chance to figuratively "kill off" the Republicans for good, yet seemed to refuse to actually do so. "Wimps!" we scolded. "Spineless!" we accused. "Stupid!" we fumed. "Incompetent!" we assumed.
Well one day I realized ....
You can see the course of my epiphany in a series of diaries I wrote here in May.
The first was In which I declare the Constitution dead
None of the Democrats seemed to care that the Constitution had been killed off and were doing nothing to stop the flogging of its corpse. I was pissed. So then I wrote:
Fuck the Dems. That's it. I'm done. I was still pissed off:
The Democratic Party is a bunch of losers, wants to represent losers, and is filled, at the top, with a bunch of absolute fucking idiots.
I am done with them. Forever.
They had Bush on the ropes. Bush was in the position, where if he wanted any more money for his little criminal vanity war, he was going to have to compromise. The Dems had absolutely no reason to fund JACK SHIT regarding this war.
So what do they do? They cave to the man with no power. They cave to the man with an approval in the 20's. They give him a blank check to steal our money and give it to "contractors" and continue killing American citizens.
Still being pissed off, I wrote one called Dealbreaker, in which I wrote, regarding the Democrats capitulating on funding Bush's murderous little war crime:
So why are the Democrats "caving" to THIS? Well, if they are, it means they are every bit as guilty, and/or stupid, as the Republicans, and there is absolutely no difference between them.
If they cave on this, it means they do NOT represent us in any way, shape, or form. In fact, it means that they have lied to us and utterly betrayed us, the people who supported them, worked for them, and voted for them.
(snip)
If we let the Dems get away with this, WE'RE GODDAMN FOOLS.
Ha! Man, it's funny to see how pissed off I was in retrospect! But then ... I started to get somewhere. My next piece was this:
America under One Party Rule. But I still didn't quite get it. I wrote:
Well, the Democrats have done us a favor.
They've shown us that this country is officially under One Party Rule by the Corporatocracy, which hires the GOP, paying Big Money, to "represent" them.
What the Democrats did today was a cry for help. An admittance that they are utterly powerless.
Powerless? No, of course they weren't powerless. But I was assuming they were. Assuming they would use their power if they could. That SOMETHING must be stopping them!
And then ... it clicked. I conveyed my epiphany in this diary, here:
How I Learned to Stop Being Angry, which started like this:
So today we learned that the Democratic Party doesn't really work for us. That they are not loyal to us. Most importantly, that they don't fear us.
They fear others. They are loyal to others. And they work for others.
To me, this comes as a relief. After years of wondering why they seemed so spineless, and so stupid, and so intent on constantly losing, I am now finding myself in the calm eye of the emotional storm that only the truth can bring.
It's like finding out that your spouse has been cheating on you all those years. Lying to you about it. And suddenly it all makes sense -- all those strange business trips, those late nights at the office, those weird phone calls -- suddenly you know, and there's just no going back.
And it really WAS a relief! It made no more sense to rage against the Democratic Machine than it did to rage against, say, the wind. Because This Was Just How Things Were.
The diary hit a nerve. It got 309 comments, was on the Recommended list for a while, and was actually stolen by, oddly enough, an anti-Israel website (who called me a "Zionist" when I complained that they had stolen my writing without even crediting my fictional name, or even Dailykos!).
Some people thought it was a GBCW diary (actually some thought my Fuck The Dems diary was the GBCW, but I never said it was and never intended it to be). I've continued to write here and post here, because, well, where the hell else am I gonna go? And I still dream that somehow, some day, the people who call themselves "Democrats", and give money and time and chunks of their lives to these so-called "leaders" will realize that the Democrats aren't working for them, and those of us who finally figure this shit out will form our own party and finally get something done.
People are scared of forming their own party. "They never work!" they cry. "It just guarantees the Republican Party will win!" they complain. Well guess what -- Even if the Democratic Party wins, it's the SAME RICH BUSINESS INTERESTS that win.
But I digress. The real reason I'm posting this diary tonight is because I stumbled across the most beautiful definition of the modern Democratic Party that I've ever read. I wish I'd written it.
The link is here, and it's written by a brilliant blogger by the name Chlamor, who I coincidentally was vaguely familiar with from posts at one of my favorite sites, The Rigorous Intuition discussion board, which was started by a man I believe is the first genius of the blogging age (sorry, Kos), a writer named Jeff Wells, whose regular blog is called Rigorous Intuition.
Are you ready? Here goes. I'm going to post key paragraphs to avoid any conflicts, although Chlamor explicitly states to pass it around.
The Democratic Party plays an indispensable role in society's political machinery. This doesn't mean it has any power, in terms of controlling the state or setting policy. It means that without the existence of the Dem Party, the US could no longer maintain the pretense that it's a "democracy." If the Dem Party disintegrated, the US would be revealed for what it really is -- a one-party state ruled by a narrow alliance of business interests.
(snip)
The party's true function is thus largely theatrical. It doesn't exist to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly bestir itself to fight for change. Thus the whole magic of the Dem Party -- the essential service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere existence: by simply existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and this is enough to relieve despair & to let the system portray itself as a "democracy."
As long as the Dem Party exists, most Americans will believe we have a "democracy" and a "choice" in how we are ruled. They will not despair, and will not revolt, as long as they have this hope for "change within the system." From the system's point of view, this mechanism serves as the ultimate safety valve -- it insures against a despairing populace, thus eliminates the threat of rebellion; yet guarantees that no serious change to the system will be mounted, because the Dems weren't designed to play that role in the first place.
Wow, just wow ... I kind of hate to say it, but I've been seriously paying attention and voting since 1980, and since 2001 I've been obsessively studying the current political situation in the United States, and I have to conclude the same.
Frank Zappa saw it years ago, when he made his famous quote:
The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.
But again I digress. Back to the writing:
Democrats invariably submit to what Republicans more ardently promulgate, & the entire range of official opinion thereby shifts to the right. Thus the overall function of Democrats is not so much to fight, as to quasi-passively participate in this ever-rightward-moving process. Just as the Harlem Globetrotters need their Washington Generals to make their basketball games properly entertaining, Republicans need the Democrats for effective staging of the political show.
The Democrats are permitted to exist because their vague hint of eventual progressive change keeps large numbers of people from bolting the political system altogether. Emma Goldman once said, "If voting made a difference, it would be illegal." Similarly, if the Democrats potentially threatened any sort of serious change, they would be banned. The fact that they are fully accepted by the corporations and political establishment tells us at once that their ultimate function must be wholly in line with the interests of those ruling groups.
Doesn't the presence of the Dennis Kuciniches, Cynthia McKinneys, et al "prove" that the Democrats are progressive? No. The Kuciniches and McKinneys are indeed significantly different from the Hillary types -- but there are compelling reasons not to get too excited about them, either. First, they are used by the party as a "Left decoration," simply to keep potential left defectors in tow. Secondly, the party power brokers will NEVER in a million years let the Kucinich-McKinney faction have any real power.
In other words, the very modestly-sized progressive Dem faction is cynically used as a marketing tool by the national party. They are dangled before your eyes to make you think that the Dems are the "lesser evil" (since the Republicans offer no such Left decorations). The existence of a few decent Dems makes no real difference in the overall alignment of the party, and they will never be internally influential. They are a distraction.
I just had to bold that one section. We all have seen just how true THIS is lately. It doesn't matter that Kucinich is right, and has been right, over and over again, he's marginalized, he's ignored, he's labelled "unelectable" by, well, everybody, before the race even starts.
Ah, now we get to the real meat of the issue, and even the supposed "reason for existence" of this very website:
Can Progressives "Take Over" the Dem Party?
This is wishful thinking, and ignores the actual history and character of both parties.
The Republicans were always the party of Wall Street & Northern manufacturing. The Democrats were the party of the Southern slaveocracy. When the national Democrats defied southern racism by passing the Civil Rights Acts in the mid '60's, the southern states bolted, destroying the New Deal coalition. The Republicans profited from this by adapting to southern tastes, values, & religious/cultural conceptions.
(snip)
By contrast, for progressives to take over the Democrats would be an unprecedented departure from the party's character. To understand this, one must first recognize that the sole Dem claim to being progressive is rooted almost entirely in the New Deal, itself a response to a unique crisis in American history. FDR recognized that to avert the very real threat of massive social unrest and instability, significant concessions had to be made to the working class by the ruling class. Government could act to defend the weak, and to some extent to rein in the strong, but this was all in the longterm interests of defending the existing social order.
Before FDR, the Dem Party had no progressive record whatsoever; and after FDR, though the New Deal coalition survived until the mid-1960's, it did so with a record of achievement that was restrained compared to the 1930's. After passing Medicare in 1965 the party reverted to its longterm pattern, and since then, there has again been no progressive record to speak of. The party's progressive social reform was thus concentrated mostly in the 1930's, with some residual momentum lasting until the mid 60's. The party's "progressive period" was thus 1) an exception to the longer term pattern; 2) a response to a unique crisis; and 3) has in any case been dead for over 40 years.
The word "progressive" refers to the commitment of a political party to defend the interests of the working class (aka the overwhelming majority of the population) against the depredations of the ruling elite. Not only is the Democratic Party unable and unwilling to engage in such a fight, it is unwilling even to pronounce the fight's name -- "class warfare." Marx is understandably reviled by capitalists for his annoyingly accurate perception that the capitalist class and the rest of the population have a fundamental conflict of interest. Capital seeks only to maximize its return; return can certainly be enhanced by using the machinery of state to transfer costs and burdens to the weak and vulnerable; thus rule by capital is intrinsically inimical to the basic interests of the majority of the population. There is no escaping this reality.
American public discourse attempts to paper over this vexing truth with fatuous happy talk, such as, "By working together, we can make make things better for everyone!" This is a lie. When capital controls government, government is no more than a tool used by elites to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. This kind of arrangement cannot possibly "make all boats rise" over the long term. Only the yachts will rise.
If there is no political mechanism for opposing plutocratic rule, the strong will continue to squeeze additional wealth out of the weak until a) the weak become desperate and rebel, b) the weak are crushed and become permanently enslaved, or c) the strong begin suffering more from guilty consciences, than reaping enjoyment from additional wealth -- and therefore relent. (Very few instances of this last are known in recorded history.)
I can't help but agree with this. However, being the eternal optimist who insanely keeps bashing his head against the wall hoping for a different result, I actually do believe that we should try to take over the Democratic Party.
But that's not all we should do. Because that's putting all our eggs in one basket. Which Mamma always told me not to do.
But that's what happens in this country and that's what happens here at Dailykos, in fact, it's the stated goal of this site -- to transform the Democratic Party from within. A nice ideal, but is it really possible?
For the Democratic Party to even begin to serve as a vehicle for opposing the absolute rule of capital, it would at a minimum have to be capable of acknowledging the conflict that exists between the interests of capital and the rest of the population; and of expressing a principled determination to take the side of the population in this conflict.
A party whose controlling elements are millionaires, lobbyists, fund-raisers, careerist apparatchiks, consultants, and corporate lawyers; that has stood by prostrate and helpless (when not actively collaborating) in the face of stolen elections, illegal wars, torture, CIA concentration camps, lies as state policy, and one assault on the Bill of Rights after the next, is not likely to take that position.
So ultimately, this blogger is more pessimistic than I am. But not much.
We see, right now, in this election cycle, and in the day-to-day capitulation of the Party to the Most Unpopular President in History, the power that the "establishment" Democratic Party has. We see, right now, the helplessness that true progressives, even ones who are in elected office and are in some cases quite popular (hello, Feingold!) experience.
So where does logic say we should go? Besides to another country?
Seems like the only logical thing to do is to acknowledge that we can, and should, form a new party. And throw our weight around. We don't HAVE to run, hoping to win, against the juggernauts of the Two Ruling Parties (actually one ruling party that looks like two). We can do that where we might actually have a chance of winning, but in those cases where we don't, we can exert political clout to see that our candidates actually get noticed, get money, and get elected. We can hold off on supporting candidates until we make deasl to get what we want! (no more of that "I will vote for whoever the Dem candidate is" BULLSHIT! What an abjectly pathetic thing to say -- to admit! that you have absolutely no power, and you'll to just give it away to someone who doesn't even represent you, like some desperate slut who just wants to be "loved" by the popular guys.)
We need to start actually creating political power, and using it. And we need to realize that the Democratic Party DOES NOT WANT US. They will resist us. They will ridicule us ( Steny Hoyer is mad at you, don't forget). And they will ignore us. Until we either force them to deal with us, or render them obsolete.
In short, the argument is: What do we have to lose? We already have one party rule. It's time we had a second.