Part one: “A Prelude to Punishment?”
November 5, 2002, 2:39 A.M.: The 2002 mid-term election goes down in a few
hours. This is like the calm before the storm, except the storm started
two years ago. This is a major election in strategic terms, because of
both the war and the severe financial distress of the nation, which gets
hardly the heat it merits. It could be a war in and of itself, and
severely complicate external policy notions for both parties regardless of
how Bush chooses to neutralize the terrorist threat.
Yet the media, whose job it is to get the population ready for the
essential duty of citizenship that occurs today, are predicting perhaps,
possibly, potentially the lowest voter turnout rate in American history.
The ironic thing about this dismal projection is that the current record
of 35.7% was set in 1942, in the general election immediately after our
entry into WWII. Some things never change, even if it would be a good
idea.
I think it says a lot about the nature of those challenges and choices
facing America over the next Congressional session that many of the major
players in the Republican Party (Helms, Gramm, Thurmond, Armey, Watts,
etc.) have chosen to leave the scene just as their party's poised to seize
total control of the federal government, and many of the state houses and
governors' mansions, as well. I figure that since they're old, they may
want to get a head start out of Washington and watch the next two years
unfold from fortified ranches in their home districts. So, there's a lot
of leadership space opening up in the GOP.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are on a downward slide to oblivion, in a
collective dead heat with a Bush machine that's never been seriously
challenged by anyone not named Clinton. Al Gore's "loss" in 2000 (which
really needs no quotation marks, because the only thing that matters in
this business is who takes the oath) highlighted all of the Democrats'
major flaws, and their response was to proceed in the same failed
direction. Their prudent early stonewalling of certain Bush initiatives
backfired after 9/11; they were easily spun as obstructionist, and thus
gave Mr. Bush a de facto nod to do what he wants, period. He publicly
commands them to do his bidding, and so they do. The only reason they had
what little stroke they did this session is due to those Republicans who
pissed off Jim Jeffords. The serious left has no place in the new DP, and
they're worse for it.
Now, the matter of prediction. I'm not interested in handicapping this
election, because I suspect that much of it has already been fixed, in one
way or another. Not as surely as Saddam's 100% tally from last month
(which presumably include the relatives of people he killed, if there are
any), but something not unlike 2000, where money and elite consensus
combined to impose a well-defined trajectory upon the proceedings. Polls
are simply tools to influence the perception of undecideds and unlikely
voters, who tend to favor the front-runner.
Today the status of 33 Senate seats, 36 governorships and all 435 seats in
the House of Representatives, and the power that goes with "majority rule"
in a democracy, will be decided by about one-fourth of the country's adult
population. This is good news for all the wrong people, and awful news for
everyone else. The death of Senator Wellstone from (and in) Minnesota, 11
days before his certain reelection (against a guy that lost to Jesse
Ventura in a three-way race), while completely and unquestionably
accidental, speak a bit to the essential seriousness and brutality of
what's happening today. It's also worth noting that his basic ideology
died with him.
I count myself as one who, though completely unenthusiastic about any of
my choices, is lucky that there's even going to be an election today, and
pray it comes off without some sort of sick tragedy. The standards of
quality in our process fall lower and lower with each electoral cycle, to
the point that ultimate control over the nature and composition of our
representation has been ceded by citizens to the state itself, which then
has carte blanche to construct society based on the wishes of their
corporate sponsors, who see little more of America than its marketplace.
We live in (and are threatened now by) the logical result of our own
laziness and intractability. As the Democrats prepare to spend the
immediate future in varying states of irrelevance, having been publicly
emasculated by the opposition, they may feel acutely the words of their
former leader: "I feel your pain."
Part TWO: “Postmortem for a Party?”
November 7, 2002, 12:46 A.M.: Being a mark for the ideal of a functional
democracy, which I still feel is a better system than anything devised so
far (though the Bushes may have some fun new variations in store for us),
it took me an entire day to get in the mood for summing up what I'd
already predicted: the wholesale stomping of the Democratic party by our
President and the GOP candidates who fell in line behind him. The pundits'
post-election spin of the results had near-messianic undertones as they
described how GWB single-handedly pulled his party up from what was still,
in theory, a close battle for control of Congress as late as last weekend.
Bush's barnstorming tour of close districts over the final month helped
bring him the sort of stark, inarguable victory at the polls that has thus
far eluded him in the War on Terror.
Bush became the first Republican President ever to seize control of
Congress during the mid-terms, and brother Jeb is now the first GOP
governor ever reelected in Florida. Not bad for a regime that some people
feel is fundamentally illegitimate. Of course, that's just sour grapes
from folks who've latched onto an antiquated notion of political reality.
At least the left can say it wasn't their fault, "this time." Unlike in
2000, where the DLC flacks foisted blame for failure onto a handful of
Nader voters in Florida, thus setting up what happened two days ago, there
was no left or "progressive" presence in any of this year's contests.
(However, Carl McCall's loss in the New York governor's race is easily
attributable to a collapse of party solidarity, financially and otherwise,
exemplified by Senator Clinton's allowing herself to be seen smiling in
the orbit of Pataki, as well as an independent candidate who took 14%.)
The results of November 5 amount to a violent refutation of what the
Democrats seemed to believe was a sound strategy: picking at the minutiae
of domestic policy, while ignoring the larger infrastructural concerns of
the nation. The voters didn't want to hear that shit. The party's insane
centrist pandering has brought them to the edge of a cliff; the only
question that remains now concerns their future direction.
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