Rethink.

1. We need to assume a few things to play this game:

• Clinton’s vot­ers are, more-or-less, tra­di­tional Demo­c­ra­tic vot­ers. Obvi­ously, this is highly debat­able, espe­cially given Obama’s suc­cess in the cau­cuses (who goes out for these things anyway?)
• We assert also that the vot­ers Sen­a­tor Obama is get­ting will never vote Demo­c­rat beyond this cam­paign ever again. That “younger voter” phe­nom­e­non could be very tem­po­rary; we note that the Inter­net is the major unspo­ken player in the Demo­c­ra­tic party cur­rently, and is shilling for Obama openly.
• Fur­ther, we under­stand the Demo­c­ra­tic party as a pop­ulist party, con­cerned above all with the people’s will. To that end, even very prin­ci­pled, artic­u­late lib­er­als will make com­pro­mises with forces that could turn the party against them. (I think Bey­er­stein is far too kind to Kos in that review: if I were lib­eral and fem­i­nist, I’d be furi­ous at some of the asser­tions he makes).
• Finally, there are plenty of lib­er­als who are thought­ful and from whom I learn much. If this argu­ment holds up, and if the Demo­c­ra­tic party does end up being split because of this blog entry, it is only just that their voice is rep­re­sented well some­how. We need to address what the higher inter­ests of lib­er­als are that would move them beyond the Demo­c­ra­tic party.

2. You might be ask­ing your­self why it is a good thing to split the Demo­c­ra­tic party and, by impli­ca­tion, destroy it once and for all. I hon­estly think there’s plenty of room for lib­er­als within the Repub­li­can party, and if I can get my way and make the Repub­li­can party educa­tive, we might end up with a num­ber of Left­ists who can artic­u­late argu­ments from Rousseau or Anais Nin and not have to rely on con­spir­acy the­ory or pop­ulist rage in order to advance poli­cies that cre­ate voter blocs.

You heard me cor­rectly: all this iso­la­tion­ism and blindly cater­ing to unions and pay­ing for abor­tions and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism cre­ates unnat­ural inter­ests in Amer­i­can soci­ety. It skews the “grass-roots” the way acad­e­mia and bureau­crats want (I can’t say “shape,” because more tra­di­tional inter­ests — i.e. con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals — still exist). I’m not say­ing peo­ple can’t be lib­eral — I am say­ing that a con­sid­er­able num­ber of lib­er­als today lack what might be termed “authen­tic­ity.” They’re alien­ated from hav­ing any ideas of their own, they’re alien­ated from think­ing for them­selves. How­ever, their “inter­est,” in the base sense, is worked toward. It’s a herd men­tal­ity, and it has to stop, because irony of ironies its great­est vic­tims are Pro­gres­sives and Left­ists who actu­ally have a real inter­est in Left-leaning poli­cies (i.e. favor­able poli­cies for pro­tect­ing minori­ties, prison reform, pro­tec­tions for work­ers, etc).

I’m not promis­ing to cure par­ti­san­ship. I’ll still dis­agree with my more lib­eral friends on every­thing, and now I’ll even have to deal with them being in my party. It could be really annoy­ing. The only dif­fer­ence is that in what I’m envi­sion­ing, there might be a tad more dis­cus­sion about pol­icy and a lot less scream­ing and hype.

3. My gam­ble is that if we can get the vot­ers for Sen­a­tor Clin­ton to take umbrage at the game Sen­a­tor Obama and his camp are play­ing, the Demo­c­ra­tic party will kill itself off. I wouldn’t be mak­ing this gam­ble if there were not just cause for the Democ­rats to disunite.

The key argu­ment is that DailyKos/Hillary blog­ger scrap is demon­stra­tive of the fact that one half of the party doesn’t even want to lis­ten to the other half. I think we can all safely say that Dai­lyKos has remade the Demo­c­ra­tic party nearly entirely in its own image. But a cru­cial part of that remak­ing is that any­thing that even seems closer to the polit­i­cal “cen­ter” has to go.

Dai­lyKos is always extreme — unleash­ing idi­otic pas­sions is the name of the game there — but what should a good, life­long Demo­c­rat do when Sen­a­tor Obama’s sup­port­ers — includ­ing some very big name Democ­rats — have decided to insult all Clin­ton vot­ers for the mere fact they voted for her? The argu­ment “she should drop out, she’s hurt­ing the party,” pre­tends that Sen­a­tor Obama would have enough del­e­gates to secure the nom­i­na­tion should she drop out. Truth be told, if every one of Hillary’s del­e­gates went with her, the Demo­c­ra­tic party would have no nominee.

A good half of the Demo­c­ra­tic party is say­ing to the other half that their vote doesn’t mat­ter, not at all. And that “half” seems to con­sist of peo­ple that might not have ever voted except for Barack Obama — in other words, it isn’t clear that these are going to be life­long Democ­rats that are com­mit­ted to the party’s values.

We Repub­li­cans can help demol­ish this stu­pid party for­ever (i.e.: one could say it has been a pro-slave, anti-civil rights party that begun its exis­tence for­mally by trash­ing the White House to cel­e­brate Inau­gu­ra­tion Day) if we work more closely with the tra­di­tional Democ­rats. The way we can do this most effec­tively is to talk pol­icy: that Colom­bian trade agree­ment, which the AFL-CIO opposes and pushed the Demo­c­ra­tic con­gress to oppose, is a great exam­ple. The speak­ers from CATO on C-Span noted that there won’t be a sin­gle Amer­i­can job lost because of this agree­ment: it helps our exports. Fur­ther­more, the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment has worked very hard to min­i­mize vio­lence against trade union­ists. There’s every rea­son unions should be for this trade agree­ment, and yet they’re against it.

The unwill­ing­ness of Sen­a­tor Obama to talk pol­icy in any con­crete terms is what we have to harp on and exploit. Let the Demo­c­ra­tic party have their “party:” we’ll be the party that’s seri­ous about edu­ca­tion and pol­icy and work­ing through our dif­fer­ences together. In the begin­ning, the Founders didn’t want par­ties, and maybe we can go back to a blessed time where pol­i­tics wasn’t dom­i­nated by com­pe­ti­tion, but rather by deliberation.

• For My Repub­li­can Read­ers: Why Do We Need a Party? And How Are We Going To Win Elec­tions In the Future?
• “Doing” Some­thing for the Repub­li­can Party Instead of Whin­ing has yielded this Extended Whine
• Briefly Noted: That Repub­li­can “Rebuild the Party” Site is Excellent
• Not Ter­ri­bly Objec­tive Thoughts on a Por­tion of the Demo­c­ra­tic Convention
• In Appre­ci­a­tion: Glen Thurow and the Prob­lem of Speech in Demo­c­ra­tic Life

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plu­gin.