Posts tagged ‘2020 elections’

An answer for Aaron

by , posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2020 at 6:31 pm

Cousin Aaron is a hoot. Pretty much every day he posts something on Facebook that makes me smile. Today, however, he posed a more serious question to his Facebook friends.

This was my answer for Aaron:

At the risk of taking your question too seriously, here goes … I am a political historian by training and I’ve been politically active for a good 45 years now, and I think Biden is the worst nominee the Democratic Party has put forth since at least before FDR. And I detest Pelosi, Schumer, and the entire Democratic establishment, too. But from their left, not their right. So, as bad as I think Biden & Co. are, I think Trump is worse. If I lived in a swing state where there was a risk that Trump might grab the electoral votes, I’d hold my nose and vote for Biden as the lesser evil. But I don’t live in a swing state, so I’m free to make a principled vote for what I believe in, not caring that my candidate won’t win, because, given the reality that either Trump or Biden will win, this election is already lost as far as I’m concerned. There is no winning with such a choice, only damage control.

And for me, damage control means doing as little as possible to strengthen Biden’s hand, and those like him within the Democratic Party, even though I want Trump voted out. The reason why I try to thread such a needle is because I think the only reason someone like Trump gets elected in the first place is because the faction of the Democratic Party that has been in charge for the last forty years or so has so abandoned and alienated the working people of this country that many of them had long since concluded that that type of Democrat had nothing to offer them but the same old b.s. that had already failed them, and so, if they hadn’t given up on politics altogether by then, they had become desperate enough to buy into Trump’s con job. So, while I want to see Trump lose, I believe that the only hope we have for things to change for the better in the future is for the Democratic elites who are in the pockets of Wall Street, and all the hacks and grifters who are their enablers, to be driven out of power within the party, so that the Democratic Party can begin to represent the interests of the folks on Main Street once again, instead of taking them for granted. I know that isn’t going to happen in 2020, but I just want this election to be over so I can put my shoulder to the wheel again, trying to help clean up the mess that is today’s Democratic Party.

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The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend

by , posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 at 2:50 pm

The Democratic establishment is not composed of democrats, it’s made up of elites who, not unlike our “Founders” were, are opposed to an excess of democracy (which the so-called Founders considered to be as big a threat as monarchy). And U.S. political history has been a never-ending contest between the forces of reform who have sought to democratize our republic — the anti-slavery movement, the women;s rights movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, etc., — vs. those who defended the status quo or, worse, sought to roll back progress whenever it was made.

The Democratic Party was once the party of those democratizing impulses, but that hasn’t been true for a good forty years or more now. Trump must be defeated, but our problems didn’t begin with Trump’s ascension to power and they won’t end with his defeat. The removal from power of the not-particularly-democratic Democratic establishment is also a necessary condition for progress, if not for survival of the species itself, every bit as much as the defeat of even greater evils farther to the right are, and that’s why we have to remember that even when we share a common goal, like defeating Trump, with the Democratic establishment and it’s enablers, the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend, and the path we take in hopes of reaching that common destination, the strategic and tactical choices we make that frustrte and anger establishment Dems and their loyal followers, will necessarily differ from that of our intraparty rivals.

cross-posted from Facebook

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