In yesterday’s Washington Post, Harold Meyerson has a thought provoker about the Republican and Democratic primary candidates. It’s called "Democrats in Conflict, the GOP in Space" Meyerson on the 2008 Race
He starts out about a big Republican conundrum playing out on the campaign trail. He exams Mitt Romney who, besides having his varmint hunting credentials shred, has been reduced to pretending that he did not come up with a near universal heathcare plan in Massachusetts. He is now forced at fundraisers to put aside his pragmatic hands-across-the-aisle approach that worked well for him as Governor. Poor Mitt is trying hard to squeeze himself into extreme tight fitting ideologue pants that the increasingly far right wing Republican Party wants him to wear.
These duds bear little resemblance to the old G.O.P. of which Mitt’s father, Governor George Romney of Michigan, was a fine example. I know those folks. I grew up with them. They were members of clubs; Rotaries’, Lions’, and Chambers’. Meyerson speculates that Republicans in their quest for purity might like hot air balloons just "float beyond the realm of electability".
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth Meyerson zeros in on the Democrats and the dance that’s going on under the Big Tent. What’s hip and what’s hop? Who’s "Dancing With the Stars"? Meyerson says that ultimately it may well come down to who’s Gene Kelley and who’s Fred Astaire? But it's never really that easy, is it?
For the Democrats, the contest is settling into a pattern set four decades ago: primary-season class conflict, in which one candidate appeals to a younger and more upscale electorate by talking about political reform and other chiefly noneconomic concerns, while another emphasizes pocketbook issues to the party's working-class voters. In primaries past, the upscale-reformer role has been embraced by Eugene McCarthy, Morris Udall, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean, while the part of the more populist bread-and-butter battler has been played by Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Richard Gephardt and John Edwards, among others. This year's upscale reformer, as Ronald Brownstein keenly noted in his Los Angeles Times column last month, is Barack Obama.
Note: Brownstein refers to this 40 year old confrontation as between warrior and priest with the occasional person rising above both or combining both. I call that type, Captain Kirk.
Meyerson points out that Obama is not railing against "outsourcing American jobs or drug companies that drive the price of medications to unregulated heights." "Rather he campaigns against the compromises, shallowness, the corruptions inherent in our political and legislative processes."
Meyerson notes that Obama while pulling in more money than either Edwards or Clinton among higher–income groups, "bombs before such working-class confabs as the service workers’ healthcare forum and the International Association of Firefighters in Washington.
Now in Brownstein’s March 10th piece in the LA Times, he wants to make it clear that it’s still early and despite Hilary leading Obama by 2 to 1 amongst non-college whites in a recent Quinnipiac University survey in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, Obama may be able to cut into Hilary’s working class and black American votes. (Note: Brownstein’s article was written the week John Edwards announced he was staying in the race and a lot of interesting news has come out since then about his strength. Edwards is also cutting into Hilary’s working class territory in the South and in the depressed industrial North including her home state.)
Eric Alterman wrote a piece in the December 27, 2004 "Nation" called "Big Ideas Need Sharp Elbows". In it he talks about a recent gathering in New York City to honor John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. for their large contributions to what the historian Kevin Mattson terms a "fighting faith", a "tough-minded realism" that battled in the political world, "a world of messy compromise and inevitable failures." Alterman felt that Bill Moyers best summed up their impact. Moyers said ‘Ken Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger engaged in the passions of our times and brought to the liberal project the fire of deep conviction, the gravity of fierce intellect and the temperament of the tested warrior of ideas who accepts that the achievable is possible while the perfect can only be imagined...The hopes of common people rest not with saints but with flawed champions who understand that in a world where bad ideas wear brass knuckles, big ideas need sharp elbows." Seems to me that statement makes a fine blue print for picking out leaders.
Folks, There is no easy way out...of Iraq...of poverty....of relationships...of life.
There is no easy way out of any of this. We cannot transcend. We cannot rise above.We cannot be transported or carried away or lifted up. Not even Jesus promised us an easy way through life. You cannot simply go to "Jesus Camp". You simply cannot go to a political rally or a mega church. You simply cannot go to a lecture or a forum or listen to NPR or blog.
We need from the people who are vying for our affection in the next election to give us more than a shiny brochure, we need the repair manual⎯the how to get out of this mess.
We need to take action. We need to work. We need to stop shopping and start sqwawking.We all need to take a giant step back and take a look at ourselves, our community, and our world then ask ourselves, "What do we want this place to look like in a hundred years? What do I want our species to be remembered for?" Will it be for our mega stuff? Our mega malls, our mega homes and our mega churches? Will they marvel at our "Yellowstone Clubs " our Wal-Mart Super Stores and all the Bed, Bath, and Beyonds we managed to build?
Will we be looked on like the dinosaurs as we sink into the tar pits of our own making? Will those who discover our planet thousands of years from now ask, "What were they thinking?"
Or can we turn this around? Can we be known for the people who stopped the ship before it hit the iceberg? Or if it already sunk, how do we get this darn lifeboat to start?
Liberalism isn’t for the weak-kneed. Tom Paine knew that. Liberalism relished opposites and differences. It came up with checks and balances, not capitulations. It came up with competition and brawls called elections. If you want something comfortable, choose a monarchic system where wholeness is the model with the benevolent father at the helm. Paul Starr wrote a whole book about this called "Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism." Yes it is a Force. It is a power. But it’s power comes from the fight not the surrender.
Tom P had a beautiful diary yesterday called " John Edwards: People’s Bootstraps Are Worn to a Thread." Bootstraps
He ended it with a song written by a striking miner’s wife. I would like to echo that sentiment again.
Which side are you on, my friends? Which side are you on? Bill Moyers is right. The times cry out for sharp elbows. Choose. Choose which side you are on and go to your local precinct and sign up. Then pick up your pen. Strike your keyboard. It ‘s time to lock and load.