Vote Like It Matters

One of the problems with partisan bloggers is that they tend to be too—partisan.

Though bloggers with a partisan edge—those writers who advocate—are by order of magnitude more insightful than the banal David Broders or the idiots on cable news shows, some are too ready to jettison democratic ideas, coming to the perceived rescue of the Democratic Party as a whole should it become politically threatened, in their view.

This does not do the Democratic Party any good, and too often some Democrats (in my view) are undeserving of such service anyway.

This last week there has been a meme going around Democratic/progressive sites that we engage in 'unity-promoting' language for the good of the Party (Soviet-sounding, isn't it?), rather than risk the election of John McCain, a nut with truly dangerous major policy stands.

Coming under fire is the following oft-repeated assertion regarding the Democratic primary: That should Hillary and Bill try to steal the election and undermine Obama through subtle appeals to racism, xenophobia and outright McCarthyism, many casually political Obama supporters (and many political progressives) would refuse to work and vote for Hillary, in 2008 or 2012.

This assertion is almost universally panned by both the earnest and the posturing proclaiming the imperative of unity.

Two issues elude these progressive-minded bloggers:

1. This anti-Hillary, general-election dynamic is a reality, not some gratuitous, unity-destroying venting regarding this DLC creation.

2. That voting is and should be an individual decision made by citizens exercising a right, it is more than ratifying a candidate who believes that (she in this case) is entitled to an office. Voting is an expression and statement on how a candidate conducts herself in a campaign (importantly signaling how she would conduct herself in office) and the direction a voter wants a society to take. In a liberal democracy public opinion should form the basis for public policy (with the proviso that rights are not subject to majority opinion). But one would not conclude that this basic aspect of a classical liberal democracy is alive and well from the presidential campaigns' rhetoric and the commentary of some supporting the campaigns.

I know a casually political person (supporting Obama) in Wisconsin who told me before the mid-Feb. Wisconsin primary that "If the Democrats want to make this a brokered convention with a bunch of insiders (super delegates) deciding the nominee, the hell with them, I’ll vote for McCain. And I don’t even like McCain." Good for him, he's doing what he wants, and making a politcal demand of the Democratic Party.

Myself, though I’ve gone back-and-forth, I won't vote for Hillary who has long-since entered the muck of no return (for me). If this is the conduct of certain candidates', forget them, I'll stick to movement politics.

Public opinion and public policy are not very close in American society and that's wrong, though it's not just Republicans who fail to realize this truism.

Candidates need to realize that it is the public that is supposed to be boss; that it is the voters who are supposed to lead because elections are about them.

The egos, disgusting tactics and selfish pursuits of the candidates need to be knocked down when they come in conflict with the political will of what matters—that would be us, the backbone of a democratic party that Kos, AmericaBlog and others exist to create.

For what it's worth, I'm voting for Barack Obama (my third choice of the Democratic candidates) because I believe that Obama is in closer alignment with the ideal that my voice matters, and that policy would flow from this central realization.