SERIOUSLY NOW

Attention, Small-D Democrats: The Party's Over

by James Ridgeway

(Village Voice, Nov. 12) -- Since last week's election, liberals have
been
melodramatically wringing their hands, while the pundits have rushed to
expound upon the deeper meaning of the Republican sweep. The Democrats
lost,
they say, because they no longer stand for anything. From the pundits'
portentous tones, you'd never guess that they were beating a horse
that's
been dead for more than 30 years.

In fact, this party has been disintegrating since it nominated Hubert

Humphrey in the bloody streets of Chicago in 1968. The Democrats haven't
had
a shred of original ideology since the New Deal, or a spark of fire in
their
bellies since the nominally liberal momentum of the Kennedy-Johnson
years
ran aground on the party's cowardly refusal to oppose the Vietnam War.

And it was Jimmy Carter who provided the spark that fired up the
right
wing. His decision to abandon the Panama Canal helped result in the
founding
of the New Right. That, in turn, went hand in hand with Ronald Reagan's
march to power. Flailing wildly, Carter tried to beat the right by
co-opting
its economic plan, doing such things as embracing deregulation of the
energy
industry and other businesses.

Charting new ground with an allegedly centrist support base, Clinton
tried to outfox conservatives by adopting halfhearted versions of their
own
plans. Clinton put the final nail in the New Deal's coffin -- embracing
welfare "reform," screwing up and then abandoning healthcare, even
letting
it be known that his administration would look kindly on experiments to
reform Social Security by handing partial control to Wall Street
brokerages.
He managed to leave his greatest mark on history by giving the
Republicans
an opportunity to impeach him because of an ill-timed blowjob.

Today's Democratic Party is less a party than an entrenched
Washington
apparatus, which operates as a sort of simulacrum of itself, bellowing
the
names of past icons, while it carries on the business of responding to
the
interests of one lobby group or another. It is what William Greider
calls a
"managerial" party, exemplified by the technocratic fussbudgets in the
Democratic Leadership Council.

Now, some say, there may be a real shakeup in the party in the wake
of
the midterm defeat, the failed Dick Gephardt stepping down as minority
leader, and the Democrats turning to new leadership in the form of
California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. But this is sham. Gephardt is not

quitting as a failure, but to prepare for a presidential run in 2004.

As of late, Pelosi is best known for her role as senior House
Democrat on
the Intelligence Committee, where with the rest of this deadbeat crew
she
ignored or covered up the U.S. intelligence fiascoes that led to 9-11.

Pelosi hails from a Baltimore Democratic political family and says
she
traces her roots to FDR. Currently she's known as the mother of
documentary
filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, who traveled with George Bush during his
campaign, and whose filmmaking, among other things, apparently spurred
the
two families to meet for lunch.

The Republicans, on the other hand, have, since the days of Barry
Goldwater, articulated a clear ideology. Beginning with the Nixon
campaign
of 1968, they have carried out an elaborate plan of action to muster the

"silent majority" and bring what was a splintered and broken party to
power.
They have successfully positioned themselves as the party of
conservative
"principle," with a mission to roll back the ever encroaching federal
government -- shutting down agencies and privatizing others, returning
power
to the states, crushing the New Deal welfare state -- while restoring
old-fashioned Christian morality to civil society.

There is some substance to these political claims, but not much.
Right
now, the Republican majority is using its power to expand, not contract,
the
role of the government, replacing the welfare state with a far more
costly
and intrusive police state, with an economic program based on Keynesian
pump-priming for the defense industries.

Power may be wielded to advance ideology, but more often, ideology is
a
front for the simple protection of power. Bush may pose as a Texas
wildcatter, a Bible-thumping Christian zealot, a war-ready patriot, and
a
champion of the common man. But in reality, he's a blue-blooded New
England
Methodist who dodged the draft by joining the National Guard and pledged
for
Skull and Bones at Yale.

And he's never had anything remotely like an ideology, with the
possible
exception of the 12-Step Program. If Bush succeeds in spite of an
elitist
pedigree, it's because he heads -- and epitomizes -- today's Republican
Party. This is a party that wields the money and power of Big Business,
shrewdly woven into a populist, patriotic ideology designed to appeal to
a
country so desperate for passionate ideals that in return it will give
them
the license to rob their pensions and send their children to war.

Those who fail to fall for all this are left feeling powerless and
depressed, wondering where to go next. The answer is not terribly
hopeful,
but it is very simple -- and it has nothing whatsoever to do with party
politics. Take every opportunity to oppose the power structure: March on

Washington, go on strike, organize a boycott, start a resistance radio
station, take to the streets with the anarchists.

If you are looking for models, they are all over the rest of the
world:
the East German Christian opposition to the Honecker police state that
led
to the toppling of the Berlin Wall, the massive Czech uprising, the
South
African overthrow of apartheid, the protests in Seattle. Don't wait for
the
Democrats to do it. Do it yourself. Stand for something.
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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