Call me ever the silly wishful optimist, but until rather recently, i had long felt compelled to latch onto the sensible progressive spirit offered up by the Great-American-Left flank of the Democratic Party. But after seeing Gary Hart forced out of the running back in early 1988, the big $ players never giving Jesse Jackson a real chance ('too controversial'), & then watching the hopelessly underclassed Dukakis go down in flames later the same year, i sincerely began to wonder if this was not simply a wasted gesture.
Four years later the nascent urge toward cynicism in this elaborate American process was compounded when first Paul Tsongas & then Jerry Brown were 'headed off at the pass' by a blitz of big money campaign adverts (both positive & negative). Yes, Bill Clinton 'won', but largely on the basis of a 'moderate' set of policies, which in Democratese truthfully meant 'pandering to the conservatives' who actually Run/Own the place. (For a rough hint as to the 'liberal-eligibility' of Clinton, all you had to do was look to the conservative Republican visage of his wife, a former Nixon apologist & 'Goldwater girl' fer pete's sake).
Ditto with Gore in 2000. The 'Establishment' decided he was going to run unopposed in the primaries, & aside from that pesky Bill Bradley putting up all of the fuss of a bored child, there was never even a show from the left (not that i'm implying Bradley was in any way a 'leftist').
And everyone knows what happened in 2004.
But in case some don't care to recall, that year it briefly looked like, against all odds, a verifiable honest-to-goodness liberal would actually HAVE the audacity to go out & win the nomination. Ah, but as it turns out, all Howard Dean ended up accomplishing from this cute little 'dare' was to put in place a blueprint, a mould so to speak, for Obama's 'miracle run' four years later. [It could be argued too that Dean's down-home, grass-roots revival style helped supply the lattice for manifesting what came to be the 'tea-party' movement, albeit eventually in a much more conservative rendering.] In the meantime however, a 'former' liberal turned Big $ Brother-in-law, John Kerry, was sent up to challenge the 'monarchy' & very nearly did cause a ruckus himself. But his so-called 'unexpected' performance was in the end primarily little more than a fervent repudiation of the hated Bush/Cheney autocracy than anything else, and the machinations against Kerry had already been put into place. From campaign lies to extreme vote fraud, the debacle & befoulment of the electoral process that began in 2000 was effectively & celabratorily cemented in 2004.
It was at that very moment that i chose definitively to refuse to abide by the two-party system ever more. Sure i'd voted 'Independent' on occasion before, starting with John Anderson in 1980, but up until November 2004 i had remained a card-carrying Democrat.
And that, is how i can say begrudgingly that politically speaking, 'we' have indeed witnessed the beginning of the end of 'America'. The great wondrous democracy of the world that was. The final despoilation of this 'experiment' so fully, obviously, & ultra-cynically laid into place in early November, 2000.
And certainly, i was not alone in that observation. Anyone with even a semi perseverent political intellect or a modicum of rhetorical discernment would have evaluated the situation similarly.
That then, against this backdrop, was how the candidacy of one Barack Obama was therefore necessitated into place.
Yes, of course it was the selling of hope. For no reason other than it had to be.
Hope was sold. Hope was bought, too. And not solely by the voter either.
I certainly do not mean to be overly self-congratulatory here, but not for one single minute, in the runup to the election, did i ever consider Obama to be the sort of unabashed liberal & progressive champion that many touted him to be. Not in the old meaning of those terms anyway. And besides how could they? We did not know him. No one did. Perhaps he didn't either. Politics is an old game, and when someone has been playing it on the national level for but a measly couple years it is nearly impossible to 'know' anything about them politically-speaking. The number of nationally prominent politicians who have not only switched initial allegiances of support within their respective parties, is profound & continuous, but that does not even begin to address all those did so later in their careers as well or those who jumped ship & to the other side completely. Pledges are broken, that is not to be unexpected. But it takes longer than a motley few months strung together to begin to see a particular politician's behavioral patterns.
One thing that can in fact be said on Obama's behalf though is that he has indeed largely represented his constituents, up to & perhaps to some extent including his presidency. From urban concerns while in Illinois to garnering more labor support for the state as a senator, Obama had been quite dutiful on behalf of the people who put him there. But that is also where some of the bigger issues start to arise, and/or fall apart. When hundreds of lobbyists & wealthy donors start lending you their 'support', your constituency suddenly develops an entirely new face, a new set of core values & morals that happen to govern them, & a whole new bunch of needs & expectations.
But Obama you see, right from the outset, gave us every indication of being nothing but an opportunist as well. He has always responded both to his constituents (who all that might represent) as well as to the bright, shiny future. His future. For one to spend a mere two years in politics on the national level & then decide, 'Hey, I look good as a Senator, but I think I'd look Great as a President !', is well, extremely opportunistic. And opportunists have this wonderful knack for letting doors open to them by opening themselves up to & for whoever & whatever's on the other side of that door. It's the Art of Politics at its most debauched & self-aggrandizing moment.
As with all pure opportunists though, Obama was approached (or co-opted if you prefer) by other opportunists, and of course, they him. Ultimately, in just such an agreement the various parties involved carefully craft 'the final package', so to speak, & bind it together replete with their respective terms & conditions. In this particular case, the end result of all the political lobby groups (both good & bad), high-roller donors, & opportunist operatives was not new legislation, but of course Candidate Obama.
And Candidate Obama surely did not come from anything that can be remotely called a long-standing tradition of liberal, 'bleeding-heart' humanitarianism. He did not have the impeccable credentials as such of a Jesse Jackson or a Ted Kennedy or a Eugene McCarthy. Nor even of a Edmund Muskie, Wayne Morse, Paul Wellstone or a Maxine Waters for that matter. As a US Senator, his votes were certainly liberal indeed, but only for the measly 3-plus years he was in office. (And as Hillary Clinton so nastily noticed in the '08 primaries, there were an extremely large number of abstentations or 'present' votes by this so-called 'highly principled' orator.)
Many too seemed ready to overlook his origins (not talking about any 'faked id' here). Consider; he started out as a dutiful wide-eyed polycrat in the great Chicago political machine, only to benefit greatly from an almost bewildering series of convictions, accidents, and unexplained withdrawals that occurred successively to his opponents over the course of his 10 years spent in Windy City politics. A well-groomed (not talking about his dress here) & well-spoken example certainly, but a South-side Sentry for what used to be called the 'Dailey Express' nonetheless. And suddenly, there He was. OUR candidate. The World's Candidate.
Fast forward a barely more than a year & suddenly everyone seems so surprised when most of the significant campaign pledges have come to either little fruition or an actual reverse sponsorship has been activated in their place? Yeah big surprise.
So in 2008, in those far away & impatient times, i chose instead to 'throw away' my vote. I did so by putting a little check next to Ralph Nader's name. You remember Ralph, the Green Party candidate ? Who every media outlet in the country laughed at, & who was barred (yet again) from every one of the 'debates' ? Who bravely stood there nevertheless, like a somewhat more stoic, intellectuallized & similarly impassioned Peter Finch out in the rain ? (& if you're already thinking Peter Falk instead, you're forgiven, that image would work as well). Who shouted at us to never trust in the two-party system, and by extension, never to trust whatever conscripted & scripted, pampered & packaged, pruned & primed candidates they threw at us, no matter how intoxicating their charisma or their rhetoric ? Yes, that guy.
I sincerely urge others to vote for whatever reasonable & real humans are on the 3rd or 4th or 5th party ticket next time, & indeed EVERY time. In a two-party system the individual is doomed to a ridiculously limited number of alternatives from the very start. One could easily make a very rational claim that the two-party system cannot possibly even be truly representative, for the number of differing opinions are limited only by the number of individuals present who are asked to come to a decision. Sure one might occasionally be addled by the inconvenience of having to form a 'coalition' government, but that is but a minor annoyance to be naturally anticipated within the framework of a representative government.
A third party vote is not just a plausible response, it is in fact the ONLY sensible answer.
Here's the Wonderful Writer John Pilger, with his Take on Obama :
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