A few thoughts from the peanut gallery....
1. The whole issue of which court did what and so on isn't very
important, not really. The candidates took their issues to the courts and
abided by the courts' decisions, so the rule of law was preserved. None
of the court's decisions were terribly out of line with the law or legal
principle--contradictions and imprecisions do exist in the standing
laws. I do recall at one point, though, Gore *did* propose a statewide
recount as a political compromise that Bush rejected. In general, I think
both parties acted shamefully during the process. But acting shamefully
isn't against the law.
2. It was the Democrats' election to lose, and they lost it. Bush ran a
smart campaign, but Gore didn't (and nevertheless garnered the popular
vote). And if the voting machines are woefully obsolete in populous,
heavily Democratic counties, whose fault is that? Presumably the fault of
the Democratic administrations that have been running those counties. Of
course, they may have a legitimate excuse: perhaps the per capita income
of those counties is low, and so in yearly budget crunches the money must
be allocated for social and infrastructure programs rather than for
"frills" like modern voting machines.
3. The Republican party has been much smarter about playing the US
political game at the grassroots level. It is the party that has declared
that there is a cultural "war" to be won, and they understand the
importance to their cause of winning all offices, great and small. The
effects of this chess game add up and become apparent whenever things get
really tight in the "democratic" sense.
4. To counteract this strategy, Democrats have to stop being complacent.
Since our nation was founded by people deelply suspicious of popular
democracy, and since our Constitution structures the nation in such a
way that existing power always enjoys an overwhelming advantage, in part
by segmenting the playing field and dividing the popular opposition, hence
"states rights" and extreme decentralization (otherwise the Constitution
would never have been ratified in the first place), Democrats have to wake
up to the fact that a class war *is* at stake and must be fought;
otherwise they'll be nothing more than shadow Republicans and prove Nader
right. They have to focus less on Washington and wage a campaign through
the heartand. They can succeed because the poor far, far outnumber the
rich. But overcoming inertia takes a lot of effort.
5. To do this the Democrats will have to create a language that eschews
the buzzwords of European socialism on the one hand while laying bare the
inequities of of our incredibly lopsided society on the other. Part of
the conservative culture war has been a successful campaign to smear as
Stalinist or antiChristian all the conventional language used to suggest
that the government should aid the poor or preserve public goods for the
use of all, or that public goods should even exist. When Republican
leaders accuse Democrats, or even just liberals, of indulging in divisive
"class war" rhetoric, we need to be prepared to say, "Damn right. Here's
why," instead of, "Oh I'm sorry, did I speak out of turn?"
What has pissed me off more than anything else about this election has
been the sheer meekness of Democratic candidates, rhetoric, and strategy.
If liberals want to make a difference, we're going to have to sprout some
bloody testicles. (Including *this* liberal, who has never been, aside
from voting, very politically active.)
(So why didn't I vote for Nader? Because change is going to be slow, no
matter what, and not only isn't the man competent for the job of
president, he lacked the guts to do what *he* should have done, which was
to offer an olive branch to the Democrats and join ranks for the sake of
this election. If you're not smart enough to join ranks with your natural
allies for the sake of making progress an inch at a time, you're too
stupid for electoral politics.
Nader *should* have run. He should have harped on the issues he harped
on, and stuck to his guns. But he should also have realized that in the
USA the Green Party has roughly the odds of the Goldfish party. What
good is tilting at windmills if you topple the windmill over on the
village you say you're trying to save?
He had a chance to swing the election for the Democrats and so become a
major voice for liberalizing Democratic politics. Instead he's going to
go the way of Buchannan.)
The good news is that we learn from our most humiliating defeats (one of
the reasons Bush's strategy and rhetoric ticks off the most conservative
Republicans--he's learned from the past mistakes of his party). So I'm
looking forward to 2002.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
