From The Editor’s Desk
I have a confession to make: that unlike most of the people that I know, and many I respect, I didn’t vote for any Democrats this election–not even Eliot Spitzer. Like I have every other November–except 1992 when, in my youthful exuberance I voted for the charismatic, saxophone blowing playboy Bill Clinton–I voted the Green ticket across the board. I have done this for a full ten years now, and, as you probably know, not once have any of the candidates I voted for won. I like to think that I have at least once or twice contributed to the party’s attempts to get subsequent ballot access, but who knows?
Nonetheless, I was ecstatic to see the results of this month’s mid-terms. Watching the numbers pour in Thursday night at the bar, it was easy to get caught up in the fantasy that we had somehow all collectively come to our senses. And in a sense we had. November’s congressional elections demonstrated that, despite some of the more dire projections of the left, there is still room for progressive change through participatory politics and democratic elections. The American public, although it’s not clamoring for proportional representation and has not yet started signing up in droves for the Green Party–we’ve still got a long way to go–has at least finally demonstrated that it is capable of holding politicians accountable for their policy actions. Indeed, it is clear from the polls that, unlike the presidential elections of 2004, this was actually an election about issues and about accountability. But it is obvious that the American public was not voting for Democrats on the 5th; they were voting against Republicans and, more specifically against the Bush administration’s Neo-conservative agenda. Although this says a lot about the deficiencies of our national politics, it nonetheless at least redeems the American electoral system as a form of protest and as a real check against Executive power. That it took us this long as a nation to finally figure out what seemed so obvious to so many of us, is evidence of the continued work that lies ahead for progressives.
In other words, now is not the time to sit back and congratulate ourselves. Of the many democrats to win congressional and senate seats this year a good portion of them, known as blue dog democrats, are only moderately more progressive than the Republicans they ousted. Much of the Democratic Party, it seems, as it has done for the last twelve years is continuing to trend to the right. The Democrats’ recent choice of moderate Steny Hoyer over the more liberal Jack Murtha as Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, is indicative of the centrist position of the new democrats. Progressive issues like a real living wage (pegged to inflation), economic sustainability, free national health care, civil rights, and political reform, are, despite the rhetoric about health care and increasing the minimum wage, off the radar of the new democrats, and, if this year’s elections are any indication, aren’t going to be issues in this congress anytime soon. Sure, Pelosi will do everything she can to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its economic and foreign policy blunders, but this kind of reactive politics only takes us back to the Clinton era–if we’re lucky. It does nothing to move us forward.
Now that at least some temporary semblance of balance has been restored to the government, it is time to start thinking about the issues that really matter. If this election has taught us anything it is that change is possible, and in many ways inevitable. Now is the time to start actively pushing the Democratic Party to the left, pushing for real political reforms such as proportional and run-off voting, and simultaneously building third parties that can challenge the Democrats without undermining them.
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