By Marc Jampole
Today’s the day for my annual Vote Straight Democrat essay. These past few years it seems to be
an exercise in futility in every other area than social issues, as many
Democrats are almost as right-wing as the Republicans on economic and foreign
affairs issues, further to the right than the Eisenhower administration.
Most Democrats were once true progressives, which makes it
doubly frustrating. The urge to stay home rather than vote for an Allison
Lundergan Grimes or an Andrew Cuomo is strong.
But there are only two ways to influence elected officials,
because those are only two things they want: votes and money. Correction—they
want money and need votes. Unless you’re willing to cough up a few thousand—or
a few hundred thousand—bucks, all you can offer a politician is your vote.
Votes don’t speak as loudly as money because you only have
one vote and you can give many, many, many dollars. But the collective votes of
demographic groups can speak loudly and clearly to the candidates.
Nothing short of an enlightened dictatorship will magically
transform the United States overnight into a land in which all people get
adequate health care, education and retirement as part of the social contract,
there is an equitable distribution of wealth and income and we have secured our
future as a species by slowing down man-made global warming and resource shortages.
In our system of government, movement in a new direction, or
back into old and successful direction, comes slowly. We have to keep pushing,
just like the 1%, social conservatives and gun manufacturers have kept pushing
over the past 35 years, gradually increasing inequality, limiting the right to
an abortion, weakening unions, lowering taxes on the wealthy, attacking any
scientific theory that doesn’t support their views and making it easier to
carry guns in the street and get away with shooting people in cold blood for
flimsy excuses.
To turn back the tide may take as long as or longer than it
took for the right-wing waters to gather and flood our country. The first step
is for progressives to show our power, which we can’t do if we don’t vote,
since we 99% don’t have the same ability as the 1% do to feed money to the
candidates and parties. Until minorities, young people and the poor establish a
track record of voting, Democrats will continue to ignore our pressing needs,
make compromises with the right wing and pursue militarism and 21st century
imperialism abroad.
Right now the best reason to vote Democratic is that the
other side is so much worse. Let’s call it “voting on the Gore,” as we now know
that progressives who voted for Ralph Nader instead of Al Gore for president in
2000 are in a large part responsible for the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, the
torture gulag, the disastrous federal tax cuts for the wealthy, racking up
major debt and then paying for it by cutting funds for education, the poor and
our infrastructure, the embedding of the religious right in key government
posts, the curtailment of civil rights in the name of security—and, as it turns
out, possibly the 9/11 bombings through deliberate ignoring of many warnings signs.
Today we have to vote, and vote on the Gore. But if we can
swing the Senate for the Democrats, erode the Republican majority in the House
and start to hand governorships and state legislatures back to the Democrats,
we will be in a position in 2016 to move the party left—to insist on more progressive
candidates, and to maybe get Elizabeth Warren, Bill De Blasio or some other
progressive on the national ticket.
But if we stay home this year, the Democrats will once again
treat 2016 as if it were Halloween and dress up as a bunch of right-looking
centrists. And I’ll be back again telling everyone to hold their noses and vote
straight Democratic.