Why I don't care about the 2012 Presidential election
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Submitted by DCblogger on Mon, 03/28/2011 - 3:31pm
I can't tell you how thrilled I am with the recent protests in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and now Michigan. We are witnessing a real uprising; a new citizens movement being born.
Presidential elections are the culmination of political movements, not the beginning, or even middle. To permit ourselves to be distracted by the 2012 Presidential election from what is clearly the issue of our time would be a real shame.
This summer the Republicans will almost certainly lose control of the Wisconsin Senate as a direct result of their attack on workers. Recall efforts are under way in Ohio.
Supporting this movement in these states and spreading it to others is the most important work of our time. The 2012 Presidential is petty by comparison.
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Comments
100 % Agree
No further comment, just think you are spot on.
Pedantry alert!
In WI it's recalls, but OH doesn't have them for statewide offices. We're stuck with the current crew for the full terms.
If SB 5 passes we'll be starting on a referendum - activists are calling it a "citizens veto" - to just overturn the whole thing.
Dave Dayen had a piece a day or two ago basically saying: GOP wins no matter what. Either they hold the gains from these massively unpopular moves or they have them rolled back, but either way they stay on offense. I disagree. People are energized and they're starting to organize. It's happening under the radar though. Time will tell, but I suspect entire state parties will be crippled by this overreach, and once this attack is beaten back activists will go on the offensive. The key is going to be channeling the energy, but I think it'll happen. For as unrelentingly dark as things have been for years now - and as bad as they are in other respects at the moment - I feel a real sense of optimism about where the trend is headed for the first time in a very long time.
And with that, it's time to find the nearest phone bank.
You’re Only a Voter on Election Day
The article below is about why having the vote is not enough to create a democracy. I am with you DCblogger! This is from an article I have been wanting to share. This seems like a good time.
"Our celebration of the Vote threatens to becloud a sober understanding of the
position and place of ordinary citizens."
"Election day is exceedingly rare. Every election (in a biannual system) is separated by 689 days without voting. Although it is normal to call ordinary citizens “voters” or “the electorate,” in fact ordinary civic experience—the experience of most citizens most of the time—is bereft of formal decision-making and is characterized by a passive attention to the select few who, as officeholders, do decide law and policy on a regular basis. A too-intense fixation on voting threatens to lead us to conflate what is normal and what is out of the ordinary, with the perverse result that we look past the raw reality of the vast time between elections." http://media.sas.upenn.edu/sas_exaff/sas...
"Voting is a precious liberty, hard won in many cases, and still unrealized in too many parts of the globe. Yet our celebration of the Vote threatens to becloud a sober understanding of the position and place of ordinary citizens, insofar as it blinds us to three important distinctions.
.......First, excitement about elections blurs the difference between exceptional and ordinary political time. Election day is exceedingly rare. ................Second, an overemphasis on elections warps a correct understanding of the Vote itself, leading us to confuse the election of politicians (which does occur) with the selection of policies (which does not happen, outside of a few referenda)...........
Third, by blurring the difference between ordinary and exceptional political time and between the choice of leaders and the choice of policies, an excessive excitement with the Vote blinds us to the difference between everyday citizens (whose only political act is voting) and political officeholders (who possess great and direct power to make decisions shaping the fate of our polity). In truth, elections are as much about legitimizing power differentials as they are about determining how power gets to be used. But if we see ourselves as legislators making substantive decisions about laws and policies, if we forget that election day occurs less often than Christmas, we lose sight of the fact that elected representatives possess decision-making authority, fame and quite often wealth vastly disproportionate to those of ordinary citizens."
If you can, read the whole article. It is only 2 pages.
Keep your eyes on the prize
DCblogger's point is really important; it's so easy to get distracted. The prize is not the White House or Congress, it's the public.
I looked up the Wikipedia article on the British Reform Act of 1831 yesterday (I'm reading Middlemarch). It's quite instructive. Growing public consensus in outrage, blatant resistance from the oligarchs, public reaction pushes right to the edge of a breakdown in civic order, smarter (scared) oligarchs step in and force reform, all taking many years.
Keep pushing, pushing, pushing.