Eric Alterman’s “Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, for Now” (via) is an amazingly comprehensive description of the American political landscape here in the summer of 2010. Alterman has one big problem though, and that I’m about to describe it at length should not take away from his article. It is magisterial in its overview, and grounded enough to recognize where that may be a hindrance.
It is only the ending with which I must disagree, just the final few paragraphs of an article that went thirty pages when I pasted it into Word. In other words, the roughly 2% of this that I’m about to vehemently criticize should in not – in any way – be understood as a disagreement with the other 98% of the piece. If you are the least bit interested in early, 21st century American politics, particularly its pathological ability to ignore apolitical and (relatively) uncontested facts, this is the article you’ve been waiting for.
Its whopping length can be easily defended on grounds of comprehensiveness. Yeah, it’s long; but it’s also got just about everything you (or a grad student thirty years from now) needs to know about the structure of American self government. This really is what it’s like.
Here’s the criticism: having scouted through the forest and underbrush of traps and obstacles that lie in the way of non-insane policy, the only prescription Alterman can offer is a variation on the old left wing saw of “Don’t mourn, organize.” Far worse, he even falls into the fatal trap of thinking that maybe things need to get worse so that they can get better:
Obama is taking the best deal on the table today, but hopes and expects that once he is re-elected in 2012—a pretty strong bet, I’d say—he will build on the foundations laid during his first term to bring on the fundamental “change” that is not possible in today’s environment. This would be consistent with FDR’s strategy during his second term and makes a kind of sense when one considers the nature of the opposition he faces today and the likelihood that it will discredit itself following a takeover of one or both houses in 2010.
It seems very doubtful that the Reds could manage to “discredit” themselves more than they already have. If the Blues lose part (or all) of Congress this fall, it won’t be because lots of people have changed their minds since 2008. It will be because people who voted Red in 2008, who can’t deal with a black man and a white woman occupying the top levels of the American political pyramid, are really distressed. Dismissing a potential Red Congressional capture as just another step towards the inevitable liberal future is so naive as to border on dangerous.
The 2010 election is absolutely vital, and any notion that losing one or both houses of Congress isn’t that big a deal needs to be put out of mind immediately. Speaker Boehner is a grim enough thought, but Boehner’s not the real threat. The danger lies in all those gavel stroking committee chairman.
We don’t even need to imagine what will happen if drooling, hypocritical nutjob Reds get their hands on the subpoena power to start calling witnesses and legally demanding Obama’s toilet paper bill. All you’ve got to do is look back on the endlessly groundless scandals of the last six years of the Clinton Administration. Let’s not forget that it was the completely fictional Whitewater fantasy that begat Ken Starr, which begat Clinton’s Lewinsky testimony, which begat the most hopeless impeachment trial in the history of ever, which torpedoed the last three years of Clinton’s presidency.
(Speaking of Clintons, Hillary is still in Obama’s cabinet, and you can be damn sure a Red House will scour the State Department down to the bone. Whether or not anything untoward is actually going on won’t matter, the men doing the investigating already “know” what they’re looking for. Can we really be sure that Vince Foster is still dead without exhuming the corpse? It would be irresponsible not to investigate.)
The danger of a Red House or Senate is very real, and while the perpetual obstruction of the Clinton Administration can provide us with an outline, it is likely to be very much worse this time around. Consider that in just fifteen months, Obama endured twice as many rumors, and three times as many false ones, as Bush the Younger did in his entire eight year reign. The shitstorm of bullshit – but distracting – accusations and pseudo-scandals will be unlike anything this country has ever seen; and you can be damn sure that everything, from Obama’s birth certificate to the last twenty years of unsolved Chicago homicides, will suddenly become the focus of intense Congressional and media attention.
I’ve got a lot of confidence in Ruy Teixeira’s theory that the almost exclusively white base of the American right is shrinking every day. I have similar confidence in the idea that the gradual darkening of American skin will eventually force the Republican Party to muzzle (though not actually dump) the racist right. Alterman’s article seems to share those convictions, for the most part. But we aren’t there yet, the illogical hysteria of Arizona’s “papers please” governor Jan Brewer is proof enough of that. Given the extremely hampered state of the post-Bush the Younger federal government (to say nothing of global politics and climate), it would be vastly better if we continue progressing now, rather than pausing for two or four or even more years.
Maybe the biggest conceptual difference between the Reds and the Blues in 2010 is that while the right dreads the future, the left can hardly wait for it to get here. But I’m tired of waiting, so . . . uh . . . “organize”?
