good thing nobody listened
posted by anne @ 9:34 AM
aleatory contract
my own personal Waterloo
Previous Posts
- so tell me about Realities of misty eras past. wha...
- because verizon sucks anyway
- it's hard to feel empowered for change when contac...
- it's a bit weird for me to consider my switch to a...
- transformative!
- hey, is it possible to check out the search terms ...
- inspired by liz
- i am getting just fucking murdered by pollen. i've...
- attention 1337 haxx0rz
- so i have a hardcore geek-crush on the college nur...
12 Comments:
All of those except FISA make me extremely happy. It's clear that he'll lose a certain section of the traditional Left by going against them on certain issues like this, but I'm happy to be part of a whole family that's swung his way because of it.
I'm particularly pleased by his stance on Iraq, which has been utterly consistent with the specific things he's said about it throughout his campaign: that it should be dealt with carefully and pragmatically, rather than on ideological grounds. If Democrats get angry with him over this, then I don't believe they've understood what really went wrong with Iraq.
well gee, nate, it's just fucking super that you get to vote for a moderate republican, but i wish he weren't the ostensible democratic candidate, is all. because that means those of us who are democrats don't get a major party candidate.
i don't mean it as an insult, but the fact that you've been so pleased with obama has been a source of considerable unease for me. because i am a democrat, and both of us support very different things.
(well. was a democrat. changing registration's put me in a tough place, given new mexico's primary rules, but i did it anyway.)
Meh. I can't say I'm happy about any of it, but he is still satisfying my basic requirement of being no worse than President Clinton was. Which mostly just shows how far the past eight years have lowered my expectations, but there it is.
Oh, speaking of registration: having been registered Green for a good eight or twelve years, I would highly recommend staying registered with one major party or the other regardless of who you plan to vote for. There's rarely much of interest to be done in third party primaries, while there are often people running for the major party nominations that could do a lot to move their parties in the right direction. Your mileage may vary, of course--especially if you have a stake in how the third party primaries go--but I found it tended to leave me watching from the sidelines when there were things I wanted to be doing. Of course, I was also in California at the time, where there are a lot of good Democrats at the state and local level.
i plan to switch my registration back eventually, i think, because i agree with you; not being able to vote in primaries sucks, and now i'm scrambling to figure out whether i'll get to participate in a referendum this spring on housing taxes which wasn't on the radar when i switched to green. but for now, i just can't handle being registered as a dem. i'm too disgusted. i don't expect the party to get the message, or to care, but i can pretend to myself that a drop in registered Ds might make them think a bit harder about their actions in the future. that vain hope is pretty much all i've got at the moment.
In what respects, other than abortion, do we support "very different things"? By my lights, our disagreements are more about means than ends, with each of us thinking (naturally) that we are far more correct about appropriate means than the other.
And, Anne, you are just one person. They can get the message loud and clear that you think something, but if more people think something else, what they're going to do may be something you disagree with. Your "disenfranchisement" seems almost entirely imagined to me.
nate, if i'm not mistaken, your stance on abortion is informed pretty greatly by your religion. that religion informs quite a few other stances in your life, too. the ends of the various religious arguments against abortion concern me far more than the means, since for me, that end could be death, or a lifetime of supporting a kid i don't want. i don't really care about the specifics of the religious argument about why i'm not a person and a fetus is, because i really don't like where the end of that argument brings me.
that one disagreement of ours is a rather important one. as you've said before on this blog, quite loudly, you think feminism is stupid. this means we share a hell of a lot less ground than you seem to think we do. this is also why i share so little ground with obama. this is why i'm pissed off that both of you are now considered democrats. the political axis is frighteningly skewed to the right in this country. we have a clear demonstration of that skew right here.
i may be just one person, but the majority of americans are like me, in that they do still support roe vs. wade. what obama recently blithered about roe indicates -- if he did in fact understand what he was saying -- that he does not support roe vs. wade. the democrats, by allowing the republicans to hollow out the protections granted by roe, have effectively destroyed the ruling. it's harder now to get an abortion than it has been at any time since roe's passage. most americans are unaware of this. given the way they poll, i suspect they'd be less than pleased. how is that not disenfranchisement, when a party lies in its own damn platform, promising one thing in election after election and doing just the reverse because it's more convenient? because they do it about roe, every time, and they do it about other things, too. every time.
also, i think you've misidentified the source of the feeling of disenfranchisement. the party (and obama) court conservatives at the expense of their members. this is not a new strategy for the democrats. it has already failed them several times. not only is this frustrating for active party members, it's counterproductive for the party as a whole. making in-play moderates and conservatives like you feel warm and fuzzy means setting aside the wishes of the left wing of the party and frankly, there are more of us than there are of you, because the 'mushy middle' has proven pretty useless as an election strategy. in this particular year, moderates are likely to switch. mccain isn't a moderate, and obama (to my unending pain) most certainly is. conservatives, though, will probably vote mccain or stay home.
i don't know quite how you identify, but you're not the majority position in the democratic party. (you'd know it if you were, because you'd be under a damn bus.)my feeling of disenfranchisement stems from my (former) party's complete and utter lack of disregard for the will of progressive voters. we may not be a majority in the US, but there are a lot of us in the party. flipping us off because we've 'got nowhere else to go' (and telling us that to our faces) isn't a great strategy.
nate, i should add: i'm baffled by your surprise at my saying we support very different things. the original post here was a list of deal-breaking stupid shit obama has done, said and supported. you're 'extremely happy' with all of it, save FISA. where are we agreeing, exactly?
I can't speak for Anne, of course, but this struck me as odd: our disagreements are more about means than ends
Aren't disagreements about means to ends pretty critical when it comes to electing the highest executive officer in the government? I mean, as far as I know, Nate, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're fiscally conservative, and support (some, careful, limited) U.S. military intervention abroad when important interests are at stake. I share what I take to be the goals of these policies (greater security, prosperity, and freedom for ourselves and future generations), but I think the proper means to those goals are very different (socialist policies in the near term, radical reform of property in the long term, avoidance of war in all but a very few critical cases). These are not disagreements that end friendships, but they are disagreements that can sustain a pretty lively debate between two quite different political parties.
And that's after setting aside abortion, an extremely critical issue on which the two of you do disagree quite essentially.
And I say all of this as someone who thinks Obama's closer to being a satisfyingly left-wing candidate than anyone the Democratic party's nominated within my memory.
Post a Comment
<< Home