Dissatisfaction with Democrats Growing

I firmly believe the old axiom that politics is the art of the possible. So in recent years as elections approached and as the Republican Party turned ever further rightward, I saw the importance of voting for Democrats, virtually without exception.

And there are, in fact, two glaring exceptions in my record. These were times when it was obvious the Republican was not going to win but times when the Democrat was odious for various reasons. The first occasion was the Clinton re-election campaign of 1996. After Clinton abandoned the poor and jobless in this country through what I came to call "welfare deform," I could not bring myself to vote for him. Clearly, I would have voted for Clinton if I thought it necessary to stop the Republican nominee (Dole).

The second occasion was in 2008 amidst the thrilling clamor of the Obama crowd. My reasons here were two-fold. By far the biggest reason was the controversy -- still unresolved -- surrounding Obama's Constitutional fitness for office. I had read enough about the doubts about his citizenship to have doubts of my own. (The amount of money spent by Obama to fight the lawsuits, plus his refusal to release key records and documents were tell-tale signs to me.) I also saw him as insufficiently demonstrative of a certain mettle in combating the corporate control of our country. Additionally, I felt his credentials for the Presidency to be thin.

History will tell whether I was right in these decisions.

Now comes an interesting article by a long-time Democrat who says she is bolting. Whatever one may think of the sexual status of the writer, her views deserve a hearing. Her feelings are by no means unique.

What to do about the situation is another matter. I recommend thoughtfulness and caution. Simply abandoning Democratic candidates by itself is only an action of protest and not a strategy for political reform. Some of the characteristics of that reform have been dealt with here in the past. I plan to take up more in the future.


http://socialistworker.org/2009/11/25/leaving-the-democrats