Surely, Comrades, You Want Obama Back?

I didn't mean to return to this topic, but over the weekend some new light was shed on it.  Mehdi Hasan, a writer for the Intercept, stuck his foot into the Democratic rehabilitation of Bush a week or two ago, and now he answered a tweet by Glenn Greenwald on a related matter.

Greenwald posted a couple of video clips from 2013, in which Barack Obama debunked "the long-standing but central DC myth that the two parties are radically opposed on ideology & policy. Instead, he correctly explained, they're far more similar than different, & the US entails far less ideological dispute than most democracies."

Hasan replied: "Agree with this. But also agree with Noam Chomsky’s rider, to me, in 2016: 'Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences.'"  And added: "I’m not disputing at all that he’s sadly right about the similarities, over the differences, just that the differences - while not enough for my liking! - can also result in millions of people getting healthcare or not, living or dying, getting asylum, not getting poisoned, etc."

As a matter of principle I agree with Chomsky's dictum, which is why I've mostly gritted my teeth, held my nose and voted for Democrats for the past few decades, though I did vote for Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000.  But Hasan inadvertently undermined the recommendation. Before he took office, Obama had spoken positively about single-payer, but once he was president he blocked discussion of single-payer, even a "public option," in favor of continuing America's harmful private-insurance-based healthcare system, with some significant but minor reforms; it's reasonable to suppose that he changed his stance in collaboration with his donors and supporters in the insurance and healthcare industry.  But by the time he left office, premiums were soaring again, and even if Trump hadn't become president, even if a devastating pandemic hadn't come along, it's arguable that the whole unwieldy edifice of "Obamacare" would have crumbled under its own weight by now.  The choices Obama made improved many people's condition, but they were always at best a stopgap.  John McCain and Mitt Romney would probably have done no better, though it's important not to forget that the Affordable Care Act was based on Romney's own program for Massachusetts.  Obama made a small difference, but I can't agree that it constituted "enormous consequences."

From there, Hasan is in even worse trouble.  Most Americans' health declined during the Obama years, as their income stagnated and the stress under which they lived and worked increased. Life expectancy in the US began to decline in 2014.  Economic inequality increased, in large part because of policies Obama chose to enact.  Meanwhile, corporate profits soared.  Obama sought ways to justify cuts in Social Security and Medicare, with the long view toward destroying them.  "Living or dying"?  I cannot see any enormous positive consequences in that area resulting from Obama's election, and we don't know what his opponents would have done.  Probably worse, but who knows?

Overseas, Obama made sure that vast numbers of people died: he tried to prolong the US occupation of Iraq, he did escalate the US war in Afghanistan, he continued or started little wars that got less attention, he turned Libya into a slave market, he supported the Saudi invasion of Yemen, he droned wedding parties and bombed hospitals, and he joked about it.  He supported dictatorships and military coups, he materially supported the right-wing opposition in Venezuela, he tut-tutted over Israeli atrocities but continued to support them -- need I go on?

"Not getting poisoned"?  Obama supported fossil fuels, turning the US into a major oil exporter; supported nuclear power; equivocated on destructive oil pipelines, and undermined world action against climate change.

"Getting asylum"?  Obama deported a record number of immigrants, scolded them that they had to "earn" American citizenship (as he had?), and sent thousands of young Central American refugees back to danger and death in their home countries, knowingly.  Again, it's quite possible that McCain and Romney would have been worse, but we don't know, and electing Barack Obama had terrible consequences for millions of people in the US and around the world.  The strange thing is that Mehdi Hasan knows Obama's record at least as well as I do, and probably criticized him for it while he was in office: he writes for the Intercept, which published a lot of Obama-critical material.  Noam Chomsky, of course, was harshly critical of Obama throughout his tenure, and I don't think his tactical-voting recommendation means that he has changed his mind, or that he's nostalgic for the George W. Bush era.

Obama began his presidency with with Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, and it wasn't unrealistic to be optimistic about his administration then.  He promptly showed that he had no intention of fulfilling the hopes he'd raised in his campaign.  For me the most telling example is his offering tax cuts for the rich as part of his inadequate stimulus package even before the Republicans demanded them.  That can't be blamed on Republican obstructionism: it was his own initiative, and it was all too typical of his style.  The Democrats lost control of Congress in the midterms, and after that his cult could blame everything he failed to do on the evil Republicans.  Not only Congress but most state governorships and many Federal judgeships fell into the hands of the far right, partly because Obama and the Democratic National Committee didn't bother to support down-ticket candidates, saving their money and resources to re-elect him in 2012.  I think it's fair to say that this outcome was not what Democratic voters had voted for.  These and more are the "enormous consequences" the country (and the world) got from Barack Obama.  I rather wish someone would ask Chomsky about this point.

I have to temper this somewhat, because I don't get the impression that most voters are even aware of most of the consequences that bother me.  They did feel the sluggish economic recovery he engineered, the stagnant economy (except for the very richest) he presided over, and that was more than enough to sap their enthusiasm for him.  That Obama squandered his mandate is unquestionable, however much he and his apologists blame the voters.  (Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti of The Hill are erratic commentators, but this clip is an accurate analysis.)

Suppose, as a thought experiment, that in a parallel universe Obama had run for the presidency as a Republican instead of a Democrat, defeated parallel Hillary Clinton, and once in office governed exactly as he did in our universe - the same policies, the same consequences.  Would Mehdi Hasan, and others like him, defend Obama in the same terms he did last weekend?  Would he say that Republican Obama was a disappointment, but other Republicans would have been worse, so we shouldn't come down on him too hard, because Trump is so awful?  I doubt it, but maybe they would, just as Hasan and others have defended George W. Bush as a lesser evil compared to Donald Trump: by determinedly forgetting and misrepresenting his record.  Obama is the Republican we were warned about.

If Joe Biden manages to defeat Trump in November, I expect Chomsky will attack him as he has attacked his predecessors, and I also expect Democratic loyalists will attack Chomsky for undermining President Biden and giving aid and comfort to the Rethugs.  I wonder where Mehdi Hasan will take his stand.  The function of their argument - probably not intentionally, they're not clever enough to think tactically - is to divert criticism of Democratic politicians by playing the ranking game.

Lesser Evil, Be Thou My Good!

Some right-wing frother (the brother of a friendly co-worker, as it happens) has been posting anti-Muslim propaganda on Facebook in support of Trump's highly selective Muslim ban.  (If Muslims are really so uniformly violent, why is Trump willing to let in Saudi, UAE, Bahraini, Egyptian, etc. Muslims?)  Today he posted a video clip of Bill Maher denouncing the supposed cluelessness of liberals about "radical Islam."   I knew I had seen some objections by Maher to the ban, so I did a little digging and found this one to toss at him, with a reminder that Maher is also vocally anti-Christian.  But how funny:

Will those who called Hillary "lesser of 2 evils"admit how wrong u were? Muslim ban, Betsy DeVoss, Pruit, Perry in charge of nukes...please.

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) February 2, 2017

Is Maher really as stupid as this tweet makes him seem?  Well, yes, probably, but leave that aside for the moment.  To say that Clinton was the lesser of two evils means that she wouldn't have done as many bad things as Trump is doing.  It also means that the person calling her a lesser evil intended to vote for her, and probably did.  It's hard to know what Maher and liberals mean when they throw tantrums over the term, but it appears that they think it means "exactly the same" or "far worse", and that is not what "lesser evil" means.  Democratic loyalists will even use the lesser-evil claim to try to persuade reluctant voters, perhaps chiding them for demanding perfection from a candidate, until a voter actually says the word "lesser evil," and then they stamp their feet and cry "The Devil told you that!"

Maher isn't the brightest pencil in the box anyway, and it's mildly entertaining (though also thoroughly depressing) to watch both the far Right and the near Right citing his foolishness to support their views.

Some Further Thoughts on "Lesser Evils"

Another procrastinatory post, but it also fits in with the one I'm trying, slowly, to write.

A few weeks ago I posted on Facebook that I'd voted for Bernie Sanders as "the lesser evil."  This upset a friend who worked for Sanders in the primaries.  He conceded that Sanders was flawed but he couldn't see him as evil.  I pointed to Sanders's support for no-fly / no-buy (a no-due-process policy that would mainly target Muslims), his ambivalent criticism of Israel, his support for the Iran nuclear deal based on some odd assumptions about America's right to order other countries around.  (In this position statement Sanders spends most of his time on a tirade about George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, but never acknowledges that Iran didn't have and wasn't pursuing a nuclear weapons program in the first place.  In general, supporters of the agreement from Obama on down have deliberately confused "nuclear program" and "nuclear weapons program.")  I got bogged down in other things and didn't continue the conversation, but something occurred to me today.  Perhaps, having clarified this in my mind, I'll return to the exchange with my friend.

I want to ask my friend and all other Democrats, whether Sandernista or Clintonbot, what is the proper response when someone tells them that he or she intends to vote for their candidate -- but as the lesser evil.  I think the answer is obvious.  It should be something along the lines of "Thanks for your vote.  Will you need a ride to the polls on election day?"  It's revealing that, on the contrary, their first (and last, for that matter) impulse is to attack the prospective voter, as though his or her vote is not wanted unless it is offered in a spirit of total and unconditional adulation.  A vague admission that the candidate is "flawed" may then be permitted, provided that no flaws are specified or acknowledged.  It seems to me that a vote is a vote, but Democrats evidently don't agree.  My friend was much less hostile than Clinton or Obama devotees, but that may be because no one had ever called Sanders "the lesser evil" around him before, and he wasn't ready to break out the vitriol yet.

My original remarks on Facebook were partly satirical anyway, which I thought would be obvious to anyone who'd been conscious during the past election season.  It now seems to me that anyone being asked for their vote should refer to the candidate in question as the lesser evil, and see what reaction they get.  If you encounter resistance, you're dealing with a personality cultist who is unable to see their candidate clearly, and who is hoping to elect a messiah, not a politician.  This is why there was a good deal of disappointment (exactly how much, I'm not sure) among his supporters when Sanders kept his promise to campaign for Clinton after she won the nomination.  (My friend wasn't one of these, I should mention.)  It's why Obamamaniacs were unable to hold his feet to the fire when he was elected and began breaking his promises, selling out his base -- though of course he'd begun doing that during the campaign, and met almost no resistance, so why not continue? If you can't vote for someone while being as critical of them as need be, but must attack all their critics -- even those who vote for them -- something is wrong; you're probably pushing a bad candidate, and the angrier the criticism makes you, the worse your candidate probably is.

Thank You for Pressing the Self-Destruct Button

It turns out this meme backfires on itself, as so many do.

I didn't notice at first that it's partly an exhortation to vote for the lesser evil if that will "shift your country as much closer to your ideal as possible."  That's pretty funny right there, since Dem loyalists were furiously denouncing the Lesser Evil option so recently.  I guess that if you don't actually say the words, it's okay.  (But if you say them three times quickly ...?)

The main thing, though, is that the meme amounts to a denunciation of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the DNC, and Democratic partisans.  Clinton most of all, though, who put her determination to be President ahead of every other consideration, including the probability that Sanders had a better chance of beating Trump.  Her ego, her entitlement, her notion that it was her turn now.  I can't think of a better example of "extreme individualism."  To ensure that she won the nomination, she played dirty, which some of her fans even thought amusing.  It's their party, after all, one such person wrote, which at least was honest: the party belongs to its elites and big donors, not to the rank and file who do the scut work of making phone calls, knocking on doors, driving voters to the polls -- let alone the voters themselves.  It's not about you, you individualist with your silly notions of government by the people.   Don't believe the fairy tales the elites told you, that elections are meant to choose the best candidate for office.  Don't believe the fairy tale drummed into your head since childhood, that American values and ideals have anything to do with the running of our government.  It's like the Bible: you're not supposed to take it literally, just have faith in your leaders.  Just don't reject the fairy tales during election season, or in the hearing of the real owners of the party.

I guess I'm more or less functional again, after spending a day walking around feeling stunned.  I needed to write to find out what I thought about Trump's victory, but I wasn't sure I wanted to know what I thought.  I stayed off Facebook yesterday, and timidly logged in today.  Before long my liberal friends' reactions had me angry again, and I was back in the fray.

Most notable, as I expected, were Democrats blaming everybody but themselves for the debacle. Paul Krugman was apparently leading the charge, but I hear Rachel Maddow was in there too.  If I'm not mistaken, that was one of the tendencies that drove Germany into the hands of the Nazis.  Did Germany lose the Great War?  It wasn't their fault, it was the Jews and the homosexuals and the Reds stabbing the Fatherland in the back, and women spitting on Our Troops.  Did Hillary lose this world-historical election?  It wasn't her fault, it was the Bernie Bros and Julian Assange and Jim Comey and all the haters who made voters stay away from the polls.

Most entertaining are the Dems who yell "Don't play the blame game!" when their own attempts to play the blame game are rebutted.  We can blame everybody, but don't you dare blame us -- that's being judgmental.  We aren't being judgmental, we're just pointing out who stabbed Hillary in the back...  Really, they are acting as we were warned Trump's followers would react if he lost.  I imagine I'll be seeing a lot more of that.

Meanwhile, what to do?  I don't have any answers, but some writers are making sense.  There are others, of course, but these two were close to hand.  It's alarming that so many liberals and progressives and near-rightists and neoliberals are freaking out, lashing out almost randomly, but that was only to be expected.  I can't go on, I'll go on.

Campaign 2020 Begins in Just Two Days!

The dishonesty of this meme is outrageous.

Whence (to unleash my Inner Grammar Nazi) did so many Americans get this idea?  Like so many rhetorical questions, it's easy to answer: Along with belief in Santa Claus, we get it from the official propaganda we're dunned with from childhood onward, down to the marketing campaigns of the candidates themselves. 

Partisans only drag out this line when they're dealing with voters who don't find their candidate inspiring, or even worse, who've criticized their candidate substantively.  Or, worst of all, that they will vote for their candidate as the lesser evil.  I suppose it's preferable to the vicious abuse they indulge in when this one doesn't work. It's what we saw in 2008 and 2012: "Barack is dreamy! He's all about Hope and Change! He could have big positive repercussions for progressive politics!  He'll make us feel good about being Americans again! He can pronounce 'nuclear'!  He'll end the wars!" Anyone who pointed out that Obama was a center-right corporatist and war-lover was a Republican troll or a cynical non-voter. Then, after he was in office and showed himself to be a war-lover and a center-right corporatist, his fans asked who'd been so foolish as to think he'd be any different from any other politician -- what did you expect, Che Guevara?  Weren't you paying attention?

It's 3:26 p.m. on Tuesday in Seoul as I write this, which means it's just after midnight on Tuesday in Indiana.  The polls will open in a few hours.  In twenty-four hours this foully dispiriting election campaign will be over, and the next one will begin.  If Clinton pulls off a decisive victory, Trump voters will throw tantrums; we can hope it won't get any worse than that.  Clinton fans will be kvelling about her greatness, the world-historical moment of a female President (sure, other countries have elected female heads of state, but they aren't us) and the glorious peace and prosperity she'll give us.  If the results are close, if Clinton wins in the Electoral College or something, everybody will be throwing tantrums.  If Clinton loses, the recriminations will be "epic," as the Internet says: everybody but Clinton herself, or the Democratic Party Leadership, will be blamed.  I'll be back in the US a week later, if I haven't applied for political asylum in the meantime.  By then, I hope, the dust will have more or less settled.

You Cannot Hope to Bribe or Twist, Thank God! the Clinton Loyalist

As we trudge wearily into the home stretch of the current horse-race-cum-WWE bout, it looks like "false equivalence" may be the Clintonista word of the week.  Among other cases, a friend of a friend linked to this hopefully satirical piece from the Washington Post about Monday's Trump-Clinton debate, and commented on it:

This is great whether you watched the debate or not. In fact, I kind of wish I hadn't and just read this instead. It's a satirical (but totally accurate) version of the debate. Let's try to remember that Hillary may have politics we don't agree with (I put myself strongly in this camp), but she is a person with actual experience in governance that takes the issues seriously and actually has some understanding of them. Trump can tick neither of those boxes. I can think of many politicians I would prefer to Hillary, but I can't think of anyone less qualified or more ignorant than Donald J. Drumpf. Please, please, please, no more false equivalence. It only benefits the more dishonest, inaccurate candidate.

Someone else added this comment: "Um...seems like there is a big gap between perfect and evil? And um...pretty sure Hillary is in that gap."  Um... no.  But go ahead, make a case.  (Of course, the person didn't.)

There was also an article by on a self-styled progressive site by one Allen Clifton, which in tone resembles the Onion's fake editorials.  "I'd Like to Address This Absurd 'Hillary Clinton Is the Lesser of Two Evils' Nonsense" is the title -- see what I mean? -- but the pros at the Onion would have done a better job of addressing the topic.

I’ve met entirely too many individuals who mistake an overall “lack of excitement” for Clinton, or the fact that she’s not the best public speaker (sometimes too robotic/can come off disingenuous) with how terrible and dangerous Donald Trump is by citing the only reason they’re supporting her is because they’re choosing the “lesser of two evils.” ...


Is Hillary Clinton perfect? No. Does she have flaws? Of course. I’m not here to tell anyone that she’s some flawless candidate who can do no wrong. But I will say, without hesitation, that she’s one of the most qualified human beings to ever run for president. 

Saying she’s the “lesser of two evils” when comparing her to Trump is like saying a college kid arrested for selling marijuana out of his dorm room to help pay tuition is the “lesser of two evils” when compared to Charles Manson. 

It’s ridiculous ...

So this nonsense that she’s the “lesser of two evils” has to stop. Just because they’re part of the same debate, running for the same office, doesn’t mean that these two are equals. Believing that is sort of like suggesting Donald Trump is just as much of an expert on climate change as Bill Nye simply because they’re both well-known figures who have weighed in on the topic. The real truth is that Hillary Clinton’s “worst flaw” is the perception of her that’s largely impacted by the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent slandering her for nearly a quarter century.

Throughout his overwrought screed Clifton keeps working with variations on "lesser of two evils" and "these two are equals."  But those are two very different claims: to call Clinton the lesser of two evils is to assert explicitly that she and Trump are not equals, not the same.  To lack enthusiasm for her, which Clifton pretends to accept, is not at all the same thing as seeing no difference between her and Trump; I, for one, lack enthusiasm for Clinton, but I hold Trump in contempt, and I know I'm not alone.  That seems obvious to me, and I don't quite understand why Clifton keeps making that elementary mistake -- aside from the practical necessity of defending his candidate from any and all criticisms, of course.  His entire 'argument' is based on confusing the two.

He concedes that she's not perfect, but he does not really address any serious criticism that has been made of her, such as her foreign policy, her coziness with dictators (which is really more problematic in a Secretary of State and presidential hopeful than it is for a business tycoon), her fondness for neoliberal economics at home, her hostility to civil liberties, her offer/threat to put her husband in charge of the economy, and so on.  This is business as usual, as I said, but it's no endorsement of her.

Clifton also declares of Clinton's various political posts that "she left each of those positions extremely popular and admired."  Maybe so, but if so, why is she so disliked now?  Clifton blames it on Americans' short historical memories, and of course on the millions of dollars that have been spent attacking her.   But short historical memories also help unpopular politicians, as with George W. Bush, and the well-funded propaganda campaigns against President Obama have not really breached his teflon.  Another common claim is to blame the media, but their attacks on Trump have not stopped him, and they also were barely able to stop Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination, though they failed to crush him.  Much as people (including media people themselves) like to think so, the media are not omnipotent.  I wouldn't want to put too much store by most people's good judgment, but they (we!) just aren't as controllable as our rulers wish.

One simple point might help to clarify all this: In the primaries, I voted for Bernie Sanders as the lesser of two evils.  I didn't think he was the messiah his fans wanted to believe he was; his foreign policy was open to serious criticism, for one thing, if not quite as bad as Clinton's.  He was, in short, the lesser evil, and that obviously (I hope) does not imply that I thought him and Clinton to be equals.  But I thought, and the evidence indicates, that he could do better against Trump than Clinton could.  If this is as historically portentous an election as the Clinton campaign and its hangers-on and toadies would have us believe, then putting a candidate as weak as Clinton against Trump was foolish at best on the part of the DNC.  One would think, given the peril in which our Republic now stands according to just about every Trump opponent, that people's willingness to vote for Clinton, even if they do not love her, would be enough.  (It damn well had better be.)  But no -- for the loyalist, only total surrender will do.  Every knee must bend, and every mouth confess Her name: Hillary!

I admit, though, I have begun to see some actual examples of what could be called false equivalence about the campaign.  There was an editorial cartoon, which I unfortunately didn't save and seems to have disappeared from my feed, which showed Uncle Sam weeping into his hands in front of a big-screen TV displaying Trump and Clinton, the two major-party candidates.  I posted a critique as a comment, which may be why the cartoon and my comment disappeared.  By the kind of mainstream American political standards that Uncle Sam represents, Clinton is a notably better candidate than Trump.  Trump is a buffoon, though hardly the first buffoon to run for President or to be elected to the office.  Clinton is a thoroughly competent technocrat, with abundant experience at high levels of government.  Mainstream politicians mostly love her, as shown by the numbers of establishment Republicans who've been lining up with her (which her fans, inexplicably but revealingly, consider a recommendation).  And by their standards, why shouldn't they love her?  She'll steer the great ship Business As Usual like the pro she is.  Uncle Sam would be busting his shirt buttons with pride over her.

I've also seen numerous posts and comments from ordinary citizens, the common clay of the new west, to the effect of Who cares, they're both crooks -- all politicians are crooks! They would say the same of any candidates, so I can't see that they represent a specific response to Clinton.  Nor do they reflect the specific criticisms of Clinton that better minds have made.  Pretending that your cornpone general-store cynics and informed political writers are on the same plane, though, reeks of false equivalence itself.

P.S. I just encountered another indignant "not a lesser evil" piece, and it's more of the same.  I don't get it.  It isn't necessary to flail around incoherently and fall on your face in a puddle of stale verbiage either to endorse Clinton or to savage Trump.  Why, then, this compulsion to repeat Clinton campaign talking points?

The Honeymoon Is Over

As I've complained before, it's hard to escape from the toxic deluge of political propaganda; while blocking my Tabloid Friend's news feed on Facebook stemmed part of the flood, others have stepped up the pace of memes.  It's like running below a power line on which hundreds of pigeons are sitting, and trying to dodge their, um, discourse.

I think I detect a slight increase of "lesser evil" memes like the one above; I suppose it only is getting passed along because it doesn't actually use those fateful words.  President Obama is not the lesser evil, he's a positive and unadulterated good!  Anyone who disagrees is a stealth Republican, a radical leftist purist on Mount Disdain who secretly wants Romney to win!

By this criterion the Obama administration is clearly a secret rightwing group helping the Republicans win this election, since their policies, actions, and words have disillusioned so many of the idealistic people who voted for him in 2008. What Obama's Democratic and left critics want is not a Republican president -- let alone the Almighty -- but a Democratic President who'll do the job he was elected to do, instead of pandering to and appeasing an imaginary rightist "center."

I voted for Obama in 2008, and I may very well vote for him again this year, for a simple reason: voting is trivial. I think Obama himself has done more damage to the "more and better Democrats" line than any other single person. People now realize that voting won't get them what they need or want, certainly not from the Democrats. Some give up in apathy or despair, and that's Obama's fault, not the fault of vastleft. Others look to activism, and that's good news. If anyone were to ask me, I'd recommend that they vote for Obama, and then criticize him relentlessly, and get involved in activism if they can.

There's one very useful outcome of voting for Obama: his cultists are too stupid and vicious to answer any criticisms. They simply reply with "You must have voted for McCain!" or "You must wish McCain had won!" or "You want the Republicans to win this election!" They evidently believe that no one has any right to criticize their God-king, but it's mild fun to watch their heads try to explode at the impossible notion that someone could vote for Barack and yet not adore him absolutely. It really has nothing to do with the outcome of elections: they'll be the same even after Obama has been re-elected and the Democrats retain Congress in 2014. Obama's attack dogs are also working against Obama and the Democrats by trying to impose Fuhrerprinzip and total ideological conformity -- people do not like idiots trying to bully them like that -- so they are obviously Republican moles themselves.

When I posted most of the above in comments at Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, responding to an anonymous Obama cultist who accused VastLeft of being a Republican agent because he had dared to criticize Elizabeth Warren, an Obama critic chided me: "That's the political equivalent of yelling 'Stop! Or I'll say stop again!'  If your vote is unconditional then no politician has any reason to listen to what you say."  Another protested, "Speaking for myself, if my vote is basically meaningless, I'll at least use it to voice my principles and protest the sham democracy we supposedly have."  To which I replied:

Oh, by all means! I don't disagree with that choice at all. It's just not what I expect to do this year.

I've often seen If your vote is unconditional then no politician has any reason to listen to what you say. It isn't totally wrong, but it overlooks some things. One is that no politician, at the national level at least, will pay any attention to what I say anyhow. If the Democrats lose in the upcoming election, they will use the loss as an excuse to move even farther to the right. Voting really doesn't send much of a message by itself.

A lot of progressives have pointed out that Democrats were much more likely to oppose wars, torture, the surveillance state, and loss of civil liberties when a Republican was in office, but when Obama was elected the opposition dried up. This has some truth to it, but the Democratic opposition to Bush was pretty ineffectual, and even when the Dems regained control of Congress in 2006 they didn't do much. There were some nice big protests against Bush's invasion of Iraq, but they didn't prevent the war, and once the war got underway, they lost momentum (in the US anyway). Obama and Clinton never opposed the Iraq war in any meaningful way; I hear Clinton now regrets her vote in its favor, boo hoo hoo. Her penance: to become Secretary of State and continue Bush's foreign policy. Obama's ... well, we all know how he suffers.

So, vote (or don't), as you wish. I won't condemn you whatever you choose in that regard. It's only thinking that a vote by itself is meaningful. What's needed is organized pressure, so that withholding votes will be meaningful. Whoever is in office must be pressured, whether you voted for him or not, because every politician will sell out his or her base after the election's won.  As I've pointed out before, Obama's corporate supporters and donors knew this very well, and kept the heat on throughout the election and afterward.

From the way Dem loyalists freak out when their man is criticized, I believe that there's some value in criticizing him even after I've voted for their party. If they don't care what I think as long as they have my vote, why are they so furious at critics like me?  They don't just want a guaranteed vote, they want guaranteed lockstep party discipline.  That includes Obama himself, who has been openly contemptuous of people who voted for him but criticize him anyway. I don't believe that's only because he assumes he has their vote no matter what he does; he hates them for criticizing him. Obama cultists (like Gore cultists in 2000) throw tantrums if you tell them you'll vote Democratic as the lesser evil. I think there's something useful in working on that fury. Maybe I'm wrong. Yell at me if you like; I'm used to being yelled at. But these are questions that need to be asked.

Someone (all the commenters I've quoted here posted anonymously) actually replied:

Have never seen this. Not even once. Hell, LOTE is practically their campaign motto this year. So then, given your other premise that an individual's vote is of no consequence in and of itself, it would seem that there's no reason to vote Democratic whatsoever.

I'm not the only one (via) who's seen Democratic loyalists going berserk if you say you'll vote for their man as the Lesser of Two Evils.  I myself first encountered the syndrome in 2000, when a gay Democrat blew up at me for saying so about Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, not the most inspiring candidates the Dems have ever floated.  I've seen it often since then, and I expect to see it often this fall.  I see it after someone has effectively argued the lesser-evil case (He's not Bush!), and I've said I'll vote for the Dem as the lesser evil -- that's when the spittle starts flying.

I'd quibble that it's not my "premise" that "an individual's vote is of no consequence," it's my conclusion from watching Obama's first term and talking to his cult.  But as I said before, if someone doesn't want to vote for Obama, they shouldn't.  I think there is a reason to vote Democratic, which I explained at some length.  I suppose I could vote for someone else, or not cast a vote for the President, and say I had voted for Obama, but I'm not good at lying.

I'm also wary of the belief (declared several times in the comment thread) that a Romney victory would be, if not a good thing, then a lesser evil, because there would be more organized opposition to a Republican president.  I've had enough of lesser evils, and as I said earlier, the actual opposition probably wouldn't achieve much -- at most a few holding actions, like the Bush Supreme Court nominations that the Democrats blocked.

In any case, voting will not bring about change by itself: it's what we do after we vote, and after the results are in, that counts.  It isn't surprising that party loyalists can't wrap their fine minds around the idea that a person could vote for their candidate and still criticize him or her; what surprises me is how many of Obama's critics on the left evidently can't grasp it either.  That, I think, is the main reason there's been so little opposition to Obama among liberals and progressives and even the left: having voted for him, they belong to him.  They don't, and they should stop acting as though they do.

Donkey Season! Elephant Season!

Recently I saw a couple of comments on a LGBT-related website that brought back such memories.

First:

I suppose I wouldn’t mind feeling preached at so much if I shared the cynicism and despair pervading the sermon. Sure, I’d like to see the electoral college reformed, too, but with three strong (and yes, electable) Democrat candidates vying for the Presidency, is this really the time for liberals to complain it doesn’t matter who captains a sinking ship? Can anyone not wearing a Utilikilt as a matter of principle seriously think Clinton, Obama, or Edwards are interchangeable with Romney, McCain, or Huckabee?

I think it is time for a whole generation of liberals to grow up. It isn’t enough to just question authority. Sometimes, you have to become authority. Kucinich is a great guy and I get off on the idea of having a first lady with a piercing, but we need to win because I’m not ready to have President Huckabee changing the Constitution to define me out of the definition of family. We need to win, and that means a President that can govern the whole country, not just the minority of people who share my little subculture’s politics.

Second:

I’m a little fatigued with those elitists who think that the Dems are just rearranging the furniture when really such issues as ENDA (ya know some equal rights protections for queer folk), and climate change and global warming (ya know saving the planet, for real), and a few little crumbs to possibly provide homeless people with a place outside of the freezing rain and snow to get protection…

Yes, in the pure political worlds, the dems suck…..but in the real world where every little bit of change leads to more change, and perhaps hope for change, and perhaps energy to make more change..there’s a HUGE difference between when ANY Dem is running this country and ANY repub is running it.

“Elitists”? I’m not sure where that came from, except that we all know that elitists are bad, and anyone who criticizes the Democrats is bad, and therefore must be an elitist, Q.E.D. But in American politics, “elitists” more properly refers to the Democratic Leadership Council, the Democratic National Committee, and their Republican counterparts. One could add the corporate media to the list (they never will be missed).

But not those people who want to see the US out of Iraq, those who want to see Bush impeached, those who rated the Democrat-controlled Congress even lower than Bush last year: they (we) are a majority. We’re a majority that doesn’t register on the radar of the Democratic Party or the corporate media, but we’re here, and there's an election coming up. I wonder who is the “we” in the first commenter’s remarks, and why she thinks that Clinton or Obama in the White House will be a victory for “us.” I suspect that she identifies more with the Democratic Party than with the American people at large, or even with that “little subculture” and its politics.

I shouldn’t be surprised any longer, but I can't help wondering how so many GLBT people can have forgotten what Bill Clinton gave us between 1992 and 2000: DOMA, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (and increased numbers of queer military expelled), and the Communications Decency Act (fortunately struck down by the Courts) – not to mention NAFTA, welfare “reform”, an economic bubble that didn’t improve the financial condition of most Americans, and the undermining of the Kyoto Treaty (so much for “climate change and global warming”). And those are just the high points. Since the Democrats retook Congress in 2006, they’ve basically collaborated with Bush, supporting his increasingly unpopular war and refusing to do anything about impeachment (though at least a significant minority, and probably a majority of Americans favor it). These are not marginal, subcultural issues or concerns, and anyone who tries to spin them as if they were is collaborating with the Democrats, and ultimately, objectively, with Bush.

I noticed during the leadup to the 2000 Presidential election that Democrats weren't satisfied if I agreed merely that Gore was not as bad as Bush. I was not supposed to consider him a lesser evil, I must adulate him as the New Hope. I thought their hostility was interesting: is this how the politically savvy try to win over a reluctant voter? The same thing happened in 2004: those of us who were unenthusiastic about Kerry were vilified, not courted. (Other writers noticed this too; I’ll try to find some links.) So I take the comments I quoted above as the opening salvo in the 2008 election, even before this cycle’s uninspiring candidates have been finally chosen. Already the Democrats are trying to alienate voters who are genuinely critical of Bush and want an alternative, a choice. But if that's the way they want it...