Reply #21: 17%

[Tansy_Gold]

I was gonna post this in another thread and then aborted it; didn't want to get in a flamefest. But now my blood pressure's up and I gotta vent.

From Jim Hightower's "Thieves in High Places," p. 105 --

"Mandate? Hold your tiny pony right there, George. The great majority of the people either didn't vote or voted against your autocratic, plutocratic regime. Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate reports that in the <2002> congressional races, where Bush claims his mandate, only about one-third of eligible voters could stomach casting a ballot. And 15 percent voted for Democrats, while 1.1 percent voted for candidates from Libertarian, Green, Working Families, Independent, or other parties.
"So let's blow the foam off this beer. THE 'BIG MANDATE' THAT THE BUSHITES ARE CLAIMING FOR THEMSELVES COMES DOWN TO A PUNY 17 PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE.
"That's the Republican base, not a juggernaut. It's the same 17 percent that they won twenty years ago in the midterm elections during the Reagan infatuation, and it's nearly three points less than they got in the '94 midterms when Newt Gingrich surged to power."

. . .

"But what are the Democrats going to do to break -- dare we dream? -- 15 percent? The group now controlling the party apparatus calls itself the Democratic Leadership Council. It's corporate-funded, has a Republican-lite agenda, and practices political minimalism. Forget the party's base, is the DLC's message -- instead appeal to a narrow strata of conservative-tilting soccer moms and office-park dads."

The DLC may have financed Clinton's election in 92, but I think far more credit is due to Clinton and his personality than anything else. He offered a dramatic contrast to the obnoxious, boring, and unpleasant Bush-41 in tough economic times, but Clinton didn't have the party support to get his agenda established AND he didn't have their support when the Arkansas Project shifted into high gear. All that bs could have been quashed, IF he had had the support of the party; even the DLC didn't come to his aid.

Gore, on the other hand, had DLC support and was squeaky clean when it came to sex scandals, but he simply didn't have the personality (and I'm speaking as someone who believed then and believes now Gore would have made one helluva better president than our awol asshole) to overcome the negatives, the biggest of which was the fact that the DLC had lost the Democratic base. It wasn't just Gore and it wasn't just Nader and it wasn't just the Baker team in Florida -- it was a combination of all those and more factors. But I firmly believe that had any one of those factors been removed -- had Gore appealed more to the Democratic base and less to the Repuke-lite soccer moms, etc -- we'd have a very different administration in power right now and a very, very different world.

The Repuke base is NOT that strong, Carlos. It consists of that aristocratic elite who is trying to take us back to the 1350's and the few benighted souls who may not be in that elite but have no problem being its lackeys and henchmen. What you and the other DLCers would have us do is, essentially, join them: support the big business and profit-before-people and the sanctity of private property rights folks and forget that labor creates ALL wealth and we all live together on a very public planet.

This was supposed to be a rant that let off some of the steam and brought my blood pressure down. I don't think it worked.

Tansy Gold, madder'n hell and not taking it any more