Anti-Climacus

THOUGHT: The Moose speaketh:

"The Moose suggests that the national Democratic Party should not ignore the Dingell Democrats. Cultural issues continue to matter in American politics. It is nice to have the bean-sprout eaters, but the donkey must also have the Field and Stream readers."

Which leads me to the thing I've been wanting to say about the primary election just past: I didn't vote on the Democratic side (Joe Schwartz, baby!) because I found the tactics employed by both sides to be a touch too reprehensible for me to endorse. Rivers' argument did, as Dingell noted, essentially boil down to: "I was a teenage mother. Therefore I should be in Congress." And Dingell's response was the political equivalent of "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What have you actually done in office?" In other words, they both behaved like stupid politicians.

The folks at The Nation, perhaps predictably, see a conspiracy to keep female voices out of Congress, which, I would like to suggest, is a load of shit. Look, this is the House of Representitives, not the Senate. Having someone who ideologically matches you may make you feel good, but it won't actually do anything for you; in a sense, Dingell was right to bring up his success in passing bills: even if he doesn't exactly match your enthusiasm for liberalism, there's a better chance that he will be able to write and pass a bill that you'll at least find tolerable (and this no matter who runs the House: look at the strength of Dingell-Norwood last year as evidence). Lynn Rivers, even in a Democratic-controlled House, would be virtually powerless. A cynical choice, maybe, but certainly also the smart one.

Which leads me to what the Moose had to say: I agreed with Lynn Rivers about virtuall everything: abortion, unions, public education, civil rights, the environment. And yet, I have this distinct recollection of the last time I heard her speak (the kick-off for College Democrats last year), and being very turned-off by what she was saying because she made a point of being so completely adversarial to anyone who disagreed with that ideology at all. If you liked guns, or free trade, or the death penalty, there was clearly something wrong with you. I have no beef with hunters if they support the right of workers to bargain collectively, nor with free-traders if they accept some basic regulation and controls, nor with those who are pro-death penalty if they are willing to look a legal reforms that might be necessary for fairness. But all this gets lost in the rush to be partisan. And the Democratic Party will go precisely nowhere as long as that is true.