There Are No Worthless Voters, Only Worthless Analysts
As a political scientist, policy analyst, and all-around history nerd it’s excruciating every four years to hear the ahistorical, ad hominem-laden discourse that calls itself political analysis. I do love that people are involved in the political process and have shaken off the apathetic slumber that afflicts far too many Americans. However, it’s chalk on the blackboard of my mind to listen to the screed produced when partisan and/or ideological passions hijack the frontal lobes of people’s brains and enter the political discourse.
A perfect case in point as my fellow progressive brothers and sisters reacted to the Democratic nomination debate in Houston and the Working Families Party officially endorsement Senator Elizabeth Warren over Senator Bernie Sanders.
Let’s start with full disclosure. I have supported Sen. Warren ever since I saw her on a Frontline episode on credit card company practices over to fifteen years ago. I thought she should have run in the 2016 Democratic Primary. Now let’s add to this admission that I’m not a political fanboy or member of the ‘Cult of Personality School’ of political participation. I see politics and policy, not as a sport with teams and villains, but as a means to make people’s lives better, punish bad people, and save lives. I’m also a ‘grown-ass man' so I understand that people aren’t perfect, you don’t always get your way, and life is hard.
This brings me to Drew Magary’s Medium article, Pragmatic Democrats Are Worthless. I understand that hyperbole and personal attacks are the coins of the internet realm and that the ‘pay-to-win’ clickbait economics of the internet is very tempting. I also, as a progressive, understand and share Mr. Magary’s frustration both at the current loathsome Administration, and the wrongheaded squeamishness of the Democratic Party establishment. My criticism is not with his frustration or even his point, it’s with his style of delivery and conclusions.
Yes, I agree that Democrats need to clearly set themselves apart on policy and offer voters bold, structure-changing plans. Plans that will erode what nearly every voter, across the ideological spectrum, agrees is a broken system rigged for elites and strangling working people. Yes, I believe the 2016 Clinton campaign had no clear message of what she wanted to do as President. But we must also admit that some of why she lost was the kind of immature personal disdain among progressives that Magary showed in his piece. Childish anger that kept them from going to the polls. Now we have children in cages and a Kurdish massacre.
The anger Magary feels towards the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee(DCCC) for its crazy incumbent policy and toward North Carolina incumbent Democrats undemocratically protecting their seats is an example of entrenched power, not ideological moderation. It certainly shouldn’t be used to besmirch moderate Democratic voters at large as ‘worthless’.
This kind of rhetoric misses the real enemies who are tired, political careerists without new ideas and monied special interests. These two things aren’t about left or right ideologies or differences about the proper size and scope of government. They’re about getting, keeping, and expanding power. To frame this as an issue of ‘worthless' moderates not only insults voters and policymakers which you need to move a progressive policy agenda, it turns policy differences into professional wrestling style good guys and bad guys.
The truth is that Democratic voters and the whole country have, thankfully, moved to the left as a whole. I’m old enough to remember when being against early release for drug offenders, busing, and gays in the military was a mainstream liberal position. Reparations for slavery was only heard in lyrics or at Nation of Islam speeches. We have a ways to go, but oh how far we’ve come. Politicians respond to pressure, they are not a leading indicator. The great movements of the 20th Century like women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, didn’t begin with Presidential candidates or members of Congress. They started with people moving the system from the inside and the outside. The Sen. Durbins and DCCC leaders of the world are never going to be the engines of change (that’s our job as voters and citizens), but they might be the vehicles of it. Calling them ‘calcified lifers' and ‘past their expiration date' may feel good and get clicks but it doesn’t move policy to improve people’s lives or free caged children. It actually makes those things harder.
About the Author:
Michael Jackson is a Housing Policy Fellow & Communications Fellow at Community Change as well as a freelance editor and public policy/political writer living in New York City. He holds a B.A. in political science with a concentration in American Politics & Urban Studies from California State University, East Bay & was formerly a graduate fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences’ Ph.D. program. You can follow him on Twitter at @blk_Intellect
