Take a deep breath-or better yet, a stiff
drink.
Don't watch any news if it makes you too
sick, and try to get plenty of fluids (hopefully of the aforementioned
variety). But before succumbing to
the war fever that is supposedly gripping the nation, take time to think
a bit.
I just read a piece on vote suppression
by Joe Conason, and even though I feel sick I must admit it struck a chord.
I've been mulling over some thoughts about
this particular election, its ancestors and its progeny, and the GOP's
penchant for vote suppression is as good
a place to start as any.
'Challenging voters' under the guise of
'preventing fraud' is an old White Supremacy trick--and until Florida 2000,
it was widely acknowledged as such. What
the Democrats' cynical reaction to 2000 did was far worse than their
short-term mindset could have imagined.
It allowed the right wing to dress up this old racist scam just like David
Duke tried to do with the Klan in Louisiana.
The measured, lawyerly response allowed the slick, 'modern' argument
about accuracy to become the new republican
mantra--which hampers progressive efforts for years to come.
What we rightly tried to do--and were discouraged
from--is to make Jim Baker look like Bull Connor. God knows
he fit the bill enough, with his puffy
red face screaming into the cameras. Without exaggeration, he was basically
'Keepin the niggers down,' as Randy Newman
might say.
The poster boy and the poster moment for
reactionary resistance to voter reform was always Strom Thurmond's
historic filibuster against the Voting
Rights Act. Instead, it has been allowed to transform itself into a sort
of
Klansmanship Without Robes. Imagine John
Ashcroft, basically a klansman himself, sending out monitors to
'make sure that every vote counts!' It
is Bizarro World stuff, the The Big Lie run amok.
No, I'm not ranting here. I'm convinced
this really is the crux of the matter. Those of us on the left all believe,
more or less and to varying degrees, in
some version of what we might call the SPM: Suppressed Progressive
Majority. It's not a pipe dream or wishful
thinking--common sense also dictates that the people shouldn't
collectively vote consistently against
their own interest. And yet elections yield far worse calamities than our
failure to see this majority emerge in
the U.S. Across Latin America, people have voted for their own killers
time after time, in the grip of fear, bribery
and the Big Lie. One of many nagging problems is that broader
participation is anathema to incumbency
on both the right and left. New voters, more work, uncertainty,
and more money. Basically, it's just
a big pain in the ass.
This is why no mainstream political force
has pursued it aggressively with the exception of the Democrats in
the Civil Rights era. White politicians,
for the most part, were dragged to it kicking and screaming, but it was
one of the party's finest hours. And the
modern Knights of Reaction believe fervently that vote suppression is
cheaper and more effective than expansion
(as Joe Conason's insights show). Basically, reactionary forces have
put up barriers to voting as quickly as
others fall, from the Black Codes to Klan intimidation to Jim Crow to
poll taxes to reading tests to loyalty
oaths and Byzantine registration processes.
There is an unbroken historical link from
slavery to the scrubbing of voter rolls in the name of accuracy and
fraud prevention. Across the country, but
most pervasively in the old Jim Crow South, restrictions on felons
voting have continued this trend, with
the more insidious form being a permanent loss of suffrage, even after
convicts have served their time. A demographic
footnote? Hardly.
What this means is that, notably in something
like nine states of the old Confederacy, upwards of 20% of black
men are temporarily or permanently disenfranchised.
Now, we may be accused of arrogance simply to assume
that these potential souls 'belong' to
the left or progressive majority. But the consistent targeting of
this and other
constituencies by the right certainly implies
that they think so (such as those targeted by Bill Rehnquist in the
nefarious Operation Eagle Eye in Arizona
in the early 60's-and no, it didn't hurt his appointment as Chief Justice).
Playing off the poor white against black
has of course also been an insidious historical trick, and another of
slavery's distorting legacies. It is undoubtedly
one of the reasons why the U.S. is the only major industrial
democracy without a worker's party (why
the hell not??) or serious popular front coalition, where racism
hampered efforts time and again. But my
point here is about structural barriers, and how the well funded
right wing electoral project is able to
magnify its perceived majority. Taking Tuesday's vote, for example,
it would be unwise not to concede a victory
for reaction. But perspective is always an important antidote
to despair. The electorate, and more importantly
a slim majority of that subelectorate that could be coaxed
to vote, was scared to death, pure and
simple.
Bucking demographic, historic and economic
trends, this election result is an anomaly, an obvious, logical
reaction to the fear instilled by the events
of last September. It needn't have been so, and quite arguably
wouldn't be without the fomenting of Bush
and his henchmen storming the country shouting 'boo' at every turn,
flat out lying about Iraq and al-Qaeda
and bashing the U.N. It has been Halloween all year for this cabal,
and it's only getting scarier. Before moving
to Canada, consider that more sophisticated polling reveals
that - surprise! - when people know the
truth they are less stupid (not such an obvious fact for many of us on
Wednesday morning). But a poll on Iraq
which correlated people's awareness that there is no reliable evidence
of a connection with al-Qaeda revealed
that those who caught the lie oppose the war by a massive margin.
Feel just a little bit better? I thought
you might. For a sweetener, add in the fact that Missouri was decided
by 22,500 votes in a special election that
wasn't even supposed to take place but for a plane crash that killed
Jean Carnahan's husband two years ago.
Speculating yet again, though the 2000 voting trends seem to give us
ample room for it, Mel today would be serving
out the last four years in a seat he wrested from John Ashcroft,
not fighting for his political life in
the wake of September 11 war fever.
Likewise, another plane crash might have
altered the course of history, with the 55,000-vote margin that sank
Mondale's seat in Minnesota (it's around
40,000 if you count the absentee votes for Wellstone. They were
thrown out because no one can really be
sure if those who bothered to vote early for Paul Wellstone wouldn't
really have supported the republicans and
their right wing agenda). Speculating yet again - isn't this fun? - we
saw
Wellstone pulling ahead before his untimely
death. The obscenity of republicans in Minnesota spitting on his grave
(repulsive, but effective) with their mock
'outrage' over his memorial service (which they charged was repulsive,
but secretly envied as effective) was just
the chest beating they needed to reenergize their base in the final days.
[For the record, I told a Catholic priest
to go to hell when he tried to tell me what I could say at my father's
funeral,
but maybe that's just me.] So what? No
one can predict the weather, right? Well, okay, but I'm just saying...
Besides, I'm talking about structure, not
climate. This isn't sour grapes, and I'm not just venting either.
My point isn't that WE WUZ ROBBED. We IZ
robbed, but in a much greater way than some touch screen
fiasco in Florida. By the way, isn't anyone
alarmed at the abolition of the paper ballot? My head almost
exploded when I heard about this. But back
to our friend, the Senate. The point is not just about vote
counting, but the magnification of the
result through the structural prism of our electoral system. All told,
the republicans garnered about 1.6 million
more votes for Senate candidates than Democrats. A three or
four percent split. Hardly a whisper, I
know-hey, I already admitted it was a reactionary night. But with
those votes they scooped up 23 Senate seats
to the Democrats' 10 (and I'm cutting Landrieu and Johnson
some serious slack here).
And, since it's structural, this phenomenon
is not unique to this election. The Senate, itself a throwback to
the belief that a barrier to direct democracy
was necessary to calm the rabble-a sort of modified House-of-Lords
type bulwark-is endemically prone to this
thwarting of popular will. The very institution was conceived, in part,
as a hedge by the slaveholding Southern
states of the new republic against being overrun by the more populous north.
This form of super-representation spread
like a virus as new states entered the Union, compounded by the win/win
compromise that allowed slavery's proponents
to pimp off their chattel for representation without giving them
the franchise.
And so it goes: everyone gets their two
cents-or in this case, two Senators, from Wyoming to California.
Except, of course, for the good people
of DC, who perversely don't merit representation in this ponzi scheme
because they allegedly have 50 Senators-and
right in their own backyard, too! Ironically, in their attempt to fend
off the potential bogeyman of Tyranny of
the Majority, the (Slaveholding) Founding Fathers virtually ensured that
this tyranny would be magnified beyond
recognition, and that minority voices would never be heard.
The winner take all arrangement when the
Senate moved to direct election, as well as the Electoral College,
gives these overrepresented constituencies
a Supervote that has ballooned with the growth of the republic.
Again, who am I to deny this stacked deck
advantage to the oppressed poor progressives of Montana and
Wyoming? And how dare I automatically assume
that our beloved SPM is concentrated in the underrepresented
constituencies? Sue me-or consult the Bureau
of Labor Statistics. Your choice. But whatever you do, don't grant
true voting rights for DC. That would apparently
just compound the problem (not to mention give the left two
progressive black Senators).
What bears repeating is that Eleanor Holmes
Norton garnered 113,000 votes, more than most of her (voting)
House counterparts. Pundits who decry low
black turnout have it backwards: the real story is why they bother
to vote at all. The late Stephen Jay Gould,
eminent natural historian, crusader against creationism, and
spellbinding lecturer and writer, fascinated
me with his penchant for explaining just about any phenomenon
with a baseball analogy. Though an avid
Red Sox fan as a kid, I have never taken sports that seriously as an adult.
It's just a sport-you know? That's why
it always surprises me that, in one realm, people would instinctively laugh
you out of the room at the suggestion that
Sox fans would pay just as close attention if their team isn't playing.
Or root for the Yankees to win the World
Series (hey, it's still OUR league, isn't it?) And yet black voters are
supposed to be imbued with a sort of superhuman
altruism in the voting game.
The amazing thing is that they still answer
the call. In this game without proportional representation (or in DC's
case without any at all) it is completely
impossible for minorities to get their cut without piggybacking off a
majority winner. Not in a negotiated coalition
for a share of control, of course, but only for the table scraps-which
are getting less appetizing under the tyranny
of the DLC. Maybe this explains why black voters are less prone
to being picked off by third party candidacies
than their liberal white counterparts. Being junior partners in a
coalition is all they can ever squeeze
out of this system. It's the same for other constituencies on the left,
of course,
but most don't quite realize how the winner-take-all
scheme nullifies their vote.
And it is only by the bizarre gerrymandering
of districts than any semblance of representation is maintained in
the House-but of course this is neatly
countered by the Supervotes already discussed. It seems like we've been
here before, but the whole nut seems to
come back to the fact that the Civil War is still unfinished business.
Hey-don't blame me-I'm just a spectator.
The undocumented aliens I descend from weren't in the country yet
-and we weren't even considered white back
then.
Yes, I've hear the reverent arguments about
the wisdom of Tom Jefferson and his friends (though Sally Hemming
might disagree, in hindsight). In a federated
republic, the supermajority prevents fragmentation by giving a
mandate to the True Majority. The one small
problem is that True Majority only equals the true majority in times
of enormous crisis, like the 1930's. And
possibly the Great Opportunity of 1964 (later squandered on Johnson's
War). At least those are the only times
our SPM is able to punch through the Class Ceiling of American politics.
The sad fact is that without structural
change, the victories we long for will elude us.
Take your pick from a laundry list of options:
statehood for DC, proportional voting, apportionment of seats,
instant runoff voting, abolition of the
electoral college, replacement of the Senate (sorry, Ted, sorry Strom)
- not to
mention sincere, rigorous enforcement and
expansion of the Voting Rights Act. I'm not stupid or pie-eyed enough
to suggest that this guarantees victory.
But you just can't win without unrigging the game. These structural changes
should be the among the top priorities
of every progressive campaign from now until victory, first, because it's
right (whew-glad we got that out of the
way-and secondly, because it's a winning electoral strategy for the long
term).
This is not the place to brag-well hey,
screw it, why not brag? I'm proud of (most of) the political work I've
done:
from organizing, demonstrating, work in
progressive campaigns, in Nicaragua, support for left causes, strikes,
and
so on.... But of all of it, I think one
of my most radical accomplishments was a tiny little campaign a roommate
and
I ran on a dorm council in college. The
council, whose meetings we almost never attended, was a direct democracy.
There was no representation, and yet over
the years the clique of members (whom we nastily and somewhat unfairly
dubbed the Politburo) had instituted bylaws
tying voting rights to various attendance requirements. 'What if the jocks
brought a bunch of friends and raided the
till by voting all the money for a party in their suite?' was a standard
argument.
Tough shit-bring your own clique-was our
retort. Hey-it's either a direct democracy or a representative one.
It can't be both a council and a club.
I know, it might be a silly anecdote. Voting
is supposed to be serious business (like baseball). But the practice of
democracy is simply not something people
are exposed to-despite our lofty rhetoric-in their workplaces, homes,
schools and institutions. People can call
me a cockeyed optimist or romantic fool (for believing the SPM exists at
all)
or an insufferable downer (for believing
that it will never emerge without structural change). But I still have
a populist
streak in me, and I do believe in the SPM.
And I do believe that it will never emerge without structural change.
Please-call me a cockeyed optimist.
Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with
his
wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together, they run The Greenhouse
School.