Ed Quillen laments the sad state of the caucus in Colorado, then he goes on to describe how little life has changed for him since he switched affiliation from Republican to Democrat.
Even beyond the aggravation of the campaign phone calls, though, I start to wonder why I bother to participate in Democratic politics.
After all, if I’d wanted a health-care plan that consisted of “trying to hold on until you’re 65 and eligible for Medicare,” I’d have voted for Republicans.
If I’d wanted the United States to be involved in two shooting wars in the Middle East, I’d have voted Republican.
If I wanted to give billions of dollars to prop up Wall Street and then see huge bonuses given to the same people who got us into this financial mess, I’d vote for Republicans.
If I wanted U.S. intelligence activities (performed in our name and with our money) to continue to operate without meaningful congressional oversight, I’d vote Republican.
If I wanted accused terrorists to be tried as warriors before military tribunals as if they were soldiers, instead of in civilian courts like the criminals they are, I’d vote Republican.
If I wanted the USA Patriot Act extended rather than repealed, I’d vote for Republicans.
If I wanted theocrats in Texas to require that the American history textbooks used in public schools focus on John Calvin (who wasn’t even an American) and ignore Thomas Jefferson, I’d vote Republican.
It does force one to recognize, ultimately, how close to center the Democrat establishment has hewn since Barack Obama’s watershed election. Quillen’s commentary also–albeit incidentally–highlights the slowness of substantive institutional change in our nation’s politics.
Ed Quillen’s piece today makes no room for incrementalism, and I think that’s an oversight too common among progressives right now. Of course, Democrats lined the National Mall and stood before TV sets on January 20, 2009, and many of us wept. After eight years of global shame, Democratic Americans held their heads high with their president; yet little could we have imagined the storm of obstruction and vitriol preparing to seize the nation’s capitol.
Quillen is right, of course, and he makes each of us scratch our heads and mutter “Damn.” Damn, because one politician is, arguably, never so very different from another politician. Damn, because yesterday’s tired policies become today’s tired policies. Damn, because Washington process, by necessity, given our parliamentary checks and balances, waters down meaningful policy before it ever gets the chance to become meaningful legislation.
And yet incremental changes do take place in Washington and do spread district by district across the nation. To agree too wholeheartedly with Quillen is to forget that, in his first year or so in office, Obama oversaw expansion of children’s health insurance; sent stimulus funding directly to support social safety net institutions such as Medicaid and COBRA; allocated nearly $140 billion in funding for education; signed legislation insisting that, by 2016, all vehicles sold in the U.S. get 35+ miles to the gallon; designated 2 million acres of new federally protected wild lands; signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; began direct efforts to strengthen and update the national infrastructure (highways, rail, Internet, and more); initiated DADT repeal; and a whole lot more.*
Yes, Quillen makes a great point. Guantanamo ought to have been shuttered by now. Health insurance reform ought to have passed by now. Troops ought to have come home–not only from Iraq but also from Afghanistan–by now. No Child Left Behind ought to have been completely scrapped by now.
It’s sad that these things haven’t happened, and it’s incredibly frustrating. But make no mistake: incremental change is change. And given the extraordinary leverages afforded minority parties under current congressional rules, incremental change is about all the change we can hope for. Don’t lose sight, Democrats, of the good things that are still happening in politics today.
*List copped almost exclusively from Nathan Newman’s rundown last fall at TPM Cafe.
