Giving Up On The Democrats

I am sitting in my local school’s gym, and talking to other democrats. It was my first Democratic Caucus and I was excited and there to support Howard Dean. I had even given Dean’s campaign some money a week before. But about a half hour into the caucus I knew something was wrong. I started having feelings of distrust, usually I reserve such feelings for the public education system, but this time I had them about the political process. Clearly the Kerry supporters were in the majority and were courting most everyone in the room. The Dean campaign had failed to really organize; we were mostly made up of twenty-something college kids and optimistic thirty-somethings which had somehow found ourselves in the political process for the first time. We had a lot in common with the Edwards supporters, but we were both up against an organized and seasoned political group that were in favor of John Kerry.

By the time Dean made his now famous rant speech at the University of Iowa Student Union, (just a few miles away), the Dean campaign had failed, but I was still stuck at my local school’s gym, as we were ironing out what our local group would send to the state Democratic Party. As I sat there listening to the few people that stayed, I knew the Democratic Party would no longer matter, but I at least still hoped that we could defeat the Bush ticket. The few of us left discussed the important agendas for the party and what mattered to us: education, healthcare, jobs, and so on. By the time Kerry and Edwards had their convention, none of our concerns ever made it to the national politicians and our voices became irrelevant and drowned out in favor of more dull Kerry slogans. In a sense the Democratic party became ineffective the moment it stopped listening to its local supporters and instead tried to elect a boring and seasoned politician, no matter how well meaning Kerry was, he was still the wrong candidate. Edwards in the end, showed to be the correct choice for most of us, but on a Kerry ticket, Edwards was just a sideshow.

Now in 2006, the Democrats think they can beat Republicans, because of the scandals, because of a hurricane, because Republicans are now seen as too greedy in comparison. I doubt the Democrats can succeed on this alone. They are the inept party, the party of no ideas, in a sense they are everything I hated about politics: the combination of pride and prudence. I am in my thirties, too young yet to claim the wisdom of men in their forties and fifties, too old to cling to my rebellious and naive twenties, stuck in the middle between men who dream of making the world a better place, and those who would have you believe it cannot be done.