Election Day 2016
Every day except Election Day I'm an ambivalent Democrat. I'm a strong and vocal critic of the Democratic Party. I say things like "I have no love for the party and I don't feel 'proud' to be a Democrat." I cavil endlessly about their mealy-mouths and pandering hearts, their venality, their mediocrity, their weakness, and their hypocrisy. I am way to the left of the mainstream of Democratic Party, who I see as barely distinguishable from mainstream Republicans when it comes to the fundamentals of our economic system and our military-industrial complex. But when Election Day rolls around, I never fail to vote and it's always for Democrats, and I don't feel the slightest hesitation or ambivalence. Today is no different.
I'm not voting for Hilary Clinton today. I'm voting for the Democratic candidate for the presidency, who happens to be Hilary Clinton. That's nothing against her personally - I actually like and respect her, despite disagreeing with her strenuously on certain major areas of policy (most notably war and finance - blood and treasure issues). I have only once voted with pure enthusiasm for a particular politician (Barack Obama), but I've always supported Democratic candidates, not because I think they're better people than Republicans, but because they support policies that align more closely with my values and priorities. One of my priorities this year is to see a woman elected to the presidency of the world's most powerful country.
The presidency is a political and social function. It's not a prize for who talks the best game, or who is the most likable, or who raises the most money, or who has the best campaign operation. Neither is it a reward for a lifetime of service, however selfless and admirable. Just as I don't much care about the character of the person flying the plane, or fixing the carburetor, or removing my gallbladder, I don't much care about a potential president's personal qualities. I frankly assume we don't know that much about these. In any event, I don't expect to consort much with presidents and ex-presidents in the years to come. I do, however, expect to live in a country and a world that has been largely shaped by the policies of those presidents.
In our time, there is only one major party that is, however imperfectly, sincere and pragmatic in its commitment to the ongoing work of forming a more perfect union. Politics is not - or shouldn't be - a game, or a blood sport; it is a means of developing, arguing for, and ultimately implementing a governing agenda.
Today I'm casting my ballot for the party that seeks to make the country fairer, kinder, more just, and more humane. I'm voting for the party that values human beings in themselves, not according to how much they produce or consume. I'm voting for a party that has devised and implemented policies that have brought, or at least sought to bring, dignity, security, and opportunity to millions of human beings whose experience of living out their allotted years on this planet has been made better by those policies and would have been worse without them.
No doubt many if not all of these policies could be improved. They are imperfect solutions, but at least they are solutions, designed to address actual problems in the real world. Lord knows I don't like Obamacare, but it was formulated and implemented in an effort to solve a real problem: tens of millions of Americans without access to decent healthcare that they can afford - a disgraceful problem, unique among the developed nations of the world.
Today I'm casting my ballot for the party responsible for (in approximate chronological order) Social Security, worker protection laws, waging and winning World War 2, the GI Bill, Civil Rights and voting rights laws, Medicare/Medicaid, Head Start, clean air and clean water laws, putting a man on the moon, the Equal Rights Amendment (ultimately blocked by conservatives), a living wage, paid family leave, equal pay for equal work, marriage equality and full rights for LGBTQ Americans, and an imperfect but important first step towards genuinely universal healthcare.
Today I'm voting for the party that wants to acknowledge and atone for the injustices of the past and to create a more equal society for all Americans, regardless of race or faith (or lack thereof) or lifestyle or culture. I'm voting for the party that wants to treat undocumented immigrants and their children as human beings worthy of dignity and respect. I'm voting for the party that recognizes the threat that climate change poses to all human beings, especially the poor, and wants to ensure that the world remains habitable and safe for future generations. I'm voting for the party that wants to DO things that make life better for people - a party that, however imperfectly and inconsistently, recognizes that politics is ultimately about implementing policies that affect the real lives of millions of real live human beings.
In a perfect world, we'd all be conservatives. But the world is very far from perfect. At its best, conservatism represents a satisfaction with the way things are, but that entails a consequent desire to resist progress and even to revert to an older order under which the struggles of millions went unnoticed, or were tolerated as perhaps regrettable but nevertheless acceptable consequences of free markets, limited government, and individual liberty. But conservatism at its best is not what the G.O.P. is offering this year.
At its worst, conservatism is the sort of incoherent brutalitarian freakshow we're seeing today, which has nothing to offer except reactionary rage, bigotry, nihilism, and hatred. In other words, Trumpism. And, in the middle of the spectrum from best to worst sits the G.O.P. establishment - unprincipled, meretricious, cowardly, mendacious, cynical. They are liars and opportunists who will say anything, take any stand, hurl any accusation, to manipulate you into giving them your money and your vote. (Plenty of individual Democratic politicians are no better, but if you vote for them, at least you'll be supporting a party that has a proven record of effective governing in the public interest.) You may sincerely believe in the old respectable Republican values of small government and free-trade and independent initiative and personal freedom - fair enough. But if those really are your principles, then the G.O.P. doesn't deserve your vote because they don't stand for those things (except of course rhetorically). If you simply can't bring yourself to vote for a Democrat (i.e. a member of the party that has a demonstrably superior record of fiscal responsibility), then I'm sorry to say that you're a voter without a party.
If you're a fiscal conservative, who plans to vote Republican because they're the more responsible party when it comes to managing the economy and making prudent use of tax dollars, you might be interested to know that under Democrats the economy grows faster, (at least) twice as many jobs are created, the stock market does better, corporate profits are higher (both in themselves and as a percentage of GDP), the federal budget is more frequently balanced, the debt grows more slowly in real terms and actually declines as a percentage of GDP (whereas it rises under Republicans). Under Obama, all of these post-WW2 trends have continued. (Don't take my word for it - check for yourself. As I say in my book, the facts are readily available to anyone with an Internet connection, five minutes to spare, and a genuine interest in knowing the truth.)
You might also want to consider that the only two sustained periods of total G.O.P. control of the federal government in the past 100 years (1921-1933 and 2001-2007) ended in economic catastrophe for hundreds of millions of human beings around the world.
It's true, your taxes might go up a bit with a Democrat in the White House. On the other hand, fewer people will die of hunger, preventable illness, environmental devastation, and neglect. So there's that.
I'll leave you with this 1953 quote from Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the allied forces on D-Day and, later, the last Republican president to preside over a balanced budget, in 1959-60 (when the top marginal income tax rate was 91%):
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
"This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
"The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
"It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
"It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.
"We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
"We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
"This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
"This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Couldn't have said it better myself. Here's to a better way of life for all of us.
[Full speech here: http://bit.ly/29AeHbg]