Visions of Presidents Dancing

(Thoughts while trying to figure out why Kraftwerk replaced the line “Fl�sse, Berge, W�lder” with “Promenades and avenues” when “Europa endlos” became “Europe Endless”)

This entry is mostly a response to Dan’s hate-filled attempt at starting a flame thread in the comments of a different post. But there are bigger issues here that tie into a theory I’ve been working on for a while. If you don’t know about this theory (, Dan), then you won’t properly understand why “electability” is a bullshit reason to vote for John Kerry in 2004.

I wrote back in January that

Democrats have moved away from actually good candidates and have cast in their lot with a candidate who simply feels good…[and they] are being fooled into thinking that they’re spineless and have no direction, which makes them lust after a tough-ass candidate who gets everyone a little wet.

The point here is that there is a perception of the Democratic party, largely fueled by the conservative majority of the liberal media, but also built into the way the left has sort of envisioned itself in an era of identity politics.

Maybe I’m getting too caught up in negativity, etc., from being force-fed Frankfurt School stuff in the past few months, but in their detachment from activism (from my understanding), I find some serious kindred spirits. Trust me, I’d much rather be compared to the likes of Adorno than to the latest asshole who says he’ll “hold his nose and vote for Kerry.”

But here’s an effort at putting it all together: There is no effective solution. There is a dream of a democracy to come, of course, but we can’t predict its coming. So I’m a bit fed up with “movements” and the belief of neophytes in their dream of having the ability to effect revolution within a really, really strong-ass system by cutting it off at the presumptive head: POTUS. Because that technique is certainly not how one can make the biggest splash. If these activists are so certain that there is no difference between the Democrats and the GOP, then they should join Larouche and form a third party. And many are threatening to do just that. I wish them success. And when they get sick of being marginalised and totally shut out of the process, then the Democrats will welcome them back.

Given this as a state of affairs, what kind of hope is there for the far left–the activist kiddies who have lots of hate and lots of free time? Very little that’s immediately gratifying. My one friend is busting his ass organising on behalf of a union. It’s tiring work, I’m sure, building up a team one shop at a time. And then all that work gets undone by election theft or something. Far quicker and more gratifying, however, is lazy dreaming fueled by disposable income and productivity malaise.

Instead of going out and organising, they click on buttons on web pages and type in credit card numbers. Then they go to parties (ahem, “meetups”), where they can all imagine that something real is being done. That they are about to take the democratic process into their own hands. That somehow, they managed to catch up in just a few short months to the 400-year head start market capitalism got.

What can fuel this kind of hubris? Emptiness. No candidate is actually ever going to run on the type of platform that these people imagine. Not only will he or she never win a national election, but this candidate will also never even win a single state. I admit, in 2000, I very much supported the idea of a Paul Wellstone candidacy. But that was largely a wild fantasy, and I admit that it was as much–then and now. I supported Wellstone mostly to “keep the Democrats (Gore) honest,” much like Bradley turned out to be supposed to do. I knew Wellstone would never get the nomination; the system is simply built not to allow that to happen.

So if a “real” leftist (Wellstone, Feingold, etc…) was unavailable, then what could the left do? Well, invent a leftist candidate. And that’s precisely what they did. Howard Dean took his mix of sometime-lefty politics and anti-war message to the Holy Land, largely fueled by a very sharp campaign that precisely played to the resentment of this lazy blogging/donating class. They could feel like their hands were in the mix if they dropped some bucks on this maverick outsider who would give Washington the finger!

This is all very obvious because of the success that Dean had in comparison to Kucinich. The Vegan Elf was much more of a serious leftist, but he also has convictions and a vision, and just enough oddness to be guaranteed of never getting elected to national office. But if this lb/d class were serious about their desire to effect change, they’d have supported him. Instead, they lived the fantasy: Dean was Kucinich’s politics (or whoever’s–the point here is that he could have any lefty ethos grafted onto him), but also rising in the polls! Oh my God! Capitalism could be beaten! La d�mocratie � venir is coming a knocking!

And that undid everything. The hubris started. The gloating began. Dean started acting like a front-runner. He started getting “more” establishment. But it didn’t matter; revolution was imminent. Similarly, the backlash that was growing didn’t matter. Dean was so obviously the best candidate that he could withstand any efforts at knocking him down. (Yes, if some of this starts to sound like how I talk about Kerry, it’s not entirely non-coincidental.)

But then the votes came. And what was true remained true: a bunch of people sitting in front of Moveable Type “Create New Entry” screens couldn’t break the system and let an apparation get the nomination for President. You have to be a person (or a Bush) to win, you see, and Dean wasn’t. He was a vessel for a bunch of misguided and mixed up dreams and dissatisfactions with the state of the United States. People attached their various politics onto a by-the-book pragmatist with a distinct, admitted, lack of vision for how to do things. People who liked a cut started saying the whole album was great.

But that doesn’t work, and a lot of people understand that in probably intuitive senses–and I suspect that includes a large portion of the voting populace in Iowa and New Hampshire. Apparently, Iowans were a little upset about the influx of out-of-state cash and so on from the Dean campaign. They could sniff out the campaign with the neophytes, and they wanted none of it. America’s not a place for a bunch of Johnny-come-latelys who think they know everything about how to fix the country.

So, to get to Dan’s complaint, the problem is related to how these Deaniacs (and this isn’t just related to Dean supporters; I maintain that most Clark supporters were similarly caught up in a similar fantasy) then transferred their “support” to Kerry, as Dan has done. Let’s go to the tape.

Dan writes that he doesn’t “find Kerry’s candidacy to be wholey consistent with [his] political ideals.”[sic] Who the hell does? Kerry probably doesn’t even, considering that he’s a man who experiences change over time. To suggest that Dean or Clark or anyone else did is simply to admit my thesis: that your candidate is a fantasy you invented. I make my issues with Kerry’s philosophy entirely clear: he’s dead wrong on same-sex marriage, for example. And you know what? I still send him my scrill, because he’s the guy I agree with (and like) the most. I never saw similar criticisms among Dean supporters–and this came to a point where the Nation (I think?) was running articles about Dean supporters who could not even tell you precisely what Dean’s position on many, many issues was. Their love transcended actual political philosophy.

Anyway that implicit initial demand/complaint sets up the fantasy of electability. You (not just you, or even necessarily you, Dan, but others saying similar things often enough to suggest a level of continuity) had your man who was your magic everything. You had the guy who was the solution to all your problems. But it was ephemeral. And now you’re in a position where you’ve already spit your bile at Bush for so long that you can’t possibly support him. To get all Valentine’s Day on it: you’re heart-broken that your loved one wasn’t as beloved by your friends, your fellow Democrats. You tried to explain how great he was, but they didn’t buy it. And now they’re trying to set you up with someone who is as great, if not better, but your heart still hurts, and you make up tremendously stupid reasons to agree to going out with the new guy. But at night you kiss the old photo and reminisce and wish that your friends weren’t so blind. And then finally, you decide/invent the main reason for going out with the new guy: some action is better than no action. So you’ll keep the new guy around for laughs, whatever, but you’ll always say, “yeah, I still love Howard, but I figure I’ll keep fucking John until I can get back together with Howard.”

And that’s, ahem, fucked, once you realise that Howard doesn’t actually exist, that he’s a figment of your imagination, that he’s the embodiment of all your anger, your anxieties, your dissatisfactions, and even your thin hopes for the future.

“Electability” is only an insult because of whom you’re comparing Kerry to, and that’s all there is to it. If one said, “well, I love Wellstone, but he’s not running for President because he’s, well, dead, so instead I’m supporting Kerry,” that’s one thing. But Dean (and–to keep this slightly Dan-centric–Clark) is a fiction. Of course in politics tactics matter, as does electability in some wider general sense. But the way it’s been wielded by the Deaniacs, it seems like damnation of the faintest praise: Kerry will win since he’s the slimiest, most politician-like of our dream candidates. Fuck that line of reasoning. Kerry had done more for this country just within the VVAW than any of these Deaniacs will have done their whole lives. He deserves more than people complaining about having to hold their nose while giving support to the man who could possibly be the best President of our lives.