Nathan Newman is pissed off. Yes, it may be intemperate to call anti-unionism the date rape of corporate crime, but it must be frustrating as hell to go through all the conversations about what unions are doing wrong and why nobody wants to join them with people who won’t acknowledge that the biggest barrier to organization is illegal (and immoral and stupid besides) union-busting by corporations with the (at least tacit) approval of the government. Most people want to be in unions; most workplaces aren’t safe to organize. That’s what unions are doing wrong, except that they aren’t doing it. Now, what’s the next step? I have no idea, since evidently getting the government to enforce the law isn’t an option.
One reason I sympathize a lot with Mr. Newman’s frustration is that it mirrors my own frustration about Democrats in presidential politics. Perhaps it’s just me, but whenever somebody comes up with yet another line about how the Democrats are going to find it difficult to find a good candidate in 2008, I want to shake them and say Good Lord, we won with Albert Gore, Jr., how hard could it be?
In fact, the Democrats have won the last four consecutive presidential elections. OK, fine, I acknowledge that neither Mr. Gore nor Senator Kerry took office. But more people voted for Mr. Gore in 2000 than voted for Our Only President, right? That’s not even controversial. And it seems really really obvious that more registered Florida voters left the polls believing that they had cast legitimate ballots for the Vice President than for the erstwhile Governor of Texas. It’s possible (depending on how you count) that more people actually did cast legitimate ballots for Our Only President, and certainly I accept the authority of the Supreme Court in the matter, much as I disagree with how they handled it. But Al Gore won the election by any measure other actually taking office.
Now, I do concede that more people voted for the reelection of Our Only President than voted for Senator Kerry in 2004, although it was an extremely close election on those grounds. Furthermore, in the electoral college, the outcome once again hinged on a state whose electors did not express the will of the citizens of that state. Yes, there were more legitimate ballots actually cast in Ohio for Our Only President than for the challenger (probably; I tend to think the Diebold business is more of a potential disaster than an actual one, although I certainly haven’t any contrary evidence). However, it is absolutely clear to me that more registered voters got up in the morning on Election Day intending to vote for John Kerry. Why didn’t they? Because they can’t all take three hours standing in line. Many, possibly most of the people who might have voted Democrat felt only mildly about it, and the inconvenience factor was substantial. There were also many legitimate citizens who were struck from the roles; this was well-documented and isn’t in dispute, although the extent to which that affected the outcome is.
The Republican Party in Ohio (which has since startled even Your Humble Blogger with the level of corruption exposed) set about a deliberate policy of vote suppression, of which the centerpiece was closing an enormous number of polling places, disproportionately (of course) in heavily Democratic neighborhoods. This is going on all over the country. Seriously, it is. It’s not a Sekrit Conspiracy. I was in Medford, Massachusetts last month and discovered that in two years they are closing seven of the sixteen polling places in the town. Obviously, making it more difficult for people to vote is going to decrease the number of people who vote. Gentle Reader, can you check your hometown and see whether the number of polling places has gone down in the last four years—or if the local government is planning to shut polling places? Make a noise about it. Get all Whitman on it. It’s more than about good government; it’s about the whole democratic experiment.
Hoo hah. Where was I? Oh, yes. The problem is not that Democrats run lousy candidates, or that we don’t know how to get people to vote for those candidates. It does appear to be the case that Democrats have to win elections by a lot more than Republicans do in order to take office, but I have no idea what to do about that. It also appears to be the case that State Republican parties are able to defy the will of the people without any sort of retribution on the part of those voters, which I don’t understand at all. We could talk about those issues. But over the next thousand days when people talk about who the Democrats can find, feel free Gentle Readers to suggest that they speak to any of the four living Democrats who have won presidential elections. Or to the only living Republican who has actually beat a Democrat in a presidential race.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.