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Arthur's notes on the primary season.
Your favorite party is the only one that can produce a progressive agenda and an "electable" candidate to preach
that one true agenda.
Other parties are part of some nefarious conspiracy to destroy Your favorite party and it's stable of electable-candidate
frontrunners.
Supporters of other candidates are motivated by groupthink that consists of less drinkable bathwater than Your own favorite
party's groupthink.
Supporters of other parties are operating in bad faith and only pretending to be liberal progressives since everyone knows
that your favorite party is number two on the corporate respect ladder - but moving up to number one some day soon if enough
of the farm is given away.
Dishonest argument is the kind that tolerates no difference of opinion, takes offense in the presence of contradictions
and would, if possible, stomp off and slam the door on the way out.
And one final note:
Country would be better off if parties were more accurately self-identified by their name and agenda - even if that meant
more parties. We need at least a strong third party to keep the other two honest. Can't think of a better way to un-dummy
the electorate than candidates who ask the voters to:
Vote the Conservative Ticket,
Vote the Liberal Ticket,
Vote the Labor Ticket,
Vote the Social Conservative Ticket,
Vote the Neocon Ticket,
Vote the Imperial Ticket
Vote the Jingoist Ticket.
That way, if we gravitated once again to two parties, you might see two surviving parties with a genuine philosophical
and political differentiation.
Then "Notes on the Primary Season" would not consist of who's a member in good standing with appropriate party
beliefs and credentials and who isn't.
Delectably electable: The Prime Attribute?
So here we are at post-election time in which the Democratic Party won sorta big after Redumblicans handed them a gift-elephant
who's worn out tusks still scared em.
This election was in fact the Democratic Harlem Globetrotters competing against the Washington Generals. In the Senate
the Demos managed to eke out a close victory over the Generals in a game where the Generals had no effective offense or repounding
but still managed to keep the game close.
Demos won the House only because toward the end of the game Republicans kept committing fouls and turnovers, giving Demos
free throw after free throw. Without those series of last-minute fouls and turnovers, winning the House was only wishful for
a party who does not believe in blunt truth telling and direct confrontation of bullshit.
Oh, I'm hoping the party will stop running around in policy and philosophical circles posing as stragedy and tactics,
but those who bleat and bray in defense of the pary faith continue to demonstrate the selective blindness that cost Burner
her election locally and just barely won the U.S. Senate majority nationally.
I don't have confidence that they can or will nominate a presidential candidate who says what he/she means and means what
is said. We don't need Demos trying to define leadership as primarily caution and timidity painted with statesmanlike wisdom.
Bush's dumbness perhaps overrides the one gigantic lesson learned from both his elections.
Except for the most obtuse Democrats who are still stuck in political middle school we can see plainly that voters tend
to a leader who'll talk straight talk, speak directly to the people about his personal values and opinion and be a decider.
They of course expect a wise decider who looks for and accepts counsel.
Bush demonstrates the latter and his current unpopularity demonstrates the former.
Although He also has amply demonstrated his intellectual lack of depth and the weakness of his rigid and inflexible thinking
it was never those views and positions that got him inside the door to the oval office. It was the projection of his attitude
as an American Patriot leader.
As wise as the electorate can be when it votes, it is not made up of a sophisticate majority dominated by folks who've
read the political masters whether Plato, Hobbs, Mill or Machiavelli.
We as an electorate vote more our gut than our reason and we always will.
Bush has also demonstrated how to lose that gut support.
Demo's have not earned that gut support now going on ten years. The reason is partially demonstrated by Demo fears about
discussing and sharing personal religious values - hoping that the voters are on the same page. But in fact that very reluctance
suggests Demos are soft on all values and not just the judgmental kiddie-stuff like anti-gay, school prayer, allegiance pledges,
creationism and wars on sacred holidays.
Demos as liberal progressives or progressive liberals behave as if they are dominated by an underlying assumption that
the predominant inner and unspoken wisdom of a majority of citizens is some constant intellectual introspective pondering
of civics.
- As if Richard Dreyfuss's current discussion of civics is commonplace and all Americans fully grasp what he is saying.
American voters need arousal and they will follow the candidate who picks up the standard, waves it in our faces and says
"FOLLOW ME!"
The friendly and reasonable candidate that hesitates in order to persuade voters to "follow me!" doesn't want
to lead. Rather, the image is of a thoughtful candidate who in reality wants to become moderator of a forum-based democracy
where rational thought and slow deliberation toward consensus are the literal wheels of the national wagon.
We don't have that kind of democratic republic because it's so theoretical the population is too democratically unwieldy,
too busy and too distracted to come to forum meetings with any regularity.
The country doesn't want to be governed by consensus but by a leader who acts like Lincoln, fights like Washington but
talks like John Wayne.
Demos keep offering up Millard Fillmore, James Buchannan and Chester Arthur.
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