Before Clinton, the Dems couldn’t beat the scandal ridden Reagan or Bush 41. Bill Clinton was hip, and such a welcome choice for a candidate. I had spent my voting age years watching Reagan preposterously elected president twice, along with “just say no” Nancy and all the other crap that seemed like so much TV fluff, followed by Bush 41. Bill came along and really got the young people and the rock stars and other celebrities stoked. It was the first exciting election I had voted in and the fucking republicans were finally kicked out. Times were good, so it seemed. Technology was progressing and American culture continued its world domination. The Clinton years were, in many ways, the best years of my life. I had no idea he had completely remade the Democratic Party.
The 2000 election was a rude awakening for me, and as it turns out, the first big revelation that something was terribly wrong. At the time I used to spend hours watching CNN – not the headline news – and saw them change over a period of time, to a point that I couldn’t watch any more. I’ve always had alternative news and views available because there’s a great community radio station here in Madison, where I could hear Democracy Now and also Jim Hightower, and it was from a link on his page that I found Daily Kos. (Along with Smirking Chimp) And that, my friends, was when I began to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Since then I’ve learned so much – so much more than I wished I knew. The more you look, and the more you know, the more hopeless and insurmountable it all seems. When you look clearly at our government, man, what a mess. Way too many people just throw up their hands and tune it out.
The rest of us feel compelled to address it somehow. Kos chooses to address it via the Democratic Party, and has by this site organized huge amounts of support for them. While being and voting reliably Democratic, I, on the other hand, have over time become disillusioned with the Party, and even at times wonder whether they really want to prevail over conservatives, or if they’re what the Republicans used to be and there is no real opposition to conservatism any more. (In which case, as liberals, let alone anyone left of center, we’re screwed) Just the same, there are really no alternatives, and building one from scratch isn’t really practical, at least not in this cycle. We go to war with the army we have.
It could be said that, for all intents and purposes, because of the nature of Bernie’s candidacy, rejecting Hilary is rejecting the Democratic Party in its current form. Based on their performance in recent times, I do, in fact, reject the Party in its current form, and Hilary along with it. If there are alternatives available, I will vote for them. But I don’t want to leave the party or join a different one. I want to see it change to better reflect my values. I don’t think that will happen until we reclaim the Democratic Party from the “3rd way”.