President McKinney

The only current presidential candidate whose words I find to be consistently situated in some recognizable and relatively stable reality, and not in some astral political TV soap opera geared toward young adults, is Dennis Kucinich. I'd like to see Cynthia McKinney add her voice to the mix. No matter how marginalized and mocked her candidacy would surely be at the hands of conservatives and liberals alike, I'd like to hear what she has to say about all sorts of important issues.

I should point out here that, from my point of view, the whole notion of "electability" is a profoundly misguided and anti-democratic concept. There's a reason elementary schoolteachers ask children to put their heads down on their desks before voting by show of hands: the children are learning to make independent decisions, unswayed by the opinions of others. Asking which candidate is more "electable" is like nervously glancing around the room at an imaginary mainstream before deciding how to vote; which in effect pre-emptively marginalizes one's own value as a unique perceiver and one's agency as a democratic participant. The consideration of "electability" is inherently anti-change; that's not how I think either children or grown-ups should approach voting. In my ears, statements along the lines of "Face it, most Americans would never vote for such-and-such a person" are not only drearily self-defeating but actually rather irrelevant, because the question you're being asked in the electoral process isn't who you think most Americans would vote for; the question is, which candidate is saying the things that you, and only you, believe most need to be said for the common good. That's the fundamental thing you wanna get right before you start thinking tactics; if tactical considerations are coming before fundamentals, I'd suggest that maybe you've kinda lost your way in this maze.

Of course US elections are busted way beyond the lame-ass heuristics of pop punditry. The rickety federalism which was designed to protect slavery and states' racist rights is, in my opinion, overdue for demolition: abolish the electoral college, nationalize the presidential election system, make it a slick solid operation that packs the house with excited voters all weekend long. Obviously public financing is needed to undo the current system of blatant legalized extortion and bribery on the campaign trail. Most glaringly, the two-party stranglehold on US polity must be broken. Don't think it's doable? All four of the presidential faces on Mount Rushmore opposed two-party politics, so you'd think that I'm in good company here! We need preference voting (i.e. "instant run-off") and equal airtime for viable third, fourth, fifth, and sixth parties, articulating visionary agendas to counterbalance the stodgy-wink-nudge status quo of today's two-party corporate-political establishment. And those are just mechanics; what's really needed at the root of democratic institution-building is a cultural renewal of vibrant and innovative civic consciousness to animate participatory governance and the allocation of public resources for public revitalization and peace.

A lot of liberals these days are pissed off at the Democratic Party. I often say that the best thing the Republicans have going for them is that their opponents are Democrats. Liberals should understand that the Democratic Party has been entrenched in regressive ruling-class power throughout its existence. From my perspective, there's nothing to "take back" because it was never "ours". The Democratic Party hasn't had a populist heyday since the Progressive Era and its abandonment of unions; indeed the Dems have had a heavy hand in shaping the post-WWII Jim Crow era according to its vision of a critical mass of mostly white-middle-class liberals, bought off by enough creature comforts and self-congratulatory rhetoric to maintain a certain order and not raise a stink about crimes against humanity being perpetrated right in front of everyone's face: the brutal shakedown of people of color and the working class; the dramatic upward redistribution of wealth; the sabotage of anti-oppression movements; the savaging of the Earth's natural environment; the violent pursuit of white male supremacist corporatism, militarism, and imperialism. In all these things, Democrats and Republicans have worked side-by-side like a good-cop/bad-cop duo, making a big show of almost-believable disagreements over the exact extent of the ruling-class hustle, then sharing laughs and snifters of warm brandy at the end of a day's work. Any concessions that the US government has made to progressive forces over the decades (e.g. Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Fair Housing Acts) have been just that: concessions, not granted by liberal benevolence but coerced from those in power through extensive and sometimes bloody popular struggle against tooth-and-nail institutional hostility.

So for me right now, Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate making sense at the stump; but he's got a strike against him in my book for being part of the Democratic Party, which desperately needs to be undermined, destabilized, and replaced or fundamentally transformed. As things stand, there's no reason to believe that a Democratic takeover of the executive and legislative branches of US government would precipitate broad social change. The Green Party platform is light-years ahead of the Democrats in its progressive vision and agenda. If Cynthia McKinney runs on the Green ticket, I'll definitely give her candidacy a long close look, maybe even get on board as a volunteer if it seems like a good vehicle to galvanize grassroots interest and organization. It could be an especially potent jumping-off point for a variety of anti-racist feminist populist activism. I know how the mass media and political establishment would portray and disfigure such a campaign, but then most real action takes place outside of the mainstream gaze anyway. I say, go for it, Cynthia, grab the microphone and make 'em squirm!

Comments

[atlasien]

Well that caught my eye!

I've voted for McKinney several times, but the last election I just didn't have the heart. I couldn't stand to vote either against her or for her, so I abstained and watched my current rep Hank Johson win.

I really liked her uncompromising stance on a lot of things, including support of Palestinian rights, but her effectiveness became very low. She stopped living up to the expectations of her constituents. Otherwise, no matter how many attacks launched against her, she would have been re-elected, period. People in Dekalb County are very independent-minded, not to mention majority-minority and progressive-leaning.

I agree she could perhaps accomplish more outside the two-party system.

[skeptical brotha]

Kai,

Wow, you said a mouthfull and it was eloquent and powerful. I am so damn sick of the Democratic Party and its fascist neoliberalism. Randall Robinson said in a discussion of his latest book that there is very little difference between neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism and it is so true. Its all crap and its all fascist. The Green Party is really the alternative that real progressives should be after because the two-party system is so oppressive and unrepresentative.

[Kai]

Atlasien, yeah I hear ya, things did get seriously haywire for McKinney there at the end of her Congressional tenure. I didn't follow all the twists and turns but it seemed clear to me that she got blasted with heavy doses of racism and misogyny, specifically the hatred of Black Women as captured in the rancid reactions to the unbraiding of her hair (gasp!), which appears to be what ended her effectiveness. I don't know if she handled the attacks as graciously and flawlessly as she could have, but I can't really blame her, we all have limits to the abuse we can handle. Anyway, as you suggest it's a new day now, and we'll just see what she can do outside the two-party system. :-)

Skeptical Brotha, thanks for your comment. I'm right there with you and Randall Robinson. The way I'd put it is, neoconservativism is sort of an extreme branch of neoliberalism, distinguished by an almost-gleeful abandonment of any veneer of legitimacy. As long as neoliberal exploitation and oppression maintains a veneer of seeming benevolence, a la Democratic Party, white-middle-class US liberals are cool with the program and will support imperial aggression and all the violence and suffering that neoliberalism produces. But neoconservatives make no effort to disguise the lawlessness of US empire, which greatly upsets the self-image of US liberals.

So as I see it, this is the fundamental disagreement between the two parties: the exact extent to which a veneer of benevolent legitimacy should be maintained while carrying out a neoliberal corporatist-militarist agenda. Republicans want to beat on their scrawny chests and rub everyone's face in US white-male imperialism, while Democrats find that a tad embarrassing and prefer to be a bit smarter about robbing the world blind on a long-term basis. One could say that part of what has really pissed off liberals about the Bushies is that their recklessnes is screwing up the US imperial hustle, which was humming along smoothly under Clinton, illegal wars overseas and racist devastation at home and all, those were the good ol' days. Now Bush has peeled back the lid on What Lurks Beneath The American Facade; many US liberals see it as their job to put that lid firmly back in place and calmly say to the world, "As you were."

[prof black woman]

I often wonder if we would have had some of the greater president's in N. America if there had been the kind of 24 hour media scrutiny, internet, and ridiculous fundraising demands/reporting then like now. I am ill at ease every time the pundits refer to the democratic nominee as locked up, first 2 years in advance and now 1. The general apathy around voting and the unchecked disenfranchisement ushered in under the current regime are further exacerbated by this process of "electability" you discuss here, one can only hope that we do not once again lose the best and the brightest to the savvy and the connected. Thanks Kai for a thoughtful and thought provoking post, as usual.

[Kai]

Prof Black Woman, yeah the pundits with their inevitability/electability traps...it's ridiculous. I don't really know if the best and brightest ever did go into politics, but these days it's sure not happening! Thanks for dropping by. :-)

[Cero]

So I am behind the times: did not realize there was a McKinney/Green possibility. :-)

[Cero]

So I am behind the times: did not realize there was a McKinney/Green possibility. :-)

[kdg]

Great post!