THE DEM’S “RULES” COMMITTEE
How many of you spent a few hours this past Saturday watching the Democrat Party’s “Rules” Committee deciding what to do with the delegates and super delegates from Florida and Michigan? Come on now ….raise your hands. Good. Then you have to be as ambivalent as I am… amused and horrified. In a way, I feel like I watched the unfolding of a modern day Dicken’s novel with Mr. Icky (a truly apt name) knitting the names of Dems who dare defy his candidate into the cloth of deception.
Political parties… are they good or bad for democracy? Our democracy is still only a work in progress. With the grand prize of incredible power, we can always count on the political parties, who took control of our government away from the electorate, to try to rig the game. For many decades, the parties relied on and took advantage of well over 50% of eligible voters’ belief in the “Just Ruler Principle” (Just Ruler says, “I don’t care who the ruler is or how s/he gets there as long as s/he is just.” It is fundamental to explain why so many citizens of non-democratic countries aren’t enthusiastic about installing a democracy.) Blend in data mining and a political party can identify and control its “base” and use its campaign funds to target a relatively small number of swing voters. The Republicans executed that strategy to perfection in 2000 and 2004.
But the unusually large turnout the midyear election of 2006 was repudiation of the Just Ruler Principle; thanks to the inept mistakes and abuses of power by the Bush Administration and the Republican controlled Congress. Many voters now realize that the system cannot be counted to produce a Just Ruler. Furthermore, the unprecedented turnout of this presidential campaign underscores how the Bush years have made the electorate abandon Just Ruler, with the consequence that the party leadership is having trouble controlling the outcome, i.e. McCain and Obama respectively. By god, we, the electorate, may actually be taking some control of the process away from the party hierarchy and we may be getting a little closer to the promise of democracy.
How many of you spent a few hours this past Saturday watching the Democrat Party’s “Rules” Committee deciding what to do with the delegates and super delegates from Florida and Michigan? Come on now ….raise your hands. Good. Then you have to be as ambivalent as I am… amused and horrified. In a way, I feel like I watched the unfolding of a modern day Dicken’s novel with Mr. Icky (a truly apt name) knitting the names of Dems who dare defy his candidate into the cloth of deception.
Political parties… are they good or bad for democracy? Our democracy is still only a work in progress. With the grand prize of incredible power, we can always count on the political parties, who took control of our government away from the electorate, to try to rig the game. For many decades, the parties relied on and took advantage of well over 50% of eligible voters’ belief in the “Just Ruler Principle” (Just Ruler says, “I don’t care who the ruler is or how s/he gets there as long as s/he is just.” It is fundamental to explain why so many citizens of non-democratic countries aren’t enthusiastic about installing a democracy.) Blend in data mining and a political party can identify and control its “base” and use its campaign funds to target a relatively small number of swing voters. The Republicans executed that strategy to perfection in 2000 and 2004.
But the unusually large turnout the midyear election of 2006 was repudiation of the Just Ruler Principle; thanks to the inept mistakes and abuses of power by the Bush Administration and the Republican controlled Congress. Many voters now realize that the system cannot be counted to produce a Just Ruler. Furthermore, the unprecedented turnout of this presidential campaign underscores how the Bush years have made the electorate abandon Just Ruler, with the consequence that the party leadership is having trouble controlling the outcome, i.e. McCain and Obama respectively. By god, we, the electorate, may actually be taking some control of the process away from the party hierarchy and we may be getting a little closer to the promise of democracy.
posted by Ron at 9:08 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home