Puttin’ Out the Bone

“America has become more conservative! That’s why Bush is president and both houses are Republican.”

Wrong.

“Look at Ohio. Taft is governor. Both state houses are Republican. In fact, a Republican holds every statewide office. I’m telling you, America is settling into long-term political conservatism.”

Still wrong.

“Oh, yeah?

What about Hamilton County? Except for Democrat/Republican Auditor Dusty Rhodes and Democrat Commissioner Todd Portune, all of the county administrative office holders are Republicans.”

Doesn’t matter. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

“Then why are Republicans even running a full slate of candidates for Cincinnati City Council this fall? The fact is they smell a sweet wind sweeping the land that will even get them control of an urban center. Face it: America is now a conservative country. The days of FDR, Kennedy, even Clinton are over.”

One last time. Wrong!

Let’s start at the beginning. Republicans are tools of big business and the moneyed elite in America. It’s always been that way and always will be. Simply watch a Republican National Convention. Look for the faces of color, the regular people. They’re not there. Instead you’d think your channel finder landed on a cable cast of the opening of a Picasso exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Democrats, on the other hand, fight back against the forces of the corporate oligarchy. Democrats believe a role of government is to keep the game fair by setting some rules.

Republicans like the game rule-free because with their money and institutional power they win the game. So they say we should get government out of our lives. That’s a little like the big ranchers in the old Wild West saying, “We don’t need a sheriff; we’ll enforce justice ourselves.”

Now let’s jump to the middle, the truthful middle. Republicans are kicking my party’s ass all across this land. Sure, George W. Bush lost the popular vote. But then he won the White House because Al Gore couldn’t win his own state or a few others that should have been “gimmees.”

Ohio has been a one-party state for over a decade, partly because we lost our message and didn’t develop a game-ready bench. Hamilton County is a political amusement park for the elephant party. And on and on and on. Clearly, among the people who vote, conservative Republican philosophy rules.

Now to the strong ending. If you lined up every voting-age American and had a short conversation with each one about what concerns them and what kind of leaders they want, they would overwhelmingly describe a Democrat.

Let’s break it down even more. Generally speaking, the suburban people would love the Republican philosophy while urban and rural people would tend to agree with Democrats on core ideas about economic and social justice.

But the reason Republicans win these days is that their voter base performs at nearly full power every Election Day. It’s disciplined and efficient. They show up and vote like it’s a Sunday obligation.

Democrats, on the other hand, the masses, make up a political sleeping giant. But that giant has given up on politicians. It stays away from ballot boxes, political commercials and voter registration drives because it sees no connection between its struggles and current rhetoric. We political operatives beg the giant, shame it and sometimes even masquerade as Republicans to try to awaken it, all to no avail.

But we really do mean it when we say everyone should vote. For we know that in any election, including in Hamilton County, if everyone eligible to vote did, we’d win.

At present, about half of America’s adults register to vote. Then on election day, about half of them actually vote. So only about 25 percent of America decides who runs every level of the country. And those 25 percent come largely from the rich and suburban classes.

Never believe a Republican officeholder when he or she says Americans should register and vote. If that happened, they’d end up on the lecture circuit with Newt Gingrich, and they know it. I even heard the radical economist Walter Williams, subbing for the radical talk show host Rush Limbaugh, say the other day that only taxpaying Americans should have the right to vote, that by being poor you lost your say in American policy since you weren’t a “shareholder.”

Republicans know all that I’m saying. That’s why they abhor election-day voter registration plans, even ones with air-tight protections against voter fraud. That’s why they publicly say a Jerry Springer candidacy for the U.S. Senate would be a joke but privately they admit his unpredictable effect on turnout scares them. That’s why they redraw every voting boundary they can to dilute the potential power of rural and urban people with a strong flow of suburban population, just in case someone or something might activate working people.

Will someone come along who can articulate issues that would animate this sleeping giant of a vote? Someone who would cause huge numbers of people to finally do what they haven’t? To get faith where none has been? I don’t know.

But my Democrat Party’s best shot is to regain its soul and publish a creed that is progressive and populist, to talk to working and poor people of all races, to represent them and earn their trust.

The alternative is to accept the current electorate and then tailor our Democratic issues to them — to try to out-Republican the Republicans.

Politically speaking, maybe we do have a battle between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Maybe those who say we shouldn’t frame things up as a political class war are simply trying to drop a veil over reality to serve their own interests.

Maybe the class war has been going on for years. Maybe now is the time to lock, load and engage.

This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2003.