Democratic Conversation

The Democratic presidential hopefuls staged their first debate, and it was not Thursday Night at the Fights. It seems they want to present a more-or-less amicable style to political campaigning against which the American voters can see a stable Democratic Party that has differences, but is not fractious to the point where people say “these nuts need Prozac” merely to stand on the same stage together.

By this approach—and I must admit it is too early to say that this approach will last—the Dems can certainly also present themselves as holding a sense of reality which George W. Bush and his White House has never shown, and who continue to try to drown out any mention of sanity from reasonable Americans, the Congress, the media, the rest of the world’s nations, and the Republican presidential contenders (who’ve tried their best to not mention his name).

At the debate Thursday night, what seemed most obvious was that both Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton did not want to say anything off center or new. In this, they succeeded. And for this, they melted into the background, almost disappearing behind—to my sense of outrage at American government these years—the needed reality language demonstrated by Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Kucinich pulls no punches and did not Thursday night. I like this guy. He wields a big stick. He says what most Americans, I think, need and want to hear: the truth—impeach Dick Cheney; get the troops home; end this war-crimes-worthy war an American president started; the failed democratic experiment which is Iraq was doomed from the beginning because of religious hatreds. Kucinich is unelectable because he speaks truth to voters, who are so fucking scared of everything, one-third of the nation wants to kill anything that moves, while another one-third wants to make New Age nice-nice.

Bill Richardson has a style and command of the English language that breathes life into political language. Not to create new jargon, but to say what’s on his mind based on the evidence in front of his eyes. He’s also unelectable to more than half the nation, pretty much for the same reason Kucinich scares the be-Jesus into religious conservatives (i.e., half the American population).

The other four contending debaters stood somewhere between the Obama-Clinton mindset and the Kucinich-Richardson intervention duo. So what’s a voter to do?

As we’ve seen, centrism strikes a natural tone come election day. Bill Clinton got elected as a centrist, and his policies pretty much stayed there, but not necessarily for lack of trying to do something for the average and below average American. George W. Bush tried to play a centrist in the 2000 campaign, and while few liberals bought into it, the media pretty much let him get away with that, and the conservatives new they had a snake in the grass waiting to hatch eggs of destruction if Bush got into the White House. He did, and he did.

Now the pieces are scattered, and the country is again in massive debt, murdering innocents abroad while neglecting the real dangers to the nation, is seen as a government that tortures people and disallows civil rights, has denuded Americans of many constitutional rights, and whose economy is in the toilet even as the stock market surges (for this anomaly, you need to understand that while the stock market is supposed to reflect the state of the nation’s economy, what really matters is how many people are out of work or are working, what types of incomes they make, how much they spend, and how much they save, and the nation’s debt level compared to trade imbalance; when you add these up, there is no correlation in fact with stock market numbers and the solvency of a nation). The country keeps rolling along, but that is more out of inertia than anything else because companies still open in the morning, collect their employees for eight or ten hours, and disgorge goods and services. Hell, even Iraq does this despite car bombs ripping people apart every day. But America is not Iraq—at least not yet—and so should function as sane country with energy and drive.

With all of this and more on the plates (and palates) of American voters, do you see why they always go for the mostcalmvoice instead of the fresh-ideas and this-is-what-needs-to-be-done voices? Thomas Jefferson did not trust government. Benjamin Franklin did not trust government. Both wrote about the citizens’ need to turn over old government for new government every seven years. Why? Because that’s how long it takes for tyranny to take control.

America is nearly 231 years along in its democratic experiment. What are you going to do to see that it continues?