Some thoughts on "Democide" - Democratic Underground

dave29

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Jan-07-04 03:19 PM
Original message

Some thoughts on "Democide"

I am a proud Dean supporter. For some time, I was a big Clark fan as well. In fact, I was infatuated with the idea of a party-unifying Dean/Clark ticket. To me it seemed like the perfect way to bridge the base and the more "established" or powerful Democrats in the party apparatus. Dean had shown he could build a more powerful machine than they could. He had given them a wake up call - and in the process brought tens of thousands of new people into the process. He tapped resources no one ever considered tapping. And his message was one of centrism balanced with opposition to Bush's War in Iraq. He called-out Bush appeasers. Dean awoke the party establishment - and showed them it was OK to take the fight to Bush, and reminded them we won the last election by 500,000 votes - we couldn't continue to let them pretend they had a mandate. Dean spoke his mind, and had a particularly refreshing quality to him in modern Democrat... Backbone. Say what you will about the other candidates, and their records, Dean stood out for this very reason.

So what has been the response to Dean from both the GOP and the Democratic Party Establishment? "Unelectable!!!". Dean and his supporters, for all their efforts, have been the target of some of the most vicious, venomous, and detestable statements from the likes of people like James Carville for God's sake. Had Carville been sitting in front of me when he called me, as a Dean supporter a "snot-nosed brat", I might have decked him - and asked him what good he's done for the party since getting Clinton elected. What is James Carville doing attacking Democrats? Well, he must support somebody else if he's making those kinds of statements against his own party.

Thinking about all this I had this sudden sinking feeling.

My thoughts turned to Carville's old boss, the Big Dog. I'd let myself believe, as he has said, that he's been sitting this one out. He will not endorse. He's been giving advice to all of the candidates. When he has spoken, he has said we all need to unite after the primaries produce a nominee. The GOP of course, said he was meddling, but I refused to believe it - because, well, it just seemed too Rovian. If Clinton wanted to endorse someone, he would do it, I figured, rather than lurk in the shadows and play kingmaker. That just wouldn't be right.

I had hopes that perhaps Clinton with his near obvious support of Clark was angling for some sort of grand unifying theory for the Democratic Party. It was going to be beautiful. The two "outsider" candidates complimented each other perfectly in my opinion - one with a stellar economic record ("it's the economy, stupid"), a remarkable fresh-faced leader who had never lost an election, and the other, a stellar War-Hero 4-star General, new to the party, but able with his very presense to negate the "Democrats are soft on Defense" argument from Republicans. I didn't know much about Clark, other than that he was a remarkably bright man and, like Bill Clinton, a Rhoades Scholar from Arkansas. I craved the idea of combining Dean and Clark's obvious assets to simply crush the Republican opposition with an innovative, balanced, grassroots-powered, unified ticket.

Reality.

It is not so. And I've accepted that now. The Big Dog is playing kingmaker. Now that Clark has made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he's not gonna be Dean's "Dick Cheney" (yes, Clark is saying Dean is Bush-Lite, in case you missed it) - I've resigned myself to the sad truth... not only do the insiders want to defeat Dean, they don't seem to care what happens to his supporters. You know, the snot-nosed-brats whom have raised over 40 million dollars. There is no out-reach - only insults and attacks. They are doing their best to destroy what Dean has built, attempting to co-opt it, and pretend it is their own.

Watching and getting sucked into the Dean/Clark threads here on DU has been very depressing for me - as I see what could have been - trounced by folks trying to out-bile each other. And then, I read a Clark supporter post just a little while ago - using a civil war analogy to describe Clark's forces crushing Dean's army on the road to ultimate victory. What glorious militarism. The word that popped in my head was "Democide", the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Democrats.

And that pretty much took the cake for me. I know of course, the primaries are bloody. I know we are expected to fall "in-line" once the nominee is chosen. I am perfectly 100% absolutely fine with that. Bush must go, period. But there is something about this anti-Dean movement that is making me angry beyond the simple support of my candidate, and furious at the Big Dog himself.

I am here, now, to call out Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton, why don't you have the balls to publically endorse Wesley Clark?

Clark has most of your old staffers advising him. Clark is using you in a commercial. We all know you want it to be Clark, why not say it. Why hide in the shadows and pretend you do not? Why, when Al Gore, Bill Bradley, and Hundreds of Thousands of others have stood up publically and proudly for Howard Dean - do you insist on pretending impartiality? A majority of Clark supporters even assume that he has your blessing. What is it you are afraid of? You are supposedly the Leader of our Party - and you are playing politics in the shadows. If you think Wesley Clark is the only person who can beat Bush, why not just say it?

I submit, as just some guy from Austin Texas who is sick and tired of our party losing, that you are afraid, like so many others in the party. You have seen your fundraising skills outperformed. You have seen a man come from the tiny state of Vermont and outperform the party apparatus you built. You have seen your vice President, and so many others come out for the other guy. You have sensed the base of your party is tired of losing, and is quite impatient. In a nutshell - and I say this as a man who loves you, and your remarkable skills and accomplishments - you are afraid of taking direct responsibility for the failures of the Democratic Party under your watchful eye.

Of course, taking responsibility has never been your forte. And your pride has gotten our party in trouble before.

All we want is to take the country back from a terrible President. You don't have to agree with us, or even endorse us. Just stop fighting against us in the shadows.