The year was 1992. My computer booted up DOS, I had an external modem, and my very crude Unix skills allowed me to access the "electronic mail".
More to the point, however, I turned 18 in September of that year. On the evening of the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, I found myself at Ybor City's Ritz Theater in Tampa, Florida listening to the band Cracker. At some point during the show, the band's vocalist announced that Bill Clinton had been elected the next President of the United States. "We did a good thing today," he intoned. Yes we did. And even though my first vote for President counted for naught in the Electoral College scheme (Florida went for Bush 41 that night), I was swept up in the celebration, the dawn of the go-go 90s.
That was the last election I registered for as a Democrat and the last time I voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. Until 2004, that is.
Why did I wander? What prompted me to return? How can the Democratic Party keep me from leaving again?
My political travelogue continues below the fold...
I had moved from East Tennessee, where I was raised, to St. Petersburg, Florida in the fall of 1992 in order to attend college. Once there, I immediately sought out the Campus Democrats and dove into the work of campaigning for the Clinton/Gore ticket: registering voters, hanging campaign signs, helping with phonebanks. My mother and father were both lifelong Democrats. When I was a junior in high school, I had the honor of meeting Senator Al Gore at a statewide Model United Nations competition. His address to the gathered students
inspired me in a way that no other person had before. He was a passionate speaker, extolling the importance of protecting the environment, of working for collective security, of ensuring that care, aid, and understanding is available even for the least of us. After his speech, I was lucky enough to shake his hand and stammer out how much his speech had affected me. I also got him to sign my copy of
Earth in the Balance, which still occupies a prominent position on my bookshelf today.
So it was pretty much a no-brainer figuring out which presidential candidates would receive my virgin 18 year old vote. I voted straight "D" down the ticket, relying on party loyalty to decide the crucial question of who the next state commissioner for agriculture or state House representative would be. And on January 20, 1993, I watched and cheered as we shut the door on 12 years of Reagan/Bush.
But alas, my optimism was tempered by the events of the next two years. It wasn't the scandals that disturbed me - Travelgate, Haircutgate, Whitewatergate, Vince Fostergate - no, these were obviously the petty distractions that kept the administration from the otherwise important business of governing. It was the fact that very little seemed to have gotten accomplished. I mean sure, the right to privacy and choice was now safe from the zealots who had declared a culture war in Houston at the RNC (all right, that was a big something that got accomplished), and sure, homosexuals could now serve in the military, so long as they didn't act like homosexuals. But none of the really big stuff that Clinton sold me on in `92 got done. Both houses of Congress and POTUS were of the same party, they were the good guys, but not one goddamned big policy issue got resolved. Not one. Health care reform, in particular, was buried by an avalanche of medical insurance lobbying.
To add insult to injury, then came 1994. I had moved to a new address early that year, and when I re-registered to vote, I decided to conduct my own little one-man protest against the Democratic Party. Because they had let me down for two years, I would register as an Independent. That would show them my displeasure. But I was still blue in my heart, and it was another year of voting for Dems down the ticket, made even more satisfying by the opportunity to vote against and defeat another, albeit younger, Bush (you know, the "smarter" son) who ran for FL governor. Other than that, that day in November was an unmitigated disaster. Two years of promise, two years of hope for a government that would actually live up to the lofty ideals of liberty and equality (remember, I was 20 and still fairly naïve) were stampeded by the angry pachyderms led by that sneering asshole Newt and his Contract on America. And thus, in my eyes, began the DLC-run Democratic Party's drift to the right in earnest.
And at this point, I'd had enough. I was disgusted. The Republicans were still either way too rich and/or way too loony, and my faith in the Democrats, the party that I was born into, that was my birthright, had been betrayed.
I'd think twice before ever voting for another Democrat.
1995 saw a brief love affair between myself and capital "L" Libertarianism. But I'll be honest - it was all about legalizing weed. Sure, I tried to rationalize voluntary environmental self-regulation and privatized sewers, but deep down, I never really bought it. I just wanted to take a bonghit and not have to worry about the police knocking down the door. I graduated in the spring of 1996 and, having come to intensely dislike the Sunshine State after four years, headed west, moving about as far away from Florida as I could without leaving the lower 48, to Eugene, OR. Because pot was practically legal there, it became a non-issue, and I could return my focus to matters of substance (pardon the pun).
I was introduced to Oregon politics in the fall of 1996. Where Southern politics had maintained, on a very superficial level, a stately decorum, Oregon was a rough-and-tumble scene populated by wild characters, and where a notoriously independent-minded citizenry had the right to make their own damn laws. I was introduced to Congressman-for-Life Peter DeFazio that fall - a populist Democrat for whom I have never regretted casting a vote. I also met Gary Kutcher, who was running for U.S. Senate on the Pacific-Green ticket. Gary talked a lot about "the left and right wings of the corporate party," which appealed to my political sentiments; but he also spoke a little too often about the dissolution of the United States into smaller nations. The man was full on about Ecotopia. Being a third party candidate usually spells unelectable. Gary put the exclamation point on that role. Besides, a tight race between two millionaires, one of whom was much more intolerable than the other, saw me cast a futile vote for Democratic candidate Tom Bruggere (who lost to our now current Senator Gordon Smith).
In the presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was trysting with Dick Morris that year, staking out an increasingly shallow center with meaningless feel good propositions. The candidate who had been so exciting four years earlier, who had been so different and promising, was now another corporate suit talking out of his neck. And he was kicking Bob Dole's ass blindfolded with both hands tied behind his bacck. During the fall campaign, I had been working for the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG) helping in an effort to expand Oregon's bottle deposit law. The folks I worked with were hardcore Naderites, and the more I read and learned about Nader, the more I liked him. He was the candidate that I naively had thought Bill Clinton was in '92. He was only on the ballot in a few states that year, Oregon being one of them. Clinton was in no danger of losing, and if the Pacific-Green POTUS candidate received 5% of the Oregon vote, the party was given ballot access for the next four years. It was an easy decision to vote for Nader. An 8% showing, the highest in the nation that year, afforded the Pacific-Greens a certain level of stability and generated some impressive growth in this particular third party.
Events in the Northwest after that election pushed me even farther away from the Democratic Party. The passage of the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994 and the salvage logging rider in the summer of 1996 threatened to lead to the utter annihilation of the remaining old growth forests of Western Oregon. My reliance on the Democrats (and Al Gore) as stewards of the environment had been a catastrophic mistake, as anyone who's witnessed the patchwork of clearcuts in the Pacific Northwest can attest, and I was pushed into open semi-rebellion against the U.S. government. I spent a great deal of my non-wage earner time in 1997 working on forest defense, running supplies for tree sitters, and actually spending a few nights sleeping on a platform or in cargo netting a hundred feet up in the forest canopy.
1998 witnessed the intolerable deterioration of my working conditions on the job, and I became active in the labor movement, helping to organize a union at my workplace and becoming a volunteer organizer with SEIU. I shunned the 1998 election. Who cared who won? Certainly not a jaded me. Besides, the battle wasn't going to be won with politics - that would inevitably slow us down as power hungry politicians co-opted our message in order to garner our support, only to shut us out once their positions had been consolidated. No, the war would be won with direct action - fighting the timber companies in the forest and the boss at the workplace.
I found myself in Seattle at the end of November, 1999, participating in the WTO protests, peacefully taking over the streets with an unimaginable coalition. During the day, I listened to speeches by a number of near-prominent Democratic politicians on the importance of trade policy. The political statements of N30 that I heard at Husky Stadium "talked me off the ledge," so to speak - I eventually re-embraced the importance of voting and political participation in government thanks to the impassioned speakers I heard that morning. But the violence that engulfed us that afternoon and evening served to solidify my hatred of corporate America and its agents, Bill Clinton, the rest of his "centrist" DLC cronies, and the Republicans. While I know there is no direct connection, I will always blame Bill Clinton for the potential long-term consequences the evening of N30 may have had on my health (a story for another diary or comment).
When the 2000 elections rolled around, there was no doubt in my mind as to who would receive my vote for POTUS. I would again vote for Ralph Nader. Al Gore had sold me out a long time ago, and he only confirmed that when he selected Joe Lieberman as his running mate - a contrived appeal to centrism at best. Despite the begging and pleading of many progressives, I followed my principles and cast my vote for Nader. And I'll be honest with you - I still stand by that vote. I voted for the candidate who at that time truly represented the values in which I believed. I did not cost Al Gore the election. He carried Oregon, albeit narrowly, and, anyway you slice it, Al Gore won the 2000 election. Period.
Besides, I reasoned, it wouldn't take people long to figure out that Bush 43 was a grade A, world-class dingbat. And boy was I ever right. The Bush follies of the summer of 2001, coupled with the Jeffords defection, convinced me that we'd have four years of the status quo (things wouldn't get any worse, I'd tell myself), scads of material for the late night chatfests to keep us all in stitches, and in 2004, Bush would go the way of James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore, a minor hiccup in American history.
Unfortunately... well, we all know the rest of the story. Gone was the idiotic man-child we'd been laughing at, replaced by a vengeful Savior of the Free World ready to use the might that his god had gathered at his disposal to smite those who would do harm to the (narrowly-defined evangelical Christian) citizens of the United States. Well, the idiotic man-child was still there, but was cloaked by a PR machine which touted his righteousness, infallibility, and invincibility. And our long nightmare began. The Democratic Party's collapse in the 2002 election only deepened the fear and loathing. I again wondered, what was the use of voting? The hideous apparition of a one-party totalitarian state loomed over me. The massive world-wide protests in the winter of 2003 did nothing to diminish this specter, and we were plunged into the bloody conflict in Iraq.
But then, something curious happened. Al Gore, last seen as a bearded hermit taking refuge at a solitary mountaintop monastery, re-emerged in New York and started delivering scathing critiques of the Bushies' foreign policy. He was speaking with passion, with clarity, with fire. He was speaking like the man I met in 1990. Simultaneously, voices of opposition, of real opposition, began to emerge in the field of Democratic candidates for POTUS. I started paying attention. And as my friends, colleagues and peers became involved in the various campaigns in the summer and fall of 2003, I actually became excited about the Democratic field. The long-missing debate about the heart and soul of the Democratic Party was unfolding before us. Inspired, I re-registered as a Democrat for the first time since 1992.
As for the candidates, I was skeptical of Howard Dean's centrism as governor, but damn if he couldn't light a fire under folks as he ripped the Bushies a new collective asshole for their illegal war. My heart, however, was promised to the short, swingin' single Vegan from Cleveland, Dennis Kucinich. Yeah, I know, unelectable, but my wife found him oddly sexy, and he fully embraced my political values and was not afraid to speak truth to power. And, by the time the primaries rolled around to little ol' Oregon in May, Kerry had sealed up the nomination and Kucinich was the only candidate still in the running. Kerry was still the corporate man, so I voted to make sure that Oregon sent at least a small grassroots progressive contingent to occupy that prime swing-state real estate on the floor in Boston.
It took awhile for me to warm up to Kerry. He had a passionate and angry electorate ready to storm the barricades behind him, and I think he took too long in setting out a truly clear and principled alternative to the Bush agenda. And I think it was a mistake, a hokey mistake, to rely upon his "war hero" status to beat Bush. But towards the end of September, he began to hit his stride. His speech at the Cooper Union in New York critiquing the war was brilliant. He made Bush look the fool in three debates. I was not only a registered Democrat, I was hitting the pavement with ACT through my neighborhood, phonebanking with my union to make sure that our members had mailed in their ballots, and standing out on busy intersections during rush hour with dozens of fellow partisans promoting our Democratic candidates. And as the days shortened, the leaves fell, and November approached, Oregon shed its swing-state status and became solidly blue.
All of us know what the morning of November 10 felt like. The inability to rise out of bed. The shocked faces with downcast eyes wandering on the streets. The massive hangover many of us experienced from the previous night's drowning of sorrows. This was it, I figured. We leftists would now turn on each other like a pack of rats in a confined space.
The DLC, of course, led the way, eager to claim vindication and to begin their purge. The rest of us, however, didn't seem to follow the DLC example (and I hope we'll never follow their example again). We'd built something truly amazing over the last year and a half, and we weren't going to let it slip away. With the new year, a courageous Senator Boxer joined with the House Congressional Black Caucus in challenging the tainted results of the Ohio election. We got one of our own elected as the chair of the DNC. And as the last couple of months have shown, the Democratic Party, far from being an ineffective shadow of its former self, has learned how to stand together and act as a real opposition party. Senator Reid, about whom I had my doubts when he was elected majority leader, has shown some brilliant leadership. And the grass- and netroots are as engaged as ever.
Obviously, it's too soon to predict the outcome of these recent events and what they portend for 2006 and beyond, but I'm taking heart in what is occurring now. The Bush mystique has evaporated and exposed the Bush mistake. We've stymied him so far on Social Security deform. More and more Americans are beginning to see through the blatant bullshit that was peddled to dupe us into supporting his vanity war in Iraq. His leadership on the "GWOT" is being exposed as a farce. After some tentative first steps, there's a unified opposition to the extremists that are being crammed down the public's throat. The mask is off the Republican Party, and the more the wingnuts collect their due from the devil's deal they made with the Republicans, the faster the wheels come off that wagon. So for now, I'll be cautiously optimistic.
Democrats, however, should not assume that they've earned my lifelong loyalty. They've come a long way in winning me back, but my vote is not to be taken for granted ever again. They must stay connected to the grassroots of the party. They must continue to advocate for the working people of this country and oppose the corporate agenda of the Republicans and the DLC. They must stand up for the environment, stand up for the unions, stand up for the disadvantaged at home and abroad, stand up for fair trade, and stand up for peace.
After years of lonely wandering around the political landscape, I'm truly elated to have come back home to re-discover the Democratic Party that I had idealized as a young man, to be involved with a passionate group of people and leaders who share a common vision for our nation. To the leaders and activists who have been so instrumental in beginning the difficult process of restoring the party of FDR, I give you my heartfelt thanks. And while I know that little fights are bound to happen within any household, please be sure not treat me in such a way that I run away again - or even in such a way that my support for the party becomes tepid. I believe in a progressive future for America, and I want to be involved with a party that passionately embraces and fights for that same vision. To betray that vision again does our party - and our country - a great disservice.