It seems my last post has raised some eyebrows, suggesting that I don’t care about politics. What a strange conclusion. What is the valuable lesson to be gleaned from the Tea Party? Through their militancy they’ve been able to push the Republicans to the right. In their unwillingness to compromise and their capacity to organize and put forward candidates, they’ve forced establishment Republicans to the right. Their ideology is terribly wrong, but their tactics are right. And here I’m not saying anything that Zizek hasn’t said about the Act or Badiou about truth procedures.
At present Democrats are holding the American left hostage. For the last three decades the argument has been the same: ” yeah we suck, but if you don’t vote for us the Republicans will take power!”. To this day, Nader is used as a constant cautionary tale for the 2000 elections… Despite the fact that far more Democrats went over to vote for Bush than for Nadar. The result of this Stockholm syndrome is that American leftists end up continuously put Democrats into power that promote neo-liberal, pro-corporate agendas. Short of violent revolution, how is it possible to change this dynamic?
I don’t claim to be saying anything profound or original here, but so long as progressive votes can be taken for granted there’s no hope of change. It will be the same old story: we donate our labor, campaign contributions and votes only to have all that work usurped by a plutocratic political establishment that assumes office. The only way to change this dynamic is through the formation of political forms (in large numbers) that are willing to assume risk and loss. This means 1) refusing to vote for and support establishment candidates that will promote a corporate agenda, and 2) putting forward our own candidates that might not win.
This is the brilliance of the Tea Party. I doubt they expect a nut like Christine O’donnell to win, but while they might lose the battle they win the war. They win the war by forcing the Republican establishment to become more conservative and by very likely forcing them to put up a conservative presidential candidate. They are thus more likely to get more of the sort of legislation they would like to see supported. So how do leftists go about doing that? They don’t do it by getting behind existing Democrats. With health insurance reform and the financial reform we’ve already seen that Obama and Rahm are more than willing to sell us out. So long as we don’t put the fear of god in them none of this will change. But that fear of god can only be produced if people are willing to organize in large enough numbers and assume risk, giving up on the politics of incrementalism and compromise that perpetually moves American politics to the right. Again, nothing original here but it still is worth repeating.
September 20, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Glad to see you’re back up and running, Levi. Hope you’re feeling better, and I’m sure you’ll pull out of your funk in no time. Just wanted to say that I agree wholeheartedly with what you’re saying here. The Tea Party is an excellent example, and should be a lesson for us all – not in their political position, but in their tactics. Unfortunately, it’s also heavily funded by the corporate powers-that-be, and I don’t see anything like that happening with the left any time soon. That just means that we’ll have to make do with our own initiative and power – which, once mobilized, can be considerable (I’m thinking of the Obama election, for example).
I also agree with your assessment of third parties. I used to be a Nader naysayer, but changed my mind in the last 7 or so years. The politics in America is so shifted to the right, that we need some strong left candidates to pull things back every now and again. I didn’t vote for Obama – I voted for the Green party candidate, Cynthia McKinney. Maybe we’ll start to see some backlash in the coming years as the ultra-conservatives fail once again to give us the world we want. We’ll see – but don’t lose hope.
September 20, 2010 at 3:34 pm
This is why I’ll always hold a torch for Kucinich.
September 20, 2010 at 4:04 pm
I also find myself nodding in agreement to many of these points–but I also think that it is important to keep in mind that the Tea Party is a relatively young phenomenon and it is not yet clear what its long term impact on the Republican party will be. It seems at least possible that in pushing party representatives further and further to the right and revving up increasingly extremist discourse in highly public contexts, it might alienate many moderate republicans who are distressed by its radicalism and lunacy. This might lead to a significant fissure in the Republican party, perhaps even leading to an outright split. So far the Tea Party has been operating under the Republican umbrella–as of yet they are not a third party. But in the event that they become one (a possibility about which there has already been some speculation in the media), they might actually weaken the American right by dividing it between moderates and radicals.
But of course, there are also terrifying elements to the latter scenario. A radicalized right-wing nationalist minority party with xenophobic and racist tendencies operating in conditions of financial collapse… sound familiar?
September 20, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Yeah Aaron,
I’ve wondered about all these things as well. With respect to your first point, it might very well be the case that the conservatives are radicalizing themselves out of existence. On the face of things that appears good, but the problem is that this might lead to even more neo-liberal economic policy among the democrats as they become the “moderate republican party”. My take is that the democratic elected officials profoundly misread the American political situation. They look at the Tea Party and conclude that the United States is largely conservative or center-right. They thus tilt to the right in their policies. My view is that these reactionary movements have become so powerful in recent decades largely because government abandoned the working and middle class, abolishing programs that worked for them. As a consequence, large swaths turned towards religious culture issues and hatred directed at different groups. And here, of course, I’m cynical. It’s not merely that democrats have misread the political situation, but also that they’re in the pockets of the corporations. So long as they were out of power they could safely jeer at the conservatives and portray themselves as friends of the working and middle class. Once they got in power they said “oh shit, we have to keep our corporate donors happy and somehow enact policy that isn’t merely directed at the benefit of Wall Street.” So far they haven’t, in my view, squared the circle.
As for your second paragraph, I agree, it’s terrifying. Given the role that religion and reactionary elements play in our politics, I suspect things would be extremely ugly if there were a financial collapse or major energy or ecocatastrophe.
September 20, 2010 at 7:34 pm
The Tea Party seems to have strange similarities to William Jennings Bryan style populism, which used to be seen as a core constituency of the left, but hasn’t been a major part of the Democratic Party for decades. Like Bryan, it’s successfully deploying a mixture of cultural/religious traditionalism, anti-elite sentiment, and anti-Wall-Street sentiment. It is pretty strange to hear the right using rhetoric like “no bailouts for bankers” and “Main Street, not Wall Street” more successfully than the left.
September 20, 2010 at 10:59 pm
I think the effect of the tea party is vastly overstated. I also think that the movement itself is a broad populist movement and one should be careful reading too much into particular individuals who’ve managed to ride the movement train too much. Cleraly the establishment isn’t happy, but I think the movement itself is pretty incholate in its actual policy aims.
While the movement might push things to the right, more likely by nominating candidates who aren’t so centrist it may actually have the effect of diluting the far right overall due to electability issues. If a lot of tea candidates lose come November look for there to be a huge backlash. I also think the tea party is at the moment defined by what they don’t like with superficial views. To become a serious movement it’ll have to engage with issues which it thus far hasn’t done. It’s also, I feel, largely a movement tied to fear and anger over Wall Street and a perception (perhaps largely correct) that Washington (both Republican and Democrat) is more concerned with bailing out Wall Street than real fiscal responsibility or concern with the individual. When the recession is over I rather suspect the tea party will be as relevant as Ross Perot. At best right now they can play the spoiler.
September 21, 2010 at 1:14 am
I’m as concerned about the extremism of the Tea Party as the next person, but I don’t see them as being “radically” different than the Republican party in general. Most of it is unbridled GOP agenda stuff about welfare, socialism, race and xenophobia that have been off the table in terms of speaking about hem forthrightly for years. To me, these folks are just being honest about their hatred and the ignorant policies they want to implement because of it.
I’m only going to quote a small paragraph from the following excellent post by Glenn Greenwald, which can be found here in its entirety: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/16/tea_party/index.html.
Here’s a representative passage of what I mention above:
“For as long as I can remember — decades — I’ve been hearing that the new incarnation of the GOP is far more radical and dangerous than anything that preceded it, and it tragically threatens to banish the previously Reasonable, Serious, Adult version of that party. That was certainly said about Ronald Reagan, as he argued for the elimination of the Department of Education, brought in cabinet officials like Ed Meese and Jim Watt, catered to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and nominated people like Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. That was certainly said about the Gingrich-led GOP of the 90s, with their Contract with America, obsessions with law-enforced morality, and impeachment of Bill Clinton. And it was said over and over about the Bush/Cheney era that ushered in the Iraq War, the torture regime, broad executive lawlessness, and an endless roster of vapid, know-nothing ideologues and religious fanatics in the highest positions.
Given all that, I’d really like to hear what it is about Christine O’Donnell, or Sharron Angle, or any of these other candidates that sets them apart from decades of radical right-wing elected officials who came before them? They seem far more similar to me than different. When was this idealized era of GOP Adult Reasonableness? “
September 21, 2010 at 11:16 pm
All parties have to cater to various wings, some of which are more embarrassing than others. I’m sure many Democrats feel the same way about folks like Maxine Waters as Republicans do about their wackos. (I’m not going to include Christine O’Donnell as I think she has zero chance of being elected. Waters is actually in the mainstream of the Democratic party – I view her more akin to former Senator Stevens of Alaska.
September 22, 2010 at 5:04 am
Now just how exactly have they won the war? By handing primaries to new jacks and imbeciles? Delaware was handed to the Dems prior to any of the embarrassing stories which surfaced simply because she’s too far right of center. Karl Rove bemoaned her win on Fox News the day it happened since it was principal to taking back congress. The Tea Party may be a popular engine for angry republicans but they’re clueless when it comes to how politics actually work. There is a world of difference between an unexperienced politician who exploits anti-establishment trends and a politician whose been re-elected for decades(i.e. Maxine Waters @Clark); mainly one can get things done and the other is a waste of a seat. Pushing the Republicans to the right with populist ire and value voting might look sexy(*gag*) in the news but is it really challenging/changing the inert structures of our government?
September 22, 2010 at 11:13 am
They win the war by aggregatively pushing the republican party further to the right.
September 22, 2010 at 10:04 pm
The political parties are factions who are concerned with power, not the constitutional governance.
But the Tea Parties are worse. They are funded by billionaires, they have their own media in Fox news and Limbaugh, and they have a political party, the Republicans. Glenn Greenwald at salon.com makes the point that they are promoting Republican themes so they are somewhat to the right, but still in the Republican orbit.
Agree with what you say about the democrats and how most of them are aligned with the oligarchy and the military.
And the democrats are using fear, Nadar, Tea Party, etc., rather than what they are for. No wonder there is an enthusiasm gap.