Nearly everybody who reads this, particularly me, is too
young to remember the 1968 riots at the Democratic convention. But there is not
a single event in modern American history; not the assassinations of the 60’s,
nor the Moon Landing, nor the Iranian hostage crisis, nor the fall of
Communism, nor Bush v. Gore, nor 9/11, nor either the Vietnam or Iraq wars;
which define everything in America which happened afterward more clearly than
the 1968 Democratic convention.
As all conservative movements do, the conservatives of the
late 60’s gained traction by promising a return to rule of law. From 1968
onward, Republicans have used variations on the exact same narrative that began
at the 68 convention: “If Democrats cannot keep order within their own party,
how can they keep order in their country, or in the world?’’
How could an event that seems so trivial to us today, like it
happened in a distant solar system, have defined so much history afterward? People
of my age can’t remember a time when Democrats were utterly confident that they
were on the side of progress. The New Deal, the liberation of Europe, the Fair
Deal, civil rights marches, the New Frontier, the Great Society, – this is all abstract history to us. But by
1968, it was utterly clear to many that the Vietnam War was wrong and that
America was on history’s wrong side. After thrity-five years of unbroken moral
certainty in the rightness of their causes, the Democrats faced an agonizing
crisis of identity and were rent into multiple parts. How similar this feels to
today’s republicans… In the case of fifty years ago, however rightly so many
Democrats may have felt to splinter the party as they did, it damned liberals
to nearly half a century of unbroken conservative rule.
Unbroken conservative rule?... Yes, unbroken.
Even when Carter or Clinton was president, theirs were
presidencies whose possibilities were dictated by the demands of conservatives.
They were southern governors, elected because their policies were palatable
enough to the conservative base of the south to siphon off some of their more
moderate voters. For all his later progressivism, Jimmy Carter was a southern
governor quite late to support civil rights. One of his most significant policy
decisions was deregulate the airline industry. The biggest decrease in capital
gains tax came from the Carter administration – 49% to 28% in 1979.
Until Obama, Clinton was the only unambiguously successful
Democratic president for the last half-century. There were far more liberal
gains under Clinton than under Carter, but also far more liberal compromises. In
order to pass the Brady bill that allowed for background checks on people who
bought handguns, he had to sign two other crime bills which allowed for sixty
new death penalty offenses, eliminated Pell Grants for prison inmate education,
mandated that communications companies modify all their equipment so that
federal agencies would be able to monitor whatever they wanted. To pass the Lobbying Disclosure Act which forced
lobbyists to report their activities, he had to also sign the Interstate
Commerce Commission Termination Act, which got rid of a useful organization to
regulate business. The list of laws Clinton passed and signed goes on and on,
and they inevitably follow a pattern of a major liberal gain followed by a nearly
as major conservative compromise. This – and impeachment – was the price of
success.
(Barbara Jordan… what a shame that America wouldn’t elect a
lesbian black president forty years ago.)
I was ten years old when Bill Clinton was nominated for
president in New York, and as I was riveted to the coverage from my parents’ bedroom
- vaguely but unmistakably thrilled by the sweep of an American history still
beyond my understanding - I vividly recall their astonishment that Democrats
were having a convention that went off without a hitch.
We like to pretend that modern conventions mean nothing –
that the candidates are already elected through the primary process, it’s all
just empty theater, and have absolutely no bearing on what happens in an
election. In a certain way, this is correct. It is utterly empty theater, but
because it’s empty theater, it’s all the more revealing than it ever was in the
days of fraught, uncertain, conventions. By watching, we now know the
priorities of each party, and we now know their competence at enacting their
priorities. Because of the Republican convention, we now know that Republicans aren’t
competent enough to stop an old man from yelling at a chair for fifteen minutes
in primetime. And by watching yesterday’s convention, we know that Democrats
are finally ready: Not only to believe again in the moral rightness of their
party, but to persuade the country at large of that moral rightness.
Something miraculous is happening on television this week –
a deliverance for which liberals have longed for half a century. The
Republicans have already made their case for maintaining a conservative status
quo, it was a bad case, and it’s now entrusted for the homestretch to an
incompetent candidate. Republicans still may win, but it's not bloody likely now. It is the liberals’ turn to make their case, and Democrats
can now articulate it with a force unseen since the days of John F. Kennedy.
What is amazing about this convention is that for the first
time in my lifetime, in the lifetime of my whole generation, there is a liberal
cause being articulated on primetime television - it's not being articulated perfectly; there are some errors in facts here and there which you can find on any factchecking sight, but it is a much greater case than conservatives have ever made. Every liberal should tune in
immediately, because an unapologetic case is currently being made on national
television for the benefits of government – for corporate regulation, for
collective bargaining, for conservationism, for investment in education, for immigration
amnesty, for women’s equality, for American labor – and it’s being made for the
first time in our lifetimes. It’s being made better and more articulately than
we’ve ever heard it, and made with the confidence that Americans are listening.
If you’ve wondered when the case would be made these past four
years for liberal principles, turn on the TV tonight for Elizabeth Warren and
Bill Clinton, and all night tomorrow night. The leash has been taken off.
Nearly every major Democratic party spokesperson is on television instead of
Obama operatives, finally finding the perfect moment to take the liberal case
to the nation and speak their minds as liberal politicians have not in an
entire generation. The Democratic party is a true party again. When will liberals
stand up for themselves?
Now.
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