The Clinton campaign’s response to the Ferraro flap provides another indication that the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm.

One who considers both remaining Democratic candidates classic examples of the DLC strategy for destroying the party may attempt to innoculate himself against ism charges by pointing to past votes for Presidential tickets headed by a black man, Ron Daniels, and seconded by a woman, Geraldine Ferraro.

I remain a big fan of Daniels, the kind of guy who, in a (subscription only) conversation with Lewis Lapham, Nader, Kevin Phillips and others, might say:

We need a transformative vision, one advancing the notion that America can be more than it is today for average, ordinary people. The Democratic Party should advocate a program of basic rights, like the one enjoyed by many social democratic countries in Europe. Americans really feel that they have the best standard of living in the world. They don’t, but they don’t know they don’t. Virtually every nation in Western Europe has universal health care. In Sweden, Norway, and Holland, the social benefits are so generous that poverty has been practically eliminated. Wages in most European countries now outpace wages in the United States.

If I remember correctly, back in August 2004 the dollar was still worth more than the euro; so presumably he was talking about value, not exchange rates.

My vote for Ron Daniels was the first time I was really happy casting a ballot for President, and I was still pleased the next day. That experience molded my judgment: I felt better about myself for voting for the candidate I really thought was the best. Indeed, I’d vote for someone running on his platform again.

1. Cut the defense budget in half next year.
2. Spend half the savings on retooling the weapons factories and retraining the defense workers, so the companies and individuals don’t get screwed by the switchover, and end up building stuff we actually want to use.
3. With the other half, rebuild the national infrastructure.

I wasn’t naïve enough to think that the American plutocracy would let such a program be implemented. But I still think it would work, in the sense of accomplishing all reasonable goals. It’s just a question of when we decide to move forward.

The reason we don’t do it, of course, is that “all reasonable goals” is an incomplete set: it doesn’t include the normal focus of American communal actions. The basis of our economic system, and thus of our political and social systems as well, is a particularly feral variation of the capitalist mythology. The skeleton seems to have been adopted in toto from Veblen. To help developing countries reach our exalted heights, we talk up free-market solutions we assiduously avoided, as William Greider documents.

Our economic methodology encourages the emergence of a very small number of very successful survivors. Whether they excel through honesty and business acumen (Buffett) or prefer to game the system (Gates, Ellison), they inhabit a rarified atmosphere reserved for those smart, lucky, and vicious enough to reach it. Social Darwinism, the philosophy was called, back in the days when it was considered gauche. Nowadays we know from gene-pool studies that variety is not merely the spice but the touchstone. Survival of the fittest in a vicious business world produces the most vicious businesspeople, who may not be ideal seed corn.

More importantly, we have arrived at the first moment in history in which life does not have to center around a struggle for insufficient resources. Sure, we're running out of oil, and private corporations are buying public water supplies; but that's because our economic system is geared toward concentration of wealth rather than distribution of capabilities.

If we chose, we could feed, clothe, house, and educate every American. Why don't we choose that?

Unfortunately the second half of this tale is neither so uplifting nor so edifying. The sad spectacle that surrounds the one-time nominee for Vice President, Geraldine Ferraro, for whom I voted proudly at the time, seems at this point devoid of moral beyond the simple one enforced on commuter trains in the Bay Area: don’t be a jerk, or at least don’t let others know you’re a jerk. It’s surprising how difficult some people find that task.

I’m surprised, too, by the reports that she said Jesse Jackson wouldn’t have been in the 1984 Presidential field if he weren’t black. Still, no one seems to be denying two things.

1. That such overt racism not only made it onto a Democratic Presidential ticket a quarter-century ago, but was still a known, available, and useful tool for the more vicious of the two DLC candidates in 2008
2. That in any contest to determine who is most vicious, the representative of the Clinton team will be in the running no matter the cost

To me this is another example of my political theory of entitlements. The territory of the Democratic party has been occupated by disgruntled Republicans. After the MLK/LBJ civil-rights bills, the racists, sexists, homophobes, and xenophobes congregated around the Republican banner. Those Republicans who thought of blacks as “mentally inferior” as opposed to “hanging material” gradually found themselves at the left end of the party, and some became independents or Democrats. Personally I’m stunned to find Ferraro among such reprobates, but there it is.

Dwelling on the conspicuous concern for self over party and country exhibited by both Clintons in every imaginable type of situation is duplicative. My point here is the sense of entitlement.

Many Democrats, uncomfortable with their decision to support wooden and unconvincing candidates (not all of whom even pursue legitimate wins), seem to consider the votes of everyone in America to the left of Katherine Harris their rightful territory. Sure, you say you wouldn’t have voted for the Democrat even if we legally prevented you from voting for a Green or a Libertarian; but we know you’re lying. Your vote is ours, so hand it over.

Perhaps it’s a similar deal with Ferraro. As a woman who’s withstood the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, perhaps she figures it’s her turn. She, and her avatar Hillary, deserve their time with the scepter. Will she overcome the challenge, diminish, and go into the West? Or succumb to the lure of the Ring, the Dark Side, the power?

Hillary’s supporters, no more DLC than Obama’s at the party-hierarchy level, nevertheless have a greater sense of entitlement. [Update: (Sirota) “Why do the Clintons always treat the public like we are just drop-dead stupid?”] Is that what we mean by electability? How likely is that to work in the general?

The Clinton wing of the DLC seems to have announced its willingness to follow what Seymour Hersh called the Sampson Option: pull down the house rather than let anyone else win.

Good! Let the Republican party disappear, the DLC rename itself the Republicans, the Green party rename itself the Democrats, and the remaining Greens return to leading the way.

Posted by Chuck Dupree at March 13, 2008 01:28 AM

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