Just as the Democratic Party Establishment did not want Henry Wallace to continue to be the Vice President in the 1944 election. And just as the Party Establishment favored Obama over Clinton in 2008. And just as the Party Establishment favored Clinton over Sanders in 2016, so too has the Party Establishment restored law and order over the recent wild, wild west nomination process. And as a result, all of those Democratic Presidential early bird candidates are now at risk of becoming sheepdog candidates. BTW, a sheepdog candidate is a candidate who brings in the party's malcontents in from the fringes and back to the fold during the election.
Now if I was a comedian, a Biden vs. Trump election is my dream no-lose contest. For both have a rich history of writing many a comedian's material for them. And they do so by acting naturally. But as a voter who wants real change, my hopes have been dashed. For while Trump campaigned as the outsider anti-establishment candidate, he was nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing. One does not own the financial empire Trump has without being part of the establishment. And as Obama's Vice President, Biden will be tied to Obama's record. But Obama's record was that of an Establishment President. Even his healthcare program was written by many who are now lobbyists.
As a voter, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. speak to my 2020 expectations. For in his famous I Have A Dream speech, King said the following (click here for the source):
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
The only significant difference between then and now is that instead of just the Negro who is caught in New York voting dilemma, it is everyone.
I once asked a former colleague who was from another country about how different the candidates of the two major parties are. My friend motioned with his thumb and index finger that the difference between them was very little. That is especially true for the Establishment candidates of each party. All of the Establishment candidates support some significant degree of Neo-Conservatism in our foreign policies and Neo-Liberalism in our economic policies. So, for the most part, the main difference between what the Establishment candidates from our two major political parties is the degree to which they support those two isms though we should add that there is also a difference in the focus of Neo-Liberal economics that each major political party favors. And what is being said about today's Establishment candidates can be said about Obama when he was President.
Then what about voting for third-party candidates? I already do that. I do that because we need viable third parties to give the voters a real choice in candidates. And since third party candidates will not become viable choices overnight, we need to invest in third party candidates by voting for them today. At the same time, I must hold my nose when voting for third party candidates because after listening to them, I realize that they are the political version of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players. And though some of our third party candidates offer a better direction than our candidates from the two major parties, they are often severely deficient in their understanding of government and the tradeoffs involved with their policy proposals.
If Biden does win the Democratic Presidential nomination, we will be choosing between two Establishment candidates. Again, we will have no real choice in our voting. But the advantage of an Establishment candidate is that they can be very entertaining. After all, Establishment candidataes are very skilled in putting on a show. And indeed, watching Biden campaign against Trump promises to be perhaps the most entertaining Presidential campaign that one can imagine. The downside to such a contest is that we will have to live with the results. Can we really survive 4 more years of Trump or 4 years of Biden when there is very little difference between these two Establishment candidates?
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