Monday, December 28, 2009

Mood: Grouchy?



The base of the Democratic Party is not happy. I'm pretty sure about that. I'm less certain about the precise reasons for the unhappiness. Some seem to have believed that Obama was not the slightly-right-of-center politician he really is, and those people may feel deceived, especially if they worked very hard to get him elected. The "Change I Can Believe In" crowd.

Others are angry because of the slowness of any real change, the spineless Democrats in the Congress and the way this super-majority is frittered away while the truly scary authoritarian alternative waits and lurks in the shadows. Yet others are angry because Obama hasn't canceled Bush's penis-length competitions abroad.

But most, I think, are really angry because the Democratic Party on the whole is ignoring its base, believing that some gentle toe-licking of the evangelical fundamentalists and various types of "Independents" (to be read as people not following politics) is going to keep them in power. Why waste ammunition on behalf of the Dirty Fucking Hippies who, after all, have nowhere else to go?

That it is the base of the party which does the canvassing and the brute work near the elections appears to go unnoticed. Who knows, I may be too stupid to understand these elaborate political games, and in any case Obama will probably be re-elected if the employment situation improves and not if it does not, never mind that the mess is Bush's fault.

What about the Democrats who are feminists? I don't want to revisit the horrible debates of the Democratic primaries, but I do think that feminists, just like all women, should learn that they will be given nothing they don't fight for. You won't get attention by silently waiting for your turn, because that turn is after all the screeching wheels have been oiled. Really.