Cyclical Cycles Redux
Let’s not read too much
into it
Exactly two years ago - after the 1994 elections
- I wrote the following in this space:
“It is a universal fact of life that the seeds of victory
are sown in defeat and the seeds of defeat are sown in victory.
This fact ought to serve as gloat insurance for any conservatives
who feel the urge to dance on the grave of the Democratic Party.”
And now we see how this caution was warranted. Today we sit with
a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and Senate. And
now it is the Democrats who are tempted to gloat. I have already
seen some of it, talk about how this represents a new wave of
American politics, how history will judge the conservative dominance
of our times as a futile rearguard action against the tide of
progress. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Thomas Jefferson famously said, "The tree of liberty must
be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and
tyrants.” I am grateful that this has not turned out to
be literally true in America. But it is undeniably true from a
metaphorical perspective. If you remove ideology from the picture,
it is essential for the health of American democracy that those
in power be periodically brought low, and those out of power have
a hand at the wheel. Power does corrupt, and any party
that holds continuous power for too long a time is destined to
drift into corruption and lose touch with the people they claim
to represent.
So we ought not to be surprised by swings back and forth. The
deeper and more important question that must be asked is, does
this latest swing represent a normal “throw the bums out”
reaction to accumulated power, or is it something more, as the
Dems would have us believe?
If one thinks about how American politics works, there is at any
given time leftmost edge and a rightmost edge of acceptable political
thought. It might look something like this:
One sort of political shift occurs when the nature of the boundaries
organically change over time as society and its values grow and
change. There can be no doubt that the whole span shifted to the
left during the 1960s and 70s, only to shift back to the right
again in the 1980s and settle down in the 90s. The other sort
of shift is where the American people stand within the boundaries.
The American people generally like to be in the middle. The “Happy
Median” line is a good proxy for popular election results.
If it drifts left of center Democrats win, if it drifts right
Republicans win. The apparent outcome in 2006 was a small but
perceptible shift to the left.
In my estimation, two things can cause a shift in the Happy Median.
First, it can indicate that he American people are acting as a
“leading indicator” of paradigmatic change, in which
case they will eventually “drag” the whole paradigm
in one direction or the other. I think this is what the 1980 Reagan
landslide heralded. And this is what hopeful Democrats would have
you believe happened in 2006.
Secondly, it can indicate that a paradigmatic change is in progress
and the American people haven’t caught up yet (they are
a “lagging indicator”). In this case, a move in one
direction would be a temporary indicator that the whole paradigm
is actually moving in the other. Kind of like subways riders who
lurch backwards when the train starts moving abruptly.
The question that must be answered is which of these things is
true in 2006? Was it a signal that the American people are sick
and tired of right wing fundies and WalMart conspiring to ruin
the country, and thus tugging the nation back to the left? Or
is it merely a pause for breath on the continued rightwing march
of our political paradigm?
I believe it is the latter. Absolutely nothing about this election
indicates a renewed fondness by the American people for political
radicalism. Many of the Democrats candidates who won across the
country did so precisely by acting like good conservatives. In
a display of Clintonian political genius the Democrats put forth
a slate of pro-life, pro-gun, former military, law and order candidates
who succeeded precisely by erasing the sort of ideological distinctions
that define a paradigm. If these candidates had run on abortion,
same sex marriage and “cut and run” and won, that
would be news. But they didn’t. They won by being “me
too” Democrats.
Clearly, the American people opted for a breather. The lesson
I glean from 2006 is that the left as we have come to know it
is dead. It cannot win elections. If Democrats continue to play
winning politics, they will be dragged to the right as a consequence.
Virtually all leftist radicalism is based on pre-industrial social
models. It cannot sustain itself in its present form as our paradigm
continues rightward.
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