On the Democrats, or Down with Will Rogers Thought

 

“I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat,” comedian Will Rogers spoke these words almost a century ago. Back then it was a tongue-in-cheek good natured ribbing of a party that had just come out of a convention that required 103 ballots to nominate a presidential candidate. Yes, you read that right. In 1924, the delegates to the Democratic National Convention had to vote 103 times to nominate a man who would end up losing in a landslide to Calvin Coolidge. At least the Democratic Party of that era could contain its chaos to one gathering every four years. Today, the party’s disarray is on display 24/7. It is disorganized at every level of government and jurisdiction, at least where it can manage to get elected at all.

I know. Out of the Democrats’ recent defeat, a thousand think pieces have bloomed. Yet, most of them seem to ignore the essential issue Mr. Rogers' diagnosed a hundred years ago. They would rather focus on that nebulous term “messaging.” Among other issues with this analysis, it makes one crucial mistake: it assumes the Democrats have some secret message that they keep failing to deliver. They are otherwise unified and organized and at the same time forgetful of what needs to be expressed.  If only the Democrats could just put the right words together, the America people would fall over themselves to vote for any name with a donkey next to it. Extending this logic further,  maybe the Democratic Party can make a game of it, sending every American a decoder pin so they can figure out the “messaging” of the next election cycle like Ralphie in A Christmas Story.

All of these postmortems focus on messaging because it is convenient for the people posting them with their bylines attached. It requires no deeper reckoning with what the last two hundred years of the Democratic Party’s disorganization has led to in the present. They are also in line with the class interests of those who write them. On a personal level each one of these authors is hoping that their specific diagnosis will pique the interest of the party so they can get a gig consulting for it. Beyond that, on a more philosophical level, it helps to justify their whole line of work. Since they make a living trafficking in words, they have every incentive to promote the idea that a political party’s fortunes are tied to matters of vocabulary.

But the problem cannot be reduced to messaging while the party is such a mess of contradictions. We have seen that anything promised by one wing of the party, gets shot down by another. Or the so-called Parliamentarian gets to reject this and that proposal (you remember voting for them, right?) The Democratic Party has too many competing factions whose interests cannot be fundamentally reconciled. It is the party of billionaires and unions, landlords and renters, peaceniks and neocons, tree huggers and frackers, Zionists and Muslims, Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter More. In short, the Democrats are trying to serve both Mammon and the masses and failing at both. Any attempt to salvage the Democrats has to begin with meeting this problem head on.

Of course, contradiction is nothing new in the Democratic Party. At certain times the party managed it for a generation or so. They did it after Jackson and then after FDR. But these partisan constellations were only able to do this for two critical reasons. First was the opening of new economic frontiers that allowed competing groups to get a cut of a growing pie. Second was the lack a national issue that could divide the coalition. Eventually both of these advantages ended and the Democrats fell apart. In the case of Jackson's Democrats, they were undone by the very national issue of slavery. For Roosevelt Democrats, their coalition collapsed from the pressures of confronting racism and war in Vietnam.

It seems unlikely that the Democrats will find themselves in such a fortunate position again. The era of free real estate is over and the era of free refills is coming to a close as well. As for national controversies, the Democratic Party can no longer sidestep these. Politics in America have become homogenized thanks to TV and the Internet. Take, for example, People running for school boards. They are no longer focused on the picayune details of lunches and bus routes. They run on the red meat buffet of culture war issues such as transgender rights and so-called historical revisionism.

For the Democratic Party to win in these conditions, it has to reinvent itself. It has to become a party that either Will Rogers or his present incarnations cannot make fun of for a lack of unity. Think about it this way: if the Democrats were a serious party with long term goals, Trump's people would have been running their own version of ads warning about a "Democrat Project 2025." Or 2029. But of course, they did not. And will not. This is but one small piece of evidence the alleged party of the people needs to reorient itself in order to fight the rightward lurch of the country. Because what is at stake is more important than which gang of politicos holds office. The installation of a complete oligarchy is at hand. 

Unfortunately voters have been presented with few choices to stop this. The Republicans are the party that will make this transformation happen on purpose. Meanwhile the Democrats of the current cycle have become the party that will let it happen. Whether on purpose or not, the effect is the same. What kind of Democratic Party (or any party for that matter) would be better suited for the challenge of the day? The answer is predictable if you know me, but I do not care. The best version of the Democratic Party is one that has a solid base in the multiracial working class and is built around their representative organizations. While there will disagreements here and there in this model, at least this party will not be haphazardly built on top of known and active political fault lines.

Now for my most controversial drop. The historical and current iteration of this Democratic Party, amounts to little more than a rent seeking entity. It is run by a consulting class that inserts itself between activist groups and the avenues of power. Those who want to improve conditions for labor, minorities, women, or the environment have to go to this party, hat in hand, and beg for them for promises of change. As a result, those who run the current donkey show demand increasing contributions of cash, political labor, and votes when a simple majority is claimed to be not enough. 

It is helpful to compare the trajectory of the Democrats with the Republican Party, a party that fears its activists and works aggressively from election to election to enact its agenda. Whether they win or not is not the immediate issue. Commentators have rightly noticed the aggressively ideological character of today's GOP, though what they fail to remember is that the party was created as an explicitly ideological project. Of course that free soil, free labor, and free men ideology is in no longer in force among Republicans. Nevertheless, there was a clear political objective at one point and it echoes through to the present day. Today's Republicans have learned from that era. They have a party setup to deliver specific results. 

Know this. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans can point to a specific time and place (1854 Ripon, Wisconsin) when their party was established. They can also explain what led to this event, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. But what do Democrats have? A party built on various patronage networks, unifying urban sachems and rural courthouse gangs. It is a party that was founded by Jefferson, or Burr, or maybe Andrew Jackson, or quite possibly Martin Van Buren. It was not even consistently called the Democratic Party during all the times of its apparent founding. 

The Democrats of that era, the Democrats of Will Rogers' day, and Democrats of today have tried to pretend their messy big tent approach to politics is a secret strength that allows everyone to somehow feel represented. It should be increasingly evident this is not working. Creating a big tent in American politics ultimately leads to a sideshow, with figures like Manchin and Sinema gumming up the works. A real party with actual aims would be able to discipline these prima donna types, or better yet make sure they did not feel at home in the Democratic Party to begin with.

As it stands, the Democrats are awakening to see themselves restricted to coastal enclaves, a handful of cities in the interior, and the Black Belt in the South. Former strongholds in the Rio Grande Valley are going red, along with the rural upper Midwest. Appalachia is completely gone and if the Democrats are not careful they might start losing New Jersey in presidential and senatorial races. In the face of these changes, a complete structural reorientation is needed. The party needs to become a new kind of machine that is controlled by working class organizations, mobilizing working class voters across race and gender, to delivers real change to all working class Americans. 

Or the Democrats can continue on their current path. It is certainly easier emailed than done. Crying wolf to fundraise and waiting for the Republicans to screw up so much that it puts the Democrats back into power. Unfortunately this time around, if they continue with this approach they may find themselves joining the Whigs and Antimasons in the graveyard of American politics. Who knows what else they will take down with them when this comes to pass. Maybe a little Free Soil will be there to help ease the journey with Henry Clay Charon.  

 

Keep Wonder Alive and Kicking

 

The Amazine has published a poem of mine, The River Man

The Test of a First-Rate Intelligence Is the Ability to Hold Two Poems in Mind

 Two poems in Paradox Magazine 

One is about Psychedelic Urbanism (and is easier to understand than Megalopolis), and the other is about love, longing, and loss.

A Network Hiccup in Rochester, New York

 A new batch of Poems in Rundelania, a journal based in Rochester, in Up-Upstate New York

Read them here

On Childless Cat Ladies

 

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N****r, N****r, N****r." By 1968 you can't say "N****r"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N****r, N****r."

- Lee Atwater

For those unfamiliar, this is a quote from Lee Atwater, a Republican political operative from the 1980s and one of the architects of the Southern Strategy. Thanks in part to his work, the once solidly Democratic South became a bastion of the Republican Party. It wasn't all him of course, and this process occurred before and after the 1980s. Nevertheless, this quote feels strangely relevant in light of the recent rise and fall of the phrase "Childless Cat Ladies." 

In the past couple of months, it passed from J D. Vance's tradcath mouth into the memesphere and has largely dissipated. When the phrase still emerges, it is in an almost ironic context (like “deplorables” two elections ago). I have seen men appropriating it for themselves, and so-called CCLs in real life mentioning it for a laugh in bars. Good for them. But it is important to unpack how something like this could gain any kind of currency in the first place. Its present ridiculousness can obscure the potentially serious division the Right seeks to exploit in the future. 

Returning to the Atwater quote, we may be at the N-word stage of the process the deceased operative outlined. The Childless Cat Lady occupies its place with gender swapped in for race. That is not to say the term is anywhere near offensive. Only that it is similarly clumsy, ridiculous, and to the detriment of reactionaries, obvious. It too easily reveals what they are appealing to. In Atwater's case, it was racism. For Childless Cat Ladies it is sexism. This campaign cycle, it has been to the benefit of liberals and others that such terminology was chosen. It gives them a good laugh and allows people like Vance and his ilk to be portrayed as "weird."

Well until the VP debate. Now it seems that "weird" has been put to rest. However, that other term, Childless Cat Ladies (which has its historical antecedents) may have its afterlife (or nine) too. Not in a literal sense. Rather, a sentiment behind it might provide a fertile ground for future reactionary politics to cultivate. That is why the phrase cannot be fully dismissed. Liberals and their coalition need to be vigilant. The sentiment in question is a resentment that could very well rear its head in more coded language. Echoes of “Childless Cat Ladies” reverberating through the campaign trails of the future.

And no, I won’t speculate on what those terms will be. I’m not going to help them. It must be remembered that resentment is the bread and butter of reactionary politicians. They are constantly sizing up society to find what might be bubbling under the surface and can be lanced for their benefit. The whole CCL nonsense is no different. It’s an attempt to explore and exploit tensions between the portion of women in this society who raise children, and those who do not. The distinction isn’t as clear as the phrase makes it out to be, but when has the Right ever allowed subtly, or reality to get in its way?

Obviously, throughout history not all women have had children (or children that survived infancy) but the numbers of women who decide to not pursue some form of motherhood (or guardianship) are higher today than ever before. Meanwhile the cost in terms of money and time for children keeps increasing and is also born more and more by the individual family unit, however it may be constructed. 

(Despite the wide diversity in parenting structures, there’s little chance of the Right trying to appeal to them all. It’s why this essay is discussing things in terms of heterosexual cisgender women. This is in no way meant meant to ignore LGBT heads of households. But they occupy a different place in the discourses of Right-wing politics. In theory, transgender men with children could be celebrated by reactionaries as a way to put down CCLs. In practice they, along with others who do not conform to their supposed ideal, will merely be put down as an aberration who should not be allowed to have children in the first place. It’s another clue, among many, of how the Right isn’t actually interested in the welfare of children as an ends, but rather as a means to assert control and slot people into their “proper” place.)

Now is this particular resentment there? It is hard to imagine any useful polling that might shine a light on its dimensions. How widespread is the feeling, and how deep does it run for those who feel it?  One might have a tinge of resentment for something but it might also not bother them much. But I think it's worth an educated guess to assert there's a strong potential for it. 

In a healthy society that manages to be both empathetic and rational, there would be no conflict from those who have chosen one path over the other. Women who do not want to have children, would feel no pressure to do so, and not have their decisions over their body denigrated. They would have access to contraception, abortion, and the education to know how to use and access these options. Meanwhile, for those who choose to have children, they would have childcare, health care, flexible working situations, and affordable housing. 

But America is far from being an empathetic country and its conception of rationality is stuck in the amber of 18th century metaphysics. In short, it is a country that makes it hard to be a mother, and is trying to make it equally hard to not be one either. In such a situation, it’s only natural for a reservoir of resentment to build up. In particular, those who have taken up the responsibilities of motherhood can begin to feel like they’re providing a valuable service for a society that ultimately turns its back on them.

This feeling is not going to be universal, because motherhood is not experienced the same by everyone. Some people are under more of a strain than others. The kinds of resources available vary widely. In many situations, women with children are directly supported by their relations and friends who don’t have them. Nevertheless, I don’t think it takes much of a stretch of the imagination to see the potential for a growing divide.

As with most cleavages, a politics of solidarity would bridge it. In their absence, the divide only grows. It’s a common enough process across all kinds of social struggles and contradictions. The divide begins in a gap between what people (in this case mothers) need versus what society provides for them. Then this divide moves, switching from a “vertical” focus to a “horizontal” one that strikes out against another group of people perceived to be contributing to the issue of inadequate provisions. In time, and with enough focus and ire, this division deepens until it becomes a trench in a culture war. 

The last stage rarely happens spontaneously. It come about through a process of messaging that is both subtle and overt from reactionary forces. In this case, “Childless Cat Ladies,” is quite overt. It’s hard to think of anything that could be more on the nose. One would have to reach deep into the recess of old misogynistic lore to find it. Harridan? Maybe “Queen of the Harpies.” Yet as with CCL, these terms carry such a ridiculous, over-the-top quality that they easily become coopted into badges of merchandisable pride. 

We could be become a society that supports both groups, along with all kinds of parents and guardians. To embrace a politics of family choice that would challenge the current the system of benefits and the present work-life balance. There’s no reason to raise up one group at the expense of the other, since both experiences overlap. Plenty of women make the decision to have and/or raise children at a later date in their lives. Others with children make the choice not to have any more. This blending and entwining of paths offers proofs that politics of resentment over who is and is not a mother is nowhere near inevitable.

Unfortunately, liberalism is inadequate in creating the politics that can diffuse tensions in society through material improvements. It has a grave-digging inability to grapple with the very concept of resentment, often confusing this feeling on the Right with the rage and revulsion expressed by the Left. Liberalism believes it is above recognizing such things. The ideology treats emotion in politics as a stain on what should be a sober calculation in the minds of the citizenry. 

Which is why, when the champions of liberalism do try to get “emotional,” the attempts feel half-hearted and come off half-baked without about follow through. The “Politics of Joy” is only the latest attempt at trying to do liberalism with a human face. How quickly that seemed to fizzle out. 2024 isn’t 2008. A campaign of “Hope” or “Change,” is only sustainable when people believe actual material improvements are around the corner. When they fail to well, materialize, the collapse is hard. Both heart and mind feel betrayed.

Maybe the child/childless divide will not provide much fodder for the future Right. Reactionary forces might decide this line of attack is not worth pursuing and instead focus on cracking the African-American vote. They have been recently trying to do it by cultivating resentment against immigration. Or perhaps one day a clever operative will come along and they (and it could very well be a lady Atwater) will see the potential to seize on the underlying resentments I’ve previously outlined. The GOP has a problem with female voters and this might bring more of them into the Republican fold. Nothing helpful will be proposed or enacted. Just the cultivation of resentment with a little pandering rhetoric thrown in as a treat. 

It will not lead to the kind of natalist policies the European Right proposes. Their Right was stitched to Capitalism in a shotgun wedding presided over by NATO after World War II. Meanwhile, our Right’s true love is Capitalism. High school sweethearts, who were Homecoming King and Queen. Our Right would hate to see support mostly going to non-White women as well. A story with a familiar refrain in this country. White Antebellum Americans were perfectly fine extolling the virtues of motherhood while selling the children of mothers they enslaved (and sometimes even fathered). 

No, under this manifestation of resentment politics, mothers will be made to feel elite and “seen,” by punishing all the single ladies. Taking away abortion rights, restricting contraceptives, outlawing no-fault divorce, and censoring any information about this (one of the chief uses of obscenity laws in the past). Children will not receive any better healthcare; their mothers will be forced to work longer hours. The cats, more or less, will probably be fine.