Searching for Joy in the Democratic Party

As an older man, I’ve learned to fully embrace joy in whatever form it chooses to reveal itself. To caress the fleeting happiness of existential pleasures. To cherish sensation, be it the foam of an ocean breaker or the feel of a productive bowel movement.

And although I’ve spent a lifetime refusing to suffer fools, I have, on occasion, enthusiastically slept with a few. I teem with contradictions, blissfully ignoring introspections which might stand in the way of bliss.

So I think it fair to say that, politically-speaking, I would delight in being delighted. In fact, under the right circumstances I might even see my way clear to running amok with ebullience. My problem is I cannot fathom how most minds fathom when they process the differences between Democrats and Republicans.

I’ve always liked a quote from the theologian Reinhold Neibuhr: “the great ethical divide is between those who want to be pure and those who want to be responsible.” 2024’s voters were ethically divided by neither. They simply wished to feel good about themselves by abandoning any sense of their nation’s past or their chosen leader’s intentions. They were an electorate addicted to words as an indicator of actions.

And while Democrats continually embraced misplaced joy and Republicans perennially embraced misplaced anger, both expected the nation’s future to evolve around nothing more substantial than the efficacy of their memes. What’s worse, everyone seemed relieved to participate in yet another election predicated on vagaries vs. barbarous specifics.

As for me, in the words of Bob Dylan, “I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes”. I haven’t felt good about either my country or my religiously-inclined fellow citizens since I spent the summer of 1980 laughing hysterically as I read the Bible cover to cover. I simply wanted to make it to the Inauguration without being driven insane by Blue No Matter Who dilettantes whose embrace of the superficial is only exceeded by their boundless self-esteem. The kind of people who find Rachel Maddow pithy and are exhilarated by Nancy Pelosi theatrically ripping bits of paper and wish The Mueller Report was more widely available in paperback.

As for Trumpers, I couldn’t begin to understand what passes for thought among them, or how any could claim to find the man sincere, or what excuses they might make to the remnants of their conscience in order to wear a MAGA hat and put out a yard sign. But I did know that Trump would be very difficult to beat, not because of what he says but because of what he is. Donald Trump is an undiluted American. Free of introspection. The inevitable result of every National Anthem introduction, every honoring of America, every flyover above a stadium sized flag. Our national insecurity devolved into madness.

Yet if Trump is unhinged, a psychopath, what are we? How would we psychologically evaluate ourselves? Poll after poll shows Americans think our country is on the wrong track, so under what manic transference disorder would we classify our unending bipartisan mania to publicly proclaim our indispensable greatness and the glories of our hilltop-city radiance?

When people say they’re never going to vote because both sides suck, they don’t go far enough. They don’t think about why both sides suck. Before I get back to my Election journey, I’m going to share with you a theory of mine which will forever preclude me from sampling the hors d’oeuvres tray in the Meet The Press Green-room:  Donald Trump is a small and frightened man, but he is something far worse than a threat to our democracy. Trump is the most potent shackle ever forged by the corporate owners of this land to imprison the parameters of debate.

When Benjamin Franklin, possibly en route to a brothel, was waylaid on the steps of Independence Hall and announced he’d bequeathed a Republic, I doubt he envisioned what passes for governance today. Yes, the Founders constructed a system in which landed white guys held sway, but even with all their admonitions against faction, no Hamiltonian wet dream that a nation be of-by-and-for the monied could have foreseen the manipulative way vast financial entities maintain their profit margins today.

The super rich may be all over the place on tax rates and abortion and the environment, but the Top 1% has an overriding goal which unites the mortal remains of the semi-sentient Koch Brother with whatever donor-consultant-fireLinaKhan hat sits atop the flabby cerebellum of Zillionaire jackass Reid Hoffman. They do not want legislators who will oversee them. They want pseudo-oversight from legislators who are pliable scum.

But that quo won’t status itself. No matter how under informed and easily distracted the average person may be, they tend not to willfully elect scum and hope for the best. A new dogma was called for. One which would overlook the numberless areas where the parties march in lockstep. Something exquisitely senseless yet consequential-sounding. And not since The Council Of Trent weighed in on Transubstantiation has a dogma been more flawlessly pointless than… binary choice.

To get decent people to breathe a sigh of relief when they cast a vote which is a death rattle for their aspirations requires pristinely evil genius. But for binary choice to fully triumph, an unmistakably malignant alternative to the scum was required… namely, a maniac.

And if Donald Trump had never existed as a political force, if he had spent his life moguling in Vladivostok and bathing in urine, some other maniac would have had to descend some other golden escalator in order to keep our elections what they are: a multi-billion dollar contest between a party that stands for the powerful and the connected and the greedy and the dishonest and the vile. And one that stands for the powerful and the connected and the greedy and the dishonest and the vile and transgender bathrooms. I hope Jon Meacham chokes on the Steak tartare.

And so I stood at the periphery of the quadrennially most important election of my lifetime armed with the least functional of weapons – a keen eye for codicils and a reverence for the thoughts of the dead.

Gibbon, Vidal, Dr. Thompson, Adamses from John to John Q to Henry… these and diverse others are my transient refuge. Allowing me to move far enough to the right to avidly caress multiple Bernie Sanders’ candidacies. Secure in the knowledge that my only reward, and Bernie’s, would be the well placed shiv and the pathetic rationale, yet drawing sustenance from the struggle because the struggle is all there is.

As for codicils, I’ve grown wary of finely crafted fine print in a Democratic Party whose essence has been symbolic since the dawn of the grifting Clintons. A party devoid of a functioning heart because every ventricle is clogged with cash. A party reliant upon Phase-In, PayFor, and Means-Test. A party whose casual and continuing acceptance of the premise of Reaganism has forced it to craft legislation like predatory lenders, forever seeking to message a way between decency and its donor base in order to err on the side of money.

To play the game of politics requires coin. Only the rich and powerful may play it. But the rules of the game are available to all: where Republicans see good politics as doing whatever it takes to achieve their ends, Democrats see good politics as doing whatever it takes to avoid defining any. Republicans take pride in their bullshit. Democrats sprinkle their every utterance with apologies and qualifiers and too-smart-by-half proposals and then lash out when the average person can’t decipher their message.

However the game is played at lightning speed, and even the most devoted observer can become flummoxed by how quickly Joe Biden went from unquestioned Democratic nominee to recipient of an In Memoriam Segment. I confess, a large part of me wanted Biden to stay in the race. I would have found it fascinating to witness the depths to which party functionaries would have debased themselves in order to portray the 46th President’s lifelong commitment to self-appreciation as concern for democracy.

For it was not only Donald Trump who miraculously dodged a bullet. The entire apparatus of the Democratic Party was, as they say, committed to the bit that Biden was capable of sustained coherence, while I wanted to watch him descend into permanent indecipherability around Columbus Day. I wanted to see Scranton Joe, a man who spent a politcal lifetime fucking over anyone who ever smoked a joint, sought an abortion, or opened a checking account, permanently soil the self-image he so viciously cultivated. I wanted to bathe in the Absurdist Ionescu One Act the DNC and its media-adjacent enablers were trying to fob off as truth. I wanted to watch him wheeled onto the Truman Balcony and feebly wave like Our Leader in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” and have White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre solemnly clarify that he was wishing us all “no joke” and “my word as a Biden”.

OBVIOUS FULL DISCLOSURE: I don’t much like Joe Biden and I care far less about the pain he’s known than the pain he’s gratuitously inflicted. In my defense, I have functioning eyes and access to the C-SPAN archives. I have seen that strutting, down-punching, war-lusting, blowhard in his prime. And I have watched Zionist Joe prove his fealty to the vengeful God of the Hebrews by serving as Netanyahu’s Willing Executioner in bringing biblical levels of smiting, famine, and pestilence to two million Gazan souls.  More on that later.

In my darker moments, I yearn to be as shameless as a Jennifer Palmieri or a Donna Brazille or a Cornell Belcher or any of the Democratic “thinkers” who work tirelessly to subvert the will of the American people by redirecting it. All those strategic consultants and registered lobbyists and think tank employees and foundation founders whose every utterance is an audition and whose every belief is predicated on the check clearing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not writing from some comfortable Ivory Tower. My finances cannot handle an unexpected $400 emergency. My savings account remains $210,000 shy of accommodating a $200,000 Kamala Meet & Greet. I aspire to afford Costco. I’d gladly sellout. There’s simply no one who’d purchase me.

For my core political belief is that we are governed by gesturing cadavers immune to any concept of human progress. And no matter which gradation of their moral depravity triumphs, all the cadavers will be just fine as they continue to gnaw banknotes from the guts of the powerless while belching idle words toward ever more uninhabitable horizons.

Some find that cynical.

I believe class matters above all, and that many non-rich people take pleasure in hate because loathing and a lottery ticket are often the only means of getting through the day with a semblance of hope. As for pronouns, by current societal standards I identify as an ass. In fact most casual observers and a not inconsiderable percentage of my friends would identify me as an ass too. And while, like any functioning adult, I am capable of insincere conversation, on the whole, I’d rather not have to appear to care about Identity Politics and comfort zones and empowering anyone’s truth.

Yet I do get it: the entire purpose of politics is to be able to plausibly lie. The mark of an excellent politician is their ability to disguise the contempt they hold for those they seek to govern. So I try to analyze events secure in the knowledge that I do not matter and no one remotely connected with the Harris campaign would’ve considered it good politics to make me happy.

And The Democratic National Convention certainly agreed.

The Clintons were there of course, both of them impossible to embarrass and permanently immunized from seeing the irony in their every utterance. Bill croaked out his platitudes looking, karmically, like a syphilitic Tiberius. No longer the bright-eyed charlatan once capable of using lies the way VanGogh used yellow to intensify and transcend reality.

Hillary, as far as I know, spoke free of charge. Ahh… Hillary, forever monetizing her role as our post-event Cassandra, forever knowing what she should have said when it mattered, yet incapable of begging our forgiveness in even one of the numberless book-like objects her staff vomits forth.

Yet they were only a minor irritant. For when Yeats wrote “the centre cannot hold” he’d never been subjected to a platitude stream from aspiring billionaire Barack Obama. A man for whom the length of the moral unverse’s arc has bent toward a Netflix megadeal.

If Democrats were a serious party, they would start by permanently abandoning the negotiating style of that Great Sayer Of Words, who on any issue of lasting consequence drove himself to the cleaners in lieu of being taken there.

Yet there he was, marketing Harris in ‘24 the way he marketed Biden in ‘20, lecturing the American people on avoiding complacency when his inability to bestir himself to solicit votes on Capitol Hill left vast swathes of his theoretical agenda in ruins. But Barack is nothing if not consistently ready to frame the big picture for us. Always willing to put things in reassuring perspective.

I’ll never forget something he said in ‘20, back when he was the community organizer for Bernie’s kneecapping:  “If you look at Joe Biden’s goals and Bernie Sanders’s goals, they are not that different, from a forty-thousand-foot level. They both want to make sure everybody has health care.”

And therein lies the metastatic cancer at the core of the Democratic Party. No one lives at forty thousand feet. You would lose consciousness in seven seconds and die in forty-five. It’s the impact at GROUND LEVEL which kills people. It’s the difference between Medicare For All or maintaining profit margins for private insurance which leaves bodies strewn across the crash site. The difference between Free College and a lifetime of indebtedness to Wall Street which leaves investigators sifting the wreckage in search of the black box.

For real Democrats, everything is a question of tactics and strategy. For me it’s one of intention. They prefer to mewl about providing the poor with ladders of opportunity into the middle class. For me, the only thing separating the poor and the middle class is the rickety footstool of chance. The middle class are a diagnosis away from GoFundMe. And from there, no matter the Harris plan to build 3 million new homes, they are one financial misstep from a shopping cart and some blankets and a cardboard shelter under the bridge. That is the real issue, and you don’t need to be Eugene Debs to know it, you just need Obama’s rhetorical skill to obscure it.

But again, this convention had nothing to do with me. It had to do with reaching twenty thousand people in seven states. Buzzwords were the order of the day… access… opportunity… freedom… and of course, uber alles… strength!

Leon Panetta trundled by to reassure the pivotal CIA to CEO voting bloc that Kamala would indiscriminately kill with as much enthusiasm as her male predecessors. Harris slavishly concurred, announcing that she would have the most lethal fighting force in the world. As if in some remote corner of Hanoi or Fallujah our lethality was ever in doubt. It was an inane and stature-diminishing utterance, unworthy of a 17 year old taking Introduction To World History let alone a fully grown adult seeking the presidency.

Yet in fairness to the Harris/Walz braintrust, it had to be an incredibly complex job to continually reassure the vapid. What is the metric used to determine if an imbecile is aware they’re being courted? How many endorsements from members of the Cheney family does an ethical leper require to realize there will be no consequences for applauding corpse mounds?

That’s why if there was a bright spot for me it was the selection of Tim Walz as VP… for the simple reason he was not Josh Shapiro. That even one transparently ambitious Obama impersonator might temporarily lose his grip on Disraeli’s greasy pole due to his use of words was a rare and lovely thing. Unfortunately, a Palestinian being allowed to make it through the impenetrable dais checkpoints proved impossible. Empathy for the plight of Gazans may indeed have been in many hearts but it was strictly censored from every mic’d tongue.

Yet in the spirit of Chicago ‘68, I clung till the last to an Abbie Hoffmanesque fantasy that, in lieu of a balloon drop, the stage would somehow be showered, IDF-style, with leaflets informing delegates they were being given one hour to gather up their coconut tree placards and evacuate toward Kankakee before extremely expensive munitions turn the hospitality suites to rubble.

By now you may have noticed that America’s unquestioning military support for Israel troubles me. This is, of course, because I’m an antisemite. Actually, I’m not. I’m just saving time for leading Jewish organizations who conflate religion, ethnicity, and nationhood into an amorphous trinity intended to stigmatize as antisemitism any act or utterance which hinders arms shipments.

But for me the face of Benjamin Netanyahu has become the face of evil in the modern world. A visage so horrifically omnipresent I turned on Cable News one day and for a brief instant I actually thought he was doing the weather, though it turned out he was showing a map of all the areas of his Greater Israel which still required ethnic cleansing.

Yet throughout the campaign, on the subject of the Israeli government’s wanton barbarity Kamala Harris was too busy announcing that she was speaking to say anything. She could not articulate even one way her position on Gaza differed from Biden’s.

At a time when both morality and politics called for the Democratic Party to unshackle itself from their Love It Or Fund It policy toward Israel, Harris conducted herself as if Netanyahu might send a text alert when he’d murdered enough innocent children to feel momentarily secure. As if there’d be a special notification in the direct deposit from AIPAC when the quota of slaughtered physicians and bakers and journalists had been attained.

Few things filled me with more rage than when a bunch of Democratic sheep started bleating “USA USA” to drown out calls for justice in Palestine. Was it so hard for them to imagine what their residential block would look like if a 2,000 pound bomb, just one, was dropped on their street? Must every big picture Democrat be as unconscionably scabrous as The Mellman Group?

To understand how completely Harris squandered an opportunity to convey empathy, consider what it’s like to take young children on a visit to the doctor. All the ways they may need reassurance in order to allow a stranger to give them an injection. All the ways they’ll need to be comforted and soothed and given a promise of a reward for trusting in their parents that everything will be fine. Then, to imagine that process for a parent and child in Gaza! For polio! Polio… where according to The New York Times the vaccination rate in Gaza stood at 99% as recently as 2022.

Yet even in late October there was hope. And in that incremental, triangulative way real Democrats crave. After the first round of vaccinations were complete, a booster round of immunizations was required four weeks later. Kamala and all the dedicated public servants at the State Department could’ve announced substantive discussions with their Israeli counterparts to seek firm assurance that, in four weeks, as many kids as possible would still have their vaccinated arm. Might that small gesture have enabled Muslims in Michigan to prove as adept at overlooking atrocity when casting their vote as MSNBC’s Rashida Jones is when handing out hosting gigs to former G. W. Bush flunkies? We’ll never know.

And as long as I’m wildly fantasizing, maybe Democrats could have abandoned their fruitless scheme of always trying to get Republicans on record. As if they can hold a Party to account whose members are unaccountable. As if an ethical divide can occur in a Party devoid of ethics. As if disunity can organically erupt in a Party whose sole ideological struggle is whether to ignore suffering or inflict pain.

Centrist Democrats continue to yearn for their ideal world. A world in which Reagan-Buckley Conservatives will collaborate with them on the nation’s business. The great irony is that, unlike my ideal world in which 1930’s Myrna Loy shows up at the door asking to be held, Centrists have already gotten their wish. Ronald Reagan was a public atrocity since 1964, raving against Medicare and Social Security as extinguishers of freedom. William F. Buckley Jr. was a racist, pure and simple. A multisyllabic Bull Connor steeped in reactionary Catholicism and standing athwart voting rights screaming know thy place Negro. Reagan and Buckley are not an alternative to Republicans of today, they are the Republicans of today.

So what did it say about the messaging ability of the Democratic Party that half the electorate found Trump’s lies more persuasive? Especially when Trump himself couldn’t possibly have cared less what his lies were? When his delivery had gone from that of a first rate Borscht Belt comic to that of a jaded Blues musician, repeating, as Blues musicians do, each line with slight re-emphasis: Kamala Harris is a failed Communist who hates our country…so very bad with the Communism and failure.

There’s a side to Trump which did not bode well for Democrats in the election. When you see him in certain situations where he is not on, not performing, he comes across as likable. Just another showbiz guy trapped in his character. If he ever consistently showed that side of himself he might’ve won by four points.

Fortunately for Democrats, he couldn’t. It’s kind of an amazing thing that a man of his advanced years can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. But I tend to think there’s a reason for it. He has no choice. He can never stop talking, never stop referring to himself as “sir” in every endless story he tells, never stop blaming everyone else for everything that has ever befallen him. Donald Trump will never stop talking and look within himself. Ever. For if he honestly assessed the man he is, there’s an even chance his final press conference would end like that of another scandal-plagued Republican on a January day in 1987… when R. Budd Dwyer put a gun in his mouth.

Yet Trump notwithstanding, the Republican Age Of The Maniac will remain well and truly here. In future Presidential elections the GOP will bring forth a J D Vance or a Tom Cotton. A nominee who, unlike Don or Adolf, will keep regular office hours. A multitasking loon capable of compartmentalization and seeing the big picture.

As for me, I’m genuinely sad that millions of decent people spent their time worrying whether Trump would accept the results of the election instead of refusing to accept it themselves. At minimum, demanding some form of National RCV, Ranked Choice Voting, would certainly have been preferable to two rank choices.

Had Democrats won, the race would’ve been on for the next Manchin and Sinema to stand shoulder to shoulder with the House Parliamentarian to sluice campaign promises with stipulations. My betting favorites would’ve been John Fetterman, and that ardent regurgitator of the Davos mindset, Gore-Tex trust fund recipient Chris Coons.

Instead, SMS notifications will reach the edge of the observable universe. Battles will be joined. Moolah will be reaped. Charles Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, their legs wobbly, their voices nearly gone, will hold their floors like Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”, beseeching the C-SPAN audience to hear their plea for both democracy and the maintaining of the carried interest loophole. And in 2028, Josh Shapiro will win the nomination by acclamation.

Oh… I almost forgot to tell you who I voted for. I didn’t vote for anybody. I acquiesced to Harris, with far less feeling of accomplishment than I get from filling the bird feeder or dragging the recycling bins to the curb. Why did I do it? I’ll try to explain, but it should be obvious that I haven’t Oprah’s gift for the incipient horseshit liberals slather to inspire morale.

When Biden became comatose I did not see a veil drop from Harris. I did not see her step into her power. I saw Chester A. Arthur wondering if all that puss accumulating in Garfield’s stomach will give him the top job. In a best case scenario, like Arthur, she might have gone on to confound critics and institute reforms, even though the odds of that happening were more paltry than the average registered voter knowing Garfield and Arthur were Presidents.

So let’s just say I acquiesced to Harris/Walz because “Destiny Of The Republic” is an excellent book and everyone should check it out at their fully funded Public Library. Or because my nieces have a right to their bodies. Or because where Trump was once amusing in an Andy Kaufman way, his act has become as tedious as Kaufman’s when he only did the wrestling bit. Or because I live in Pennsylvania, I like to think, I like to argue, and I value ideas. Or because even though the ideological difference between the parties on Israel is the difference between John Fetterman fondling Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham fellating him ( I said I ain’t Oprah), I can vote Fetterman’s malodorous ass out, but this was my only chance to metaphorically bolo punch Graham in his smug fucking face.

Yet, in a larger sense, I cast my vote to do the worst thing I could possibly do to the Democratic Party. It was an act of pure vindictiveness. I tried to force them to govern instead of fundraise. Tried to force them, as Robert Graves wrote in “I, Claudius”, to let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out. And when they cannot overcome the monetary masters they serve, when the powerless begin constructing tumbrils, The Democratic Party may finally take its richly deserved place next to The Whigs.

That would be a joy I can embrace.

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