The imaginary Democratic Party

 I love the imaginary Democratic Party! The one against plutocracy, That is for hammering billionaires into millionaires via such things as a progressive capital gains tax. The one that is against corruption on the Supreme Court. The one acutely attuned to the problems of working class families, which begins, indeed,with the price of eggs and ends with the price of medical visits. The party against genocide! We should have a party like that.

But we don't. We have the party of Clinton. We have the party that dropped the A bomb, fought the Korean and Vietnam war, is aiding Israel as it commits genocide in Israel, and recently ran a presidential candidate who was closely advised by Lorene Powell Jobs, a billionaire.

Of course, the imaginary image of a party, a movement, an institution, a state is a sociological inevitability. We are, like all monkeys, creatures of fantasy.

But when imagination so interferes with real life that we develop problems in coping with real life, we have a neurosis.

Unfortunately, nobody has ever found a simple cure for neurosis.

Recognition, though, is a step forward.

2. The question is not what is good for the Democratic Party but what is good? And how do we get there?

I am generally lefitst by disposition. But I can imagine what it is like to be a Trumpist, or a Clinton liberal, etc.

In one party states (Texas, Kansas, Idaho, etc.) we've seen the liberal part of the population waste its time, for decades, hoping to put a Democrat in a Senate seat. We've seen, in Texas, the liberals waste their time trying to put a Democrat in the governorship. And we have seen the Dems nominate candidates that profess to be to the right of Manchin on the issues.

The controversial suggestion I would have is: in one party states, the game is in the party. Trump has done something to the GOP that is so far seemingly unrecognized. Republican women in Kansas, in Ohio, in Florida vote for abortion rights and for Trump, and the liberal commentariat, far from seeing that this opens up a space in the Republican party for the famous "moderate" candidate, come down on these women as racist pigs. Etc.

Now, it might well be that many of them are racist pigs. But they are racist pigs for abortion rights. In Texas, if the Trump standard of 15 weeks I believe it is was represented by some Republican in a Republican primary, it would be both a startling turnabout and a viable political ploy. The ploy would not be to elect a rightwing Democrat, but a 'populist" Republican. And in so doing, do something concrete to bring back abortion rights to Texas women.

Why, then, is the obvious not a political career path? It is because the imaginary and the real Democratic party are confused. There is no liberal Democratic party - save for a few reserved House seats - in Texas. There are Democratic mayors galore., however.

These mayors would do more if they became populist Republican mayors. They would have more power on the statewide playing field. That is a sad fact. But a happy fact is, the GOP can't, or rather won't, gerrymander against its own. If the state GOP did that, then the division between populist and far right GOP would become a politically interesting space for the Texas liberal.

Every once in a while, there is a sport of nature - a Democratic governor of Kansas, for instance. But you will notice these folks usually are center right. In NY, they would be mainstream Republicans.

This has been the state of play now for thirty years, yet the liberal activist in the South simply does not accept the party reality. It is as if the Democratic party - the party of Clinton, the party of Obama (who said, himself, that he was pursuing the politics of a liberal Republican), were a leftist org.

It isn't.