Politically homeless

I've been at least Democratic-leaning for a long time now.  At the latest, soon after the 2008 election, the "Tea Party" antics and the emergence of Sarah Palin as a major figure made it obvious that the right wing was going off the rails and becoming dangerously unserious.  (Remember when we thought Sarah Palin was as bad as it could get?  Remember when we thought Dan Quayle was as bad as it could get?)  From there things got worse.  McCain was an honorable man who would have been a good and decent president.  Romney, a deeply weird plutocrat, at least pretended to be an honorable man.  Trump never even bothered to pretend.  There are plenty of issues I have with the Democrats and the left generally, which I've been open about on the blog, but once the Republicans had fully prostrated themselves before Trump and his open contempt for democratic institutions and fundamental rights, they ceased to be a viable alternative.  Maddeningly, we had only one party that anyone who cared about those institutions and rights could even consider voting for.

I'm afraid we're now losing even that.  I feel politically homeless.

I discussed the issues posed by the gerrymandering crisis in this post last week (please read that post thoroughly before commenting on this one), and this article goes into more depth.  Democrats in the Texas legislature, and some others, have gone all-out to fight back against Republican efforts to further gerrymander the state.  But the party establishment as a whole has chosen the opposite course -- to unite with the Republicans in further undermining democracy and attacking meaningful voting rights by similarly super-gerrymandering states where Democrats control state governments.  Their attitude is now just like that of the Trumpazoids -- "what we intend to do is so important that we're entitled to rig and manipulate the system to make sure we can get in power in order to do it".  State laws that give redistricting authority to independent commissions are now an annoying obstacle to be swept aside so they can do what they condemn the Republicans for doing.

At one stroke they have blown away the whole narrative that they are fighting to save democracy and basic rights from the Republicans.  Can we trust that there is any essential democratic norm they would not violate, any fundamental freedom they would not try to take away, on the grounds that the Republicans are also attacking those things and "only sissies play by the rules when the other side doesn't"?  I can't.

The two parties are no longer two opposing sides in any meaningful sense.  There is one side, the two parties attacking democracy in the name of seizing power to enact their all-justifying agenda -- and the other side, the citizenry, now tasked with defending their rights and freedoms against the bipartisan onslaught.  In that fight, at least, I have no trouble choosing sides.

The citizenry will get a chance to fight back in a little over two months.  California needs to hold a referendum to (allegedly just temporarily) set aside the independent commission and allow the legislature to proceed with gerrymandering.  If the voters reject this, it will stop the plan in its tracks and, I have a slim hope, bring the Democratic party establishment to its senses.  Former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who fought for the independent commission law during his term in office, wants to lead the fight to save it now.  Read that link.  He gets it.  He understands that the essence of democracy is in its processes and institutions and the rights of voters, not in getting the election outcome you want.  If you care about democracy, this is the fight to watch.

I've had growing reservations about the political left for years now.  There is its embrace of trans ideology, which has done great harm both here and in Europe, as I've documented in hundreds upon hundreds of links in the link round-ups (I also put together this summary).  There is the coddling of the rabid Israel-bashers of "the Squad", and Democratic leaders starting to parrot jihadist talking points about Israel, much as Republicans parrot Russian ones about Ukraine.  There's the rise of sometimes-violent anti-Semitism on the far left in our campuses and streets since the October 7 attack -- and the fact that the left-activist blogosphere, except for a few Jewish blogs on Tumblr, utterly refuses to condemn or even acknowledge this.  There's the identity politics and the insistence on finding some racial angle to every issue, the elitist sneering at ordinary voters' legitimate concerns about immigration and cultural change and crime, the habit of dismissing any dissent or any raising of inconvenient issues with a barrage of insults ending in -ist and -phobe.  It was not quite as malignant as the Republicans' science denialism and Christian supremacism and Trump-worship and attacks on reproductive freedom and relentless tax cuts for the billionaire parasite class (not that the Democrats have ever seriously challenged the parasites' power and privileges either), but it was enough to push me steadily toward the "plague on both your houses" camp.  With this gerrymandering scheme, they've finally done it -- they've driven me out of the tent.

I don't expect the activist fringe to be persuadable on this issue.  I've learned from experience (and this applies to the activist fringe of the right as well) that they are so mentally locked by ideology that they've mostly lost the ability to assimilate or evaluate ideas or arguments that clash with their existing belief system.  But I also know that the less-politicized majority, who have opinions but aren't so ideological that it forms part of their identity, are different.  They can often absorb and consider ideas and information they haven't heard before, and even can change their views if they find them persuasive.  I have always worked hard to be open to the same.  Over the years I've completely changed my opinions on several issues, including the trans issue, the Israel-Islamist conflict, and same-sex marriage, as I learned more about them.  This is always difficult and unpleasant.  But it's necessary for intellectual integrity.

So now I find myself fully aligned with -- and aligned only with -- the "exhausted majority".  We need to tune out these fringe groups at the extremes yelling "fascist" and "Marxist" at each other over our heads (they make most of the noise, but we far outnumber them), and focus on bringing the politicians of at least one and hopefully both parties to heel, making them servants of the people's agenda rather than them making our votes mere utensils to serve theirs.  It will not be an easy fight -- not even easy to understand, for many.  But this is the reality that confronts us.