It’s Time to Fight
If history attests to anything, it attests to the fact that when a people opt for progress and change (even a modicum of change as represented by the Presidency of Barack Obama), the forces of reaction will rise shortly thereafter with all their vehemence, energy, ugliness and political primitivism. Witness the tea party movement. Witness also the result of the Massachusetts US Senatorial campaign. It shows that when mobilized the forces of reaction will support choices that lack profundity and possess a surfeit of superficiality:
That is Scott Brown, the next Senator for the state of Massachusetts. A Republican. A Republican taking the seat once held by the now deceased Ted Kennedy. A Republican who ran on a reactionary platform of no universal health care for Americans, of no stimulus program that has a realistic chance of getting Americans back to work, of no to just about anything that smacks of economic progress for middle and lower class Americans.
How did this happen in a state with a 3 to 1 Democratic voter registration? Of course, it didn't help when Martha Coakley opportunistically and preemptively announced her candidacy within a few short days after Ted Kennedy's death. It left a bad taste in the mouths of the voters. Of course, it also didn't help that Ms. Coakley decided to take a vacation during the middle of the campaign, taking that Democratic voter registration for granted. Of course, it further didn't help that she ran a campaign that by the friendliest of accounts was characterized as "atrocious" and "awful."
It also doesn't help when high ranking Democrats don't know history: namely, that reactionary forces will dog and give no quarter to the forces of change and progress. None whatsoever. They cannot be negotiated with; they cannot be assuaged; they will not simply go away. They can only be fought politically and defeated. That's why, for example, it was mystifying when President Obama talked bipartisanship about health care legislation when the Republicans were explicitly saying that they wanted to turn the Democratic health care legislative initiative into President Obama's Waterloo. The position of the Republicans was trippingly clear: their reaction would not be bipartisan; it would be reactionary.
A year's worth of Democratic mollification has not worked. It's time to fight. Instead of retreating from an agenda of progress and change, it's time to press it. Actually, press it for the first time because so far that hasn't been done. That's what the voters want to see. They don't merely want change they can believe in. They want change and progress that they can see and experience. And that hasn't happened. That's why the Democrats lost in Massachusetts today. Scott Brown was a mere protest vote. The vote for him represents nothing that really fighting for a progressive agenda won't solve.
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