Kerry’s lack of charisma was only one part of the problem. Because even if we were able to magically clone Clinton (and no, Hillary is not a perfect substitute), or get the Democrats to stop pussy-footing around and really come up with a zinger of a message, or even get our candidates to adopt the politics-as-consumerism tactics of the Republicans, the state of politics in this country would still stink to high heaven.

Because, you see, there is also a problem with the Democratic Party. It is a corrupt instrument of high finance and corporate interests.

Yes, folks, you are hearing this from me. When pressed on the matter, I do in fact believe that Ralph Nader has a legitimate point: the Democratic Party has been inescapably corrupted. But let me be clear: I believe Ralph is right on the facts, but dead wrong on what to do about them. For however bad Al Gore or John Kerry are when it comes to corporate welfare and industry giveaways, George II is far far worse not just on this, but on every other issue I care about: economic, social, foreign, domestic, you name it. But to say that the Republican Party is worse is implicitly to admit that the Democrats are bad.

Which begs the question, how bad are they?

The examples here are legion, but let me give you just three: remember the vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq? Where was the principled opposition? Where were Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein and John Kerry then? Where was our prophetic voice saying “NO! PRE-EMPTIVE WAR IS A SIN AGAINST GOD AND MAN!” Where were the people of reason saying “Fuck this Iraq shit! Saddam Hussein has been contained, and if you want to fight the war on terror then GO BACK TO AFGHANISTAN AND FIND OSAMA BIN LADIN.”

Where was the Democratic Party then? They rolled over and said “go ahead, kick us in the nuts. We deserve it. Because we can’t have the voters believing that we’re soft on terror!” They rolled over because the Democratic Party doesn’t have the guts to stick to our principles and call a lie (Saddam Hussein had WMD! Saddam Hussein was linked to 9-11! Iraq is a sovereign nation once more!) a goddamned lie.

Example #2: remember Florida? We had our asses handed to us on a platter in that state through outright intimidation, fraud, and disenfranchisement. We kissed those 27 beautiful electoral votes bye-bye, baby, because Jeb Bush made sure to deliver that state to his brother come hell or come Charley. No wonder black Americans are pissed with the Democrats – we don’t just “take them for granted” (Skip Gates’s words, not mine). Shit no. Al Gore and rest of Democratic Party leadership fucking walked away from our best friends while they were being robbed of their civil rights and said “nah. We’re not going to fight this on the merits. We’ll only fight this in a short-sighted, short-term, only-count-the-counties-that-favor-us, consultant-led bullshit court tussle, and when that hoebag Katherine Harris bitch slaps us and tells us to take our short-dicked selves elsewhere, why we’ll just hang our heads in shame and take it like the punks we are.”

Example #3: remember gilt-tongued Billy Jeff’s ringing line, “the era of Big Government is over?” This was poison poured into the ear of the Democratic Party. And now, eight years later, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, we have awoken to the realization that we are all betrayed, barking about in “a most instant tetter” (Howard Dean, are you still screaming?).

None of these events has anything to do, directly at least, with corporate corruption. True. But the point remains that the Democratic Party sold its righteous soul long ago for 30 pieces of legislation called NAFTA, the 1996 Welfare Reform Law, and the Defense of Marriage Act. And when you sell your soul, you ain’t got no fight left in you for when the devil comes a’calling.

Well, the devil is knocking on our door, darling, and his name is Daddy Rove.

And what are we going to do about it?

Are we going to go out and hang ourselves from a crooked oak?

Are we going to stand idly by while the money-changers set up shop in our temple?

Are we going to flee the pillaging armies of the usurper, and pray to find sanctuary in a foreign land?

Or are we going to put our hands together, confess our collective sins, and cast out those corporate demons into the arms of the GOPerine swine?

Alberto Gonzalez may be in a hangin’ mood these days, but I sure as hell am not. I am in the mood for some barbecue. So let me tell you what I think we need to do.

Next up: What we gonna fuckin’ do ‘bout this goddemn situation we gots right here?

P.S. I’m taking a break from this for a couple weeks, people. Have a merry holiday season. More ranting in the New Year. Hopefully my esteemed colleagues on this site will keep you entertained in the meantime.

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It is worth noting – and I suspect this is true of most of the readership of this blog (i.e., both of you) – that I am a member of way more organizations than the average American. As in, like four times as many (Putnam estimated, on the basis of GSS data, that college-educated people in 1993 were members of two (?!) associations). So, most people aren’t joiners. Why does that matter?

It is also worth noting the way in which meetings and politicization do and don’t overlap. I write letters and volunteer all the time for my church and for my Party organization. I rarely, if ever, send letters because the ACLU asks me to. If my neighborhood association ever got its act together to do something, I’d just as likely work against it as work for it, given the yahoos running that group. And while most members of the Ranch are politically active, none (so far as I know) are active as Ranch members – they are active on the basis of being gay, feminists, union organizers, lawyers, Wiccans, mothers, or as generic “community activists” – in other words, on the basis of some identity not imbedded in the Ranch per se. Why does all this matter?

Thirdly, it is worth noting that while I do a lot with this local Party organization, I also founded the damn thing. Hence, if it had not existed, I most likely would not have done as much precinct-walking – and certainly not as much donating – as I in fact did in this past election. So what does this have to do with anything?

All of this soul-searching is to point up a very basic fact of American life today: religion is the only real network left. There are no meaningful cross-region, cross-class, cross-ethnic, face-to-face networks anymore. They simply don’t exist, and if they do, no-one’s joining them anymore. The bowling league? I hardly ever go. The Masons or the Odd Fellows? Yeah, I’d probably join, if I didn’t live in Texas where it means hanging out with a bunch of racist old farts. Democratic Party clubs? I had to fucking found one in order to start going to meetings. The ACLU? I simply can’t find it in my heart to write a letter on the basis of some all-caps e-mail I get sent (Patriot Act is coming! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Etc.). The Sierra Club, HRC, or any other DC-based advocacy group? Same problem as the ACLU, even if I did maintain my memberships in them, which I don’t. My neighborhood association? Have you ever been to a neighborhood association meeting? Omigawd that shit is like a fucking nightmare of whiny middle-class assholery: “why do I have to do what the zoning bureaucrat tells me to do?” “why won’t those Mexicans stop putting their trash on the street?” “why do we have to tolerate a day-treatment center a mere 6 blocks away?” “how can we stop multi-family units from being built here – it’ll ruin the character of the neighborhood!” etc., ad nauseum. (two words I have come to hate, living in Texas: “character” and “heritage”)

This is not news. Other authors – Bob Putnam foremost among them – have discussed the causes and consequences of the decline of secular secondary associations, the waning of newspapers and the rise of Fox News, the steady evaporation of community life in favor of privatized forms of consumption and leisure, etc. And they have made these points in language far more eloquent than I could ever hope to write.

I simply want to underscore the connection between this decline in social networkedness and what happened in 2000 and 2004 (and even before, though it wasn’t as obvious). I want to underscore the connection between the lack of social connections and mob behavior, between the fading of “the public” and its replacement by the machinery of demagoguery. In a word, I argue that we are watching the dark fears of Arendt brought to fruition in the barren landscape of modern American society. And the Republicans are rapidly perfecting the art of husbanding and reaping this bitter, stunted crop. See the NYT from three weeks ago (“Bush Campaign Manager Views the Electoral Divide”, 11/19/04) or from last week, where Ken Mehlman outlined exactly how they found their voters: through marketing research, through television ads targeted to such specific sectors of the populace that, yes, they were identified purely as people who drove Volvos (Democrats) and people who drive Porsches (Republicans). Politics is no longer about principles (if it ever was) – it is about brand.

And you know what’s even worse? That article on the Republican turnout strategy revealed something truly terrifying: the decline in social networks is worse for the Democrats than for the Republicans. All those people who have stopped playing softball and sit instead in front of the boob tube? It’s us. The Republicans see this as a problem only insofar as using television might “accidentally” get Democrats out voting because we watch more TV.

To answer my earlier question – why does all this matter? Because in the absence of secular secondary associations people have few ways in which to grapple with, process, and interpret the information they have regarding politics. In order to be rational we must be imbedded in society. There are reams of literature on this, and I am not the first to make this observation. But this election was so clear a demonstration of this danger that it bears repeating. When people don’t have anyone to talk to; when they have no grounded network in which to place themselves, their identity, and their interests; when all they get is the lies and the bullshit spewing forth from the idiot box hour after hour, day after day; then people simply stop being rational actors. Lacking the opportunity to process, they lack the ability to judge between truth and mendacity, between friend and foe, between the Gospel of Interests and the Painted Whore of Values.

And those that are left in networks? They’re all in church. No wonder everyone thinks that what swung the election was “values” – religious voters are the only ones who can give a sensible account of why they’re voting they way they are.

But that ain’t all, folks. There is still one cord left in my story before we can figure out how to re-knit our political bones.

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Let me ask you, gentle reader, to reflect for a moment upon your social networks.

1.) To what formal clubs, associations, and networks do you currently belong? To give you an example of what I mean, let me list for you the groups to which I belong:
a. My church (a liberal mainline denomination)
b. A Democratic Party club, one focused on LGB concerns
c. The ACLU
d. My undergraduate alumni association
e. My graduate alumni association
f. My national professional association
g. A regional professional association
h. A retail co-operative
i. My local neighborhood association
j. The American Bowling Congress (no joke!)
k. A cooperative semi-utopian housing community somewhere in the mountains of Northern California

2.) How many of these clubs not only meet face-to-face, but you attend the meetings? Personally, I have the time and the inclination for the following:
a. I go to church, approximately 3 times a month.
b. I go to monthly meetings of the Democratic Party club
c. I think the ACLU might sponsor local speeches or somesuch, but I have never bothered to go.
d. My undergraduate alumni club appears mainly to concern itself with sponsoring local cocktail parties, speeches by muckity-mucks, and fabulously expensive vacations with guest lectures by professors on junkets. I attend a cocktail party and volunteer at a college fair maybe once a year.
e. Ditto my graduate alumni club.
f. I attend one meeting each year for my national and regional professional associations.
g. The retail co-operative to which I belong (a) is in another state, and (b) doesn’t have meetings per se.
h. I would rather stab myself in the stomach with a rusty fork than attend a meeting of my local neighborhood association.
i. I’m going to try to go bowling again after New Years, just like I’m going to try and join another local recreational club to get my fat ass rowing again.
j. I typically attend one of the semi-annual meetings of the Ranch.

In sum, basically I only go to church and to Party meetings with any frequency.

3.) How many of these clubs are in even a vague way political? As in, do they talk about political issues, or talk about identity in ways that might lend themselves to political action, or talk about issues that might be politicized? My own experience is as follows:
a. Of course my church is political. Duh. What could be more political than getting up each Sunday and hearing some goofball yammer at you for 20 minutes about poverty, war, and injustice?
b. Ditto the Party club.
c. Yeah, the ACLU is political. I guess. Maybe if I read the histrionic e-mails they periodically send me I might be moved to care, and you know, write a letter or something. Because I have full confidence that my US Representative (Kay Granger) and Senators (Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn) and even BushCo give more than a rat’s ass as to what the ACLU says. Especially on a subject like, say, gay marriage, the banning of which they have all personally and publicly endorsed. Or on the subject of the expansion of the government’s rights to read my e-mail, seize and search my personal belongings, tap my phone, know what I’ve checked out from the library and bought from the bookstore, etc., all of which they think is just fine and dandy, thank you very much.
d. My undergraduate and graduate alumni clubs do everything possible not to be political.
e. While certain scurrilous pedants on the right persist in the illusion that my chosen profession is some sort of Communist fifth column bent on the destruction of Democracy, Society, and Moral Righteousness, in point of fact the associations only take “political” positions after tedious and careful deliberation involving rather elaborate measures of internal democracy (circulating of petitions, announcement of issues, annual referendum elections, etc.). So yes, they are political, but not as much as some would believe.
f. The retail co-operative is in no wise political.
g. The neighborhood association is political on local issues, mostly of the garbage-pickup and NIMBY variety.
h. Neither the ABC, nor the other recreational society I swear I’m going to join after New Years, is political.
i. The individual members of the utopian community are quite politically active.

4.) Now take sets 2 and 3 – how do these sets overlap?

I’m obviously asking you to do this exercise to get you thinking about the nature of civic engagement in a personal way.

This is your assignment for the weekend. Report back to the group on Monday and we’ll discuss. Extra credit will be awarded for those who actually talk to a neighbor, friend, associate, or fellow club-member while preparing this assignment.

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So, what’s happening, and what can we do about it? I see the problem as, not to put too fine a point on it, like a three-fold cord:

Cord #1: How to Appeal to a Mob

Presidential politics, as currently practiced in America today, involves demagoguery. There is just no way to get around it. And the race for the presidency involves demagoguery in a way that lesser offices (like, say, US Senator) simply don’t (as much). And because presidential politics involve demagoguery, you need to understand one thing: the loudest man wins. The Greeks understood this point 2500 years ago, and could tell you exactly why Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are so popular. When you shout, people listen.

Let me say it again: it didn’t really matter what the presidential candidates said. What really mattered was the volume – or, if you like, the repetition – at which they said whatever bullshit they happened to be vending.

So, what does that mean for those of us who want to win future elections?

One way to win in a demagogic system is through charisma. This is an easy word that we banter around, but it’s a troublesome thing in practice. Because you see, Weber had his finger on the problem: charisma is a gift, like grace. It cannot really be taught, or acquired, or bottled like viagra, though it may certainly be lost (exhibit A: Michael Jackson).

Bill Clinton had charisma, and put it to good use. He won in ’92 for many reasons (the candidacy of Perot being high on the list, combined with the reluctance of Bush I to unleash the religious hounds) but perhaps the most important reason is simply that people were moved by him. He peddled his line about being a “boy from Hope” and people bought that shit like it was crack.

Howard Dean, bless his screaming self, had it, at least for some people. Why else do you think all those white liberal professionals (and professional liberals) were practically tripping over themselves to knock on doors in New Hampshire and Iowa when it was fuckin’ 10 below? That shit takes motivation, people. But Dean lost the nomination. And there was simply no way the other charismatic preacher (yes, that would be the Rev. Sharpton) was going to win.

So if you do not have it – and John Kerry did not have it, as Al Gore did not before him – your options become radically more limited in this current configuration of politics. Because no matter how much you try and tweak your message to appeal to people’s interests or “values” (this is called “focus grouping your message” in technical parlance), you face a serious dilemma: hate and fear get people to the polls in ways that charity, principle, and self-interest can’t even touch. So while you’re trying to do the principled thing and shop around for the best phrases in which to couch your nice, liberal(ish) proposals (“opportunity” and “values” and “middle-class prosperity” and “environmental protection” and “pro-choice” and “a good education for all our children” and “my daddy worked as a millhand” etc. ad nauseum) the other side is busy screaming (volume matters!) about how we’re going to take away their Bibles (fear works!) and how the faggots are going to get married and we know what that means! (well no, we don’t, but hate sure works!) and if you don’t make the “right choice” then you’ll die (fear again) and how we need to protect the unborn from all those slavering Jewish abortionists (why won’t the worst myths ever go away?).

This problem of charisma and demagoguery is solvable, but the solution practiced by the Democrats so far have mostly depended on luck, such as someone like Bill Clinton facing someone like Bob Dole or George Bush, Sr. Sadly, however, we didn’t have that situation this year. We had a square-jawed Brahmin facing a slack-jawed Bubba. So what do we do when we can’t reliably seem to find a good Democratic demagogue?

One solution is to do what the Republicans do when they have an imperfect candidate, and that is to start shouting. Kerry might have been able to approximate this solution if he had been willing to go for the jugular and repeat over and over – loudly and repetitively – that BUSH FUCKED UP. In other words, use the facts, but dumb them down enough to make the cut for a sound-byte: George W. Bush fucked up the war on terror, and if you vote for him you’re voting for a fuck-up. Repeat this enough times, and people will start to believe it. There are more or less morally queasy ways of doing this – BUSH FUCKED UP is basically a good point, while BUSH IS A FUCKING COKE FIEND is kinda playing dirty – but the principle is the same: Shout, and Repeat, until people believe it. If you do not think that this works, then you must not have lived in either a swing state or a red state during the last election: people will buy all kinds of shit if you just hit them with enough ads.

Another solution focuses more on process: what if we could find a more reliable way of picking our chosen apostle (oops, I meant “candidate”)? Since New Hampshire and Iowa appear to be woefully inadequate to the task of choosing demagogues – damn those well-educated Buckeyes and town-meeting trained Yankees! – perhaps we need to re-order which states go first in the primaries. We could, for instance, weight more heavily those states with long traditions of populist demagoguery (Wisconsin comes to mind here, as does Louisiana, though both of their populist episodes are retreating rapidly into the past). Or we could find a way to get fewer policy wonks and more trained media-savvy crowd-pleasers into the queue – movie stars are an obvious choice here, but so is someone like Bishop T.D. Jakes, if he’s a Democrat.

But I’m not such a fan of either approach, really, primarily because it is fraught with moral and political peril. I’m happy to be argued with on this one, but I would prefer to think about the root of the problem: why are people so goddamned irrational in the first place?

Next week: cord #2, the last unfrayed warp in our civic fabric, which is to say: religion.

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Other authors have spoken about this at length. I am inclined to agree with Kevin Drum’s analysis. While evangelical and religious voters were no doubt important to Bush’s victory, they were no more important than in the 2000 election. And this holds true even when you look just at the issue of gay marriage, as suggested by both Andrew Sullivan and Paul Freedman.

So Fundies (or as I like to call them, that parcel of hypocrites, loudly proclaiming their own sanctity just like the parabled Pharisee of yore), may truly have been affrighted at the horror of Fox News’s footage of Gavin Newsom marrying all those scary, scary gays. BUT, they were no more scared than they were four years ago. Their turnout did not increase (relative to the general increase in turnout), nor did their level of support for BushCo increase. This last bit is important to emphasize – evangelicals and white Protestants in general were no more likely to support BushCo than they were four years ago. The data do not lie people – gay marriage did not make the difference in this election (nor, for that matter, did guns or “moral issues” generally).

So where’s the beef? Well, intriguingly, according to polls released by the NYT, white Protestants (which would include liberals like me, so it’s not a great cut of the data) have been bouncing around between 27% support for the Democrats (in 1984) and 36% (in 1996) (an aside for a moment: I had no idea I was such a minority view! Damn I really am a freak). Similarly with Catholics – they bounce around between 42% support for the Dems (in 1980) and 53% support (in 1996).

A spread of 10 points can be important to be sure – and nudging this group back towards the 36/53 end of the spectrum is what a lot of Dems – especially the DLC – are now proposing. This could be accomplished, for instance, by having every Democratic candidate make a personal confession of faith before a live television audience, or turning the convention into a great big tent revival. That is one solution. Speaking as someone who cherishes the separation of church and state, and furthermore speaking as someone who keeps one eye on Clio’s lesson book, I am more than a little uncomfortable with the prospect of a nationwide trans-denominational Christian moral crusade.

But here’s another idea: if anything, these two groups – especially if you just look at the folks who go to church once a week or more – seem pretty inclined to bolt whenever they have the chance.

Look at 1992, for instance. In that year, 21% of white Protestants, 20% of Catholics, and 15% of regular church-goers voted for “Jughead the Midget” Ross Perot. If you look at the returns from the previous election (Bush I v. Dukakis), all of those votes sure look like they came from Republicans. Said another way: if you compare religious voter support for the Democrats in 1988 and 1992 there was no major shift (33/33 among white Protestants, 47/44 among Catholics). Said a third way: when given the chance, something approaching a third of the Republican base deserted their party in 1992.

The lesson, ladies and gentlemen? Religious voters are unreliable. You have to do everything you can to keep them close by you – choke-chained, as it were, like a vicious pit bull. So while, yes, it was an important part of BushCo’s strategy to demagogue God, Gays, and Guns, they had to do that in order to keep their base flagellating themselves in an orgy of zealous righteousness, otherwise they would have stayed home and watched “Desperate Housewives” on Nov. 2nd. They did not “sway” the election – but Karl had to get out that vote, for demn sure.

Next up: The Mob, The False Prophets, and the Broken Vessel.

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