My Demexit Diary aka The Scream
The very first presidential election I was old enough to vote in was 1972 and my first vote as a Registered Democrat went to Shirley Chisholm. I have never regretted my vote for her or for George McGovern later that year. I came into the party a FDR, Bleeding Heart Liberal (minds gotta think, mouths gotta speak and hearts gotta bleed) Democrat.
In the more than 40 years since, I have donated, tabled, phone banked, registered voters as Democrats, flyered (yes, we used to print out flyers, hand them out, tape to streetlights, staple to telephone poles), got out the vote, waved signs and banners in election years.
As a proud member of the Dirty Eff-ing Hippie wing of the Democratic Party, we worked in coalitions with labor, religious and community folks, lobbied and spoke at city councils, county boards of supervisors, traveled in groups and danged uncomfortable buses to Sacramento, did prison work, participated in the Sanctuary Movement and marched and rallied against every damn one of the US’ overt and covert Imperialist wars. Also, sat in at lunch counters in Civil Rights marches, but technically that was when I was still in the South and not yet old enough to vote. Whether it was an election year or not.
For my troubles, the Democratic Party has nominated a lo-o-o-ong line of “Lesser of Two Evils” (Al Gore and I-Rest-My-Case-Lieberman! spring immediately to mind) with one brief shining 2 days of the 1st Obama administration before he and Rham flang all that Hope-y Change-y out the door.
I have been Hippie Punched by the very best at it: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama - though I do have to give Bill credit, he pretty much waited until his second administration rather than Obama’s 2 days. Hillary started it in the primary and she’s just not good at it.
All these years of neo-liberal and corporate takeover of the Democratic Party and lesser-evil voting has brought us to this - the choice of a Neocon Warhawk or a billionaire bully who plays Mussolini on the TV and Twitter machines.
Trump is indeed HORRIBLE, but not because he’s some anomalous monster that came from nowhere. He’s scary because he is the exact culmination of more than 40 years of Republican voting strategy. There is a laser-straight line of Republican campaigns from Nixon and Lee Atwater’s Southern Strategy, picking up speed with Saint Ronnie and straight through the Bushes of dog-whistling racist, xenophobic, misogynistic tropes that they thought only their base would hear. Donald Trump just dispenses with the dog-whistles and puts on the Westminster Dogshow of white, mostly male anger.
MY TIPPING POINT
I was 38, recently widowed in June 1989, when I spoke with a colleague at UC Berkeley for the first time in a social setting.
Me:Hi I’m Faye, I work in the Berkeley office, thanks for inviting me out, I haven’t gotten out much lately.
E: Yes, I heard. So sorry for your loss. How are you doing?
Me: Oh, I’m getting better - it’s been 6 months now, and….
E: What do you mean better?
Me: well…… It doesn’t hurt so much to breathe anymore…. And I teared up.
E wrapped me in a big hug, the first of many, many hugs. There was no one on the planet that knows more about the grieving process than gay men in San Francisco in the Silence = Death years. E and his group of friends took me in and provided me with a social life, friends and became my family in my widowhood since my family was mostly back in the South.
The Reagans had done everything in their power to keep the AIDS epidemic under the rug - Silence did kill so many people. This was before the Cocktails were developed and we became caregiving circles for those for whom the cocktails were too late.
When Hillary Rodham Clinton attended Nancy Reagan’s funeral and Gratuitously, seemingly compulsively Pandered for Republican votes that was it for me. She almost cackled as she threw people I love and care for under the bus.
So, I’m Demexiting today. Leaving the corrupt, corporate shell of the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Francis Perkins and the New Deal. Divorce is final after 44 years on grounds of desertion.
I have never voted for a Republican in my life and I’m way too old and wise to start that nonsense at this stage of the festivities. So every Democratic and 3rd party candidate will have to earn my vote or I will leave it blank. Hooray for NPP! I’m free!
I am honored and proud that my last campaign as a Democrat was so inspiring and gives me much hope for the future. We are a very diverse and energized group in the SantaCruz4Bernie troop, we ran a grassroots, volunteer campaign that earned 59% of the vote and by 5 pm on June 7th, we were phone banking each other! We gave it all we had!
I’m still working a last primary and I’ll work for the down ballot Bernie candidates if I can avoid being slimed by the DNC, but I’m headed to Brand New Congress and Our Revolution for 2018 and beyond.
I’ll probably, in the end, Chomsky the 2016 general election. If that woman is doing so badly that even California is in play, well, I’ll search out the largest clothespin on the planet and vote for the Not-Trump. Otherwise, it’s Jill Stein to try for some progress on smashing the corrupt corporate duopoly that passes for a political system in this country.
Comments
Thank so much for that!
You've had an amazing journey.
I am more interested in Our Revolution now that I know that Bernie is returning to the Senate as an Independent. I have no interest in helping or promoting or reforming the Democrats from within, but I think Bernie has the nucleus of a real and meaningful Third Party if he can figure out a way to keep it together. I hope he and Jane can put together a roster of new candidates for use by the 2018 election that are committed to the reforms that he stood for while running for Pres.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
I'm with you on everything but the end.
That's not a criticism of you, by any means, we all have to make our own choice.
But I simply cannot vote for her, and I think she's far more dangerous in the long run than Trump. Trump is very dangerous for us here at home, for a few years, but part of me feels like its time to get all this racism and otherism out in the open so we can deal with the people who hold those views. So we know who they are. So they see where all that hatred actually leads - it's not a pretty destination. I'm not trying to downplay the very real danger for POC and Muslims. But I feel like that's a fight we could win, that we could fight back against home-grown hatred.
But Hillary, she's dangerous, so dangerous for our long-term survival. Neoliberal policies, TPP, Fracking, all of it is too dangerous, and we don't have time to waste 8 years, or worse, lose ground for 8 years and try to fight to reclaim it. There's pretty much zero chance if she gets in that she won't be in for 8 years.
The SCOTUS argument is a non-starter for me. Everyone acts like a SCOTUS ruling is written in stone for all eternity. It's not. Congress can simply write a new law to overrule any bad SCOTUS rulings. This, of course, means we need to work with BNC and Our Revolutions and the Greens and any other progressives to take back Congress. But SCOTUS rulings are replaceable.
Quite honestly, I'm terrified every day now, by both of them. There's only so much fear you can take before you say, fuck it. I'm voting for who I want to vote for...
Thanks for sharing your story. It's been quite an election year, hasn't it?
p.s. I Demexited already, and yes, it was very freeing to finally see and judge the party I once identified with from the outside. They look pretty ugly from out here.
Well said, Haikukitty
I too don't understand the last part of the essay. I am voting and working here in AZ to see that the Green Party and Jill Stein get the maximum number of votes. If the state is in play as some polls indicate, then that's too bad for the Dems - should have thought of that before you stole the election. #NeverHillary
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. - e.e.cummings
There are twice as many
There are twice as many Indies as Dems - or Repubs, either. If the bulk of them vote against both evils for Jill Stein, especially with voting for Hillary depressed and many Republicans not impressed by Trump, she'll get the votes.
Whether Jill's voters are permitted to vote or to have their votes accurately counted essentially depends upon whether the Dem primary theft is permitted by The People to stand as a done deal or not. If electoral fraud isn't stopped now, it never will be.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Gaslight recovery may take awhile
I've been back and forth in my mind on the LEV argument for the last month. I actually think when I look at it in late October I will be looking to see who will be the most EFFECTIVELY evil and vote the other one if CA is in play. Trumps effectiveness is entirely dependent on who he gets as his Karl Rove and who he gets as his Dick Cheney (that is NOT Mike Pence). I doubt even the Republicans will cooperate with him if he doesn't have some form of mediating influence.
By my own analysis I know Hillary Clinton will complete the corporate takeover, not only of the Democratic Party - well, that's already happened - but isn't that actually the definition of a fascist state?! More than 40 years of shattered hopes and dreams takes awhile to clear away.
Thank you for this moving story
The Nancy Reagan lie is something that should never be forgotten, and I'm happy you cite it as a reason to leave. I wrote my valedictory diary over at TOP on the matter, as a big Fuck You to the get-over-it Clintonites stomping on my heart. If I hadn't already decided never to vote for Hillary, that would have done it.
The Democratic party is indistinguishable from the Republican party of 15 or 20 years ago. That was the ultimate goal of the DLC crowd the Clintons ran with, and they have achieved it. The party's adherents are increasingly the sort of nasty authoritarian followers we used to hate when they were Republicans, which I suppose in a sense they still are.
Please help support caucus99percent!
My comment in your diary was about that.
My personal story was why I cried when you published your diary.
I remember, and thank you for your comment
Our tears honor and call back those we've lost. Have a hug.
Please help support caucus99percent!
I had the same breaking point with Hillary this cycle.
When your grip on the past is so tenuous that you basically thank Reagan for being complicit in the death of a community and for helping AIDS get such a large footprint in America, your grip on reality is so non-existentant that I can't vote for you. That said, CA is one of Hillary's safest states. If CA is in contention at all, she's lost nationally point blank. She's lost in Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania and another good 35 states (at least) as well. Jill Stein can use your vote to get to the 5% mark (and potentially beyond! But 5% is the first level where I believe money and benefits start kicking in), while its window dressing for Hillary in CA. I'm going to put together some numbers later that will back this point up better since it's going to be my main strategy to get my fellow Angelenos to go for Stein.
The way to elect Clinton will be phone banking and volunteering in swing states. I'll be happy to pick my activism up with the Green Party myself (if grad school leaves me any time; I seem to have trouble accepting that it likely won't. I'm just lucky that school started right when CA voted so that I at least got to volunteer for Bernie up until the last weekend).
Also, thank you for your progressive advocacy for all these years!
OK, I know I'm in the
OK, I know I'm in the minority here but --
The piece of reality that I keep bumping my head into is this. The fact is that a two-party duopoly is hardwired into the US electoral system. It certainly is not what the Founders intended, but the simple fact is that first-past-the-post elections and the Electoral College make it literally impossible for a third party to break through. The most any third party Presidential candidate could ever do is take enough EC votes to throw the election to the House - and therefore right back to the two majors. (And before anyone says "but the Republicans did it in 1856" - that's a myth. The Whigs had effectively disintegrated in 1852, the GOP rose as the winning faction from those ruins to fill the void as the second party, not as a third party.) So for better or worse, the next President will be either Clinton or Trump. I realize that we have survived the Alzheimer's patient and the village idiot, but Trump really is qualitatively different. I didn't think that at the beginning of the campaign - in fact back then I argued to people that I thought he was the least scary of the GOP candidates. But throughout the campaign I have seen him just becoming more and more unhinged, and I have come to believe that he really is dangerous in a way that no major candidate ever has been before. So I cannot support allowing him to win. Period.
I was pretty much maxed out for Bernie, and I'm as sick as anyone at how it turned out (and at the documented proof of how it was all rigged). I was truly hoping that somehow, some way the sane elements of the GOP would for once in their worthless lives find the balls to do something honorable and shove Trump aside. But that didn't happen. So here we are and this is what we've got. So I understand the diarist's last paragraph, and pretty much agree.
As for the future, I don't see the Dems going the way of the Whigs yet, so any energy spent building up a third party is going to be wasted. We need to put everything we've got into taking over the Dems from the bottom up, because that's the only way it will happen. We need progressive Dems moving into every town council and Mayor's office we can get. Because from there they can move into state legislatures. And that's who become the Congress, Senate, and Gubernatorial candidates of the future, as well as becoming the new Party elite. Then and only then will we have a shot at electing an actual liberal President. We can't win from the top down. Bernie was the best chance we've ever had - if he couldn't do it, no one can.
I think that's the strategy of Brand New Congress
In Santa Cruz we also have a very strong and active Progressive Democratic Club so I think folks are running for fire districts, library boards, city councils.... All of which are non-partisan so burrowing from within.
I think the Democratic Party
I think the Democratic Party is un-takeover-able... too much Wall Street money and inertia. We need to take it out back and shoot it. And if that means a few terms of Republicans winning, well, we'll deal with that as it comes. At least with an R in the White House, all the fake-ass liberals won't be apologizing for and denying everything he does wrong.
Maybe, maybe not
You could be right, time will tell. But I don't think so. I actually think it is more likely that Hillary will be the last hurrah for the Goldman Sachs crowd. There will be a generational change after this, and I think the younger Dems will be far less friendly to Wall Street. Whereas over on the GOP side, there will be a strong push by the Corporatists to yank the reins back from the crazies. At which point I think we will see that Wall Street money has absolutely no inertia at all - it will turn on a dime and flow right back the way it went before the DLC.
Wow
Those days when my friends and I were going to more funerals than parties.
Those days when the obituary section of the newspaper was bigger than the classified.
I was never registered with a specific party. But I wanted to participate in DemExit so I switched my voter registration from NPP (No Party Preference) to "The Green Party". I hope this sends a message to both the Democrats and the Republicans that I'm don't intend to be aligned with them at all.
I did this online and to sign my registration change all I needed to do was allow the signature on my Driver's License to be used as my voters registration signature. I checked the box and entered my license number.
Two days ago I received a letter stating that because I did not specify a signature they could not process my registration change. It was accompanied by a blank registration form to fill in. I can't say whether this was ineptitude or intentional stalling. Who knows anymore.
The people, united, will never be defeated.
In my part of CA DemExit was no problem
On the form there is a square where it says that you give permission to Voter Registrar to use DMV signature. It took me two minutes to deregister Dem, and register No Party Preference. By the way, to change party preference from a listed party to NPP, you have to register as "other", which then leads to another tab where you can select NPP or whatever.
That's my point. I did check the box and filled in my DL#.
They claim I didn't.
The people, united, will never be defeated.
So many funerals
And far too many AIDS Quilts too, though there was a lot of love and healing in them.
By the way, we now have an image for "The Scream"
I found and uploaded that yesterday, or thereabouts. Feel free to borrow and use anywhere it fits - that goes for everyone.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.