August 05, 2010 07:48 PM UTC

15 Shades of Grey

•  
• by: Raf

(Very well said and well written. Something all political activists, on either side of the aisle, should keep in mind this time of year. – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Earlier, Old Ben Kenobi posted a diary* that posited a theory of the campaign that I considered to be inaccurate. I wrote a long response as a comment, and I’ve decided to repost it as a diary. It follows after the jump.

*See, there’s the link! 🙂

“Bennet supporters will not see any inconsistency to these votes.”

I could say the same thing about Romanoff supporters not seeing any inconsistency with Romanoff’s record as a politician. The fact that many folks are willing to give him a pass merely on him saying that he’s reading from the right page in the prayer book is just as uncritical.

I’ve supported and worked for candidates like Mike Miles, Ned Lamont, and Paul Wellstone; it takes more than a deathbed conversion for me to grant you absolution, so to speak. Many of the things that Romanoff takes credit for now were initiatives advanced by other legislators, where he either came to the table late or not at all.

While I welcome his conversion to progressive politics, and, frankly, respect that he’s come this far waging the kind of culturally progressive campaign that we, all too often, pay lip service to, I can’t help but continue to wonder where this progressive champion was for eight years in the Colorado legislature; where this progressive champion of, for example, comprehensive immigration reform was when he rammed through legislation that could be rightfully considered the spiritual and philosophical father of Arizona’s SB 1070; and where this progressive champion will be if he is elected to the Senate.

These are all questions that, frankly, have been asked over and over and over again, for the last year, and the only answer we’ve gotten is that he’s seen the light now that it’s convenient for him to do. So you’ll have to color me skeptical on that.

“First, the presumption that this is his [Bennet’s] seat.”

Again, I could just as easily say the same thing about Romanoff supporters. Earlier in the piece, OBK referred to Bennet as an “illegitimate” incumbent. And while, when I challenged him on this, he quickly backtracked, one can’t help but think that had Romanoff received the appointment, very, very, very few people would have considered Romanoff “illegitimate”.

Without getting into the specifics again, suffice it to say that we are engaged in a great contest to ratify the choice that Governor Ritter made. This is as it should be. Both Romanoff and Bennet have had a year to make their cases before the Democrats of this state; in six days, we will render the verdict.

This is the process writ in law. We’re a nation of laws, not men. If people have a problem with the law, and not merely with the man, then there should be a parallel movement to reform the laws so that this doesn’t happen again. Sadly, I suspect that that won’t happen.

“Romanoff has no “political machine.”  His supporters are the people he has talked to and worked with across the state of Colorado for the past 15+ years.  Ironically, Bennet really did have a political machine working for him in the caucuses, Organizing for America.”

A number of things here. First, the idea that Bennet’s experience in politics is equivalent to Romanoff’s experience in politics is just simply laughable. Romanoff served on the Democratic National Committee, then spent eight years as an elected official, the last four as Speaker of the House. He’s the very definition of a career politician. To suddenly act as if he’s just a simple, down-home, just-folks kind of guy is insulting.

Moreover, it becomes even more insulting when Romanoff supporters turn around and use the very same record they just got done insisting wasn’t a mark of a career politician as proof that Romanoff would be more effective than Bennet in the U.S. Senate. Newsflash: you can’t have it both ways. Either he’s a man of the people, virginally unsullied by the mark of the special interest beast, or he’s a smooth operator who’ll excel in the halls of the Senate – but he can’t be both. Pick one.

As for the political machine known as Organizing for America: yes, it’s part of the DNC. It’s also composed of regular people who volunteer because they want to make this a better country. Furthermore, the claim that OFA is a political machine is an attack straight out of the Republican playbook. The claim is that Obama and his minions are engaging in dirty Chicago-style machine politics, as opposed to the clean politics that “real Americans” engage in.

What’s next – that ACORN and SEIU silently whispered to Bill Ritter that he should appoint Michael Bennet? One begins to wonder whether the Trilateral Commission will pop up, or maybe the fearsome Gnomes of Zurich.

For what it’s worth, having participated in Democratic Party politics for half of my young life, I can tell you that many of the Romanoff supporters that OBK sings paeans to as simple, good-hearted folk engage in dirty machine politics every bit as foul as those found in a Chicago alderman’s office.

The attack becomes especially rich when you consider that Romanoff will be the first person asking when the DSCC, OFA and other “political machines” will come to his rescue, should he win the primary. And, again, had he been appointed, no one would’ve been decrying his support by OFA. No one.

Let’s be blunt. When it comes to this primary, we’re looking at about 15 shades of grey. This idea that one guy is sainted, and the other is Satan, is absolutely ludicrous. Michael Bennet and Andrew Romanoff are, in this sense, just like the rest of us: highly gifted in some areas, highly flawed in others. More on this shortly, but I’ll segue to the last bone of contention here.

“The guy who follows Mark Udall around the Senate like a puppy dog?”

Bennet’s a freshman Senator. To be honest, all Senate freshmen have a certain puppy-like attitude about them. They follow people around, they ask a lot of questions – it’s what they do. The Senate, and more to the point, its procedures, are well-nigh impenetrable.

To be brutally honest, the idea that Romanoff is somehow going to waltz into the Senate and start on an orgy of legislating and policy-making is simply ludicrous. It’s also the corollary to the “career politician” point; that despite him being a simple guy who’s just interested in politics, he’s also a skilled legislative savant who’ll dazzle the world with his political legerdemain.

Yeah, not so much. If Romanoff gets elected to the Senate, particularly a Senate with a diminished Democratic majority, he’s going to do what Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer tell him to do, in exchange for which they’ll let him make floor speeches that have the policy substance of a jelly donut. If the Republicans are in charge, you can forget about even that.

That’s not Romanoff’s fault, incidentally; that’s how the system is constructed. In Senate tradition, freshmen are little seen or heard. And while Romanoff has the potential, if elected, to be a great Senator, the idea that he’s somehow a world-historical figure who’ll be the exception to the rule in the Senate feeds into my last point.

“Convert a zombie today.”

And here’s the problem, in a nutshell. No, not the zombie.

When you talk about belief, when you talk about conversion, you’re talking about something deeply personal. You’re also talking about something that anchors you down, and keeps you from going further. As Chris Rock said, you can always change an idea; it’s a lot harder to change a belief.

The other thing about conversion and beliefs is that they don’t really mix well with the free exchanges of a democracy (cue the “it’s not a democracy, it’s a REPUBLIC!” guys. Yeah, yeah. Listen, Patrick Henry called and wants his breeches, three-corner hat and musket back in 1774, ok? Thanks.)

We’ve gotten, lately, into a really bad habit of believing that the political leaders we support are imbued with all manner of good virtues and that the ones we don’t are Hell’s own spawn. You saw it with Barack Obama, and now you’re seeing it with Michael Bennet and Andrew Romanoff.

The problem with doing that is that it forces us to concentrate on the other guy’s flaws, and makes us ignore our guy’s own deep shortcomings. Furthermore, when another person attacks our guy, we feel deep down inside as if we’re the ones being attacked, so we go nuclear on the other guy and his supporters.

But that’s not the the worst thing. The worst thing is, when our guy fails to live up to the inhuman expectations that we place on her or him, we immediately call down the thunder on our guy and scream betrayal to the heavens.

Our guy didn’t betray us; we betrayed ourselves. We betrayed ourselves because we surrendered our power in a democracy to our guy. He didn’t take it; we gave it away, with a pretty little bow on top.

The only way we keep the power is by thinking critically and acting critically. There’s no way to do that if we’re talking about conversion and belief.  And frankly, in this primary, we’ve done that to ourselves and each other far, far too many times.

We have to do better than that.