This from Katrina van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine:
On some of the fundamental core issues, people don’t want this kind of messianic, militaristic policy. They just want to be secure and have some kind of principled foreign policy. They want universal health care. They want an end to the war. With virtually no political leadership, I think people seek a saner, more decent country than our elected representatives offer and the mainstream media paint. And this blue/red divide they’re always harping on, I don’t like it. . . . There’s more complexity and more decency and more generosity of spirit here than is generally allowed in the kind of 36/7 media culture we live in.
I agree. But the problem lies in that these same American people have no political means to exert their will on the national poltical scene, and they seem to have given up hope of ever having any. And maybe it is too late. For me it’s an open question.
Americans have pretty much abandoned their responsibility for governing themselves to the moneyed class. This class has an agenda that has little or nothing to do with the interests of ordinary Americans. The Democrats have become almost as bad as the Republicans in representing the interests of money.
The idea of the Democrats taking back the house this Fall would be a relief. But regardless how exhilarated the folks over at DailyKos might be about the prospect, I won’t be feeling any. The Democrats are profoundly implicated in what is horrific in our political culture right now, and I am not at all sure they have an illness for which there is a cure. And please God, spare us having to deal with Hillary Clinton in 2008.
So the question for me is what has to happen for democracy to reassert itself in this country? Is anything possible anymore? Has it all become too complicated? Is it a pipedream to believe that an alert, well-informed American electorate, an electorate much as vanden Heuval describes them, could take back one or the other party from the money interests who run them. Or will it require the creation of a new party, which perhaps could be called "The American Decency Party," and whose program starts with the three issues vanden Heuvel identifies: "There’s the Constitution — defend it; there’s Iraq — get out of it; there’s universal health care — pass it."
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