Progressive Democrats' Stockholm Syndrome

By Daniel W.K. Lee

Last August, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, told progressive Democrats to “fuck off” and leave the Blue Dog Dems alone in order to pass a heavily compromised healthcare bill. This week, Vice President Joe Biden told attendees at a fundraiser for Democratic candidates in New Hampshire to “remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look for the alternatives.”

These two moments over the early course of Obama’s presidency are indicative of the patronizing and hostile attitude “Establishment Democrats” have toward progressives/liberals within their party. Instead of a politics of hope and change, both Emanuel and Biden have fallen back into a politics of fear in order to try to keep Democrats in line by employing the following narrative, or variations of: “Shut the fuck up. We’ve delivered watered-down, progressive legislation that you should thank us for, instead of bitching about, otherwise the only alternative is the GOP, which is worse. You definitely don’t want that so stop rabble-rousing, take what you can get, and don’t forget to vote us back into power in November or be really afraid of what the Republicans might do.” As a result, progressive Democrats—dismayed by the unemployment rate, paltry finance reform, devastating austerity measures, non-existent climate-change bill, still yet to be repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, still open Guantánamo Bay, the legal black holes/continued suspension of habeas corpus, and of course, an unclear vision of immigration reform, among other things—have become blatant apologists for the administration, calling for patience, to accept an incrementalist approach, and a steady diet of presidential rhetoric. Essentially, progressive Democrats have developed Stockholm Syndrome for their Beltway, center-leaning captors—some more intensely than others.

The more afflicted show their sympathy by rationalizing only so much can be accomplished in two years time and perhaps conceding that President Obama wouldn’t be able to transform Washington as he and they had hoped; while the less afflicted may be shouting and resisting the easy compromises by congressional Democrats and POTUS, nonetheless, they will still stay in their taken-for-granted, psychologically-exhaustive, disappointing, and borderline(?) emotionally-abusive relationship with the party and vote Democrat come November because the unknown wilderness outside this prison is too scary to imagine other possibilities.

Biden commands the base to “go out there and look for the alternatives,” which is exactly what liberals should do by daring to support candidates that actually do represent their progressive or even radical political agenda, irrespective of political party. People talk about candidates’ “viability” like it were an immutable trait, but the truth is that a candidate is viable because voters believe, support, and empower him or her whether or not s/he is a Democrat, Republic, Green, Libertarian, or Socialist. It is a politics of fear, it is voting from fear—like the fear of a Republican majority—that limits democracy, marginalizes truly better candidates, and keeps progressive voters in their Democratic Party cages. So which is it: voting your fears or voting your hopes?

#tlot #tpot Vote your hopes not your fears! #GOTV2010 Vote #GreenParty!