Republicans rebel. Democrats fall in line.

My friend Angelo D’Argenio and I were asking ourselves why the Republicans seem to have all the political will and then Democrats have none.

I realized: Republicans rebel. Democrats fall in line. Republicans are afraid of aggressive, far right wing Tea Party challengers in their home districts, so they’re pushing the shutdown. You know what happened to the last hardline, anti-war Democrat? His own party redistricted him such that he lost his primary. That man’s name was Dennis Kucinich.

Democrats, for all their talk of a “big tent”, are actually more ideologically narrow than the Republicans. The Republicans at least have a lunatic fringe, a far right extreme minority that’s vocal and powerful. It doesn’t cleave to the demands of leadership, and in fact terrorizes the leadership.

Where are the hazy, trippy, far out Timothy Leary types that the right wing always stereotypes Democrats as? Where are the representatives and Senators screaming “NO NUKES!”, burning their bras, and staging sit ins against rape? Where are the Democrats refusing to pass a government budget unless it includes EFCA union card check and a fifteen dollar minimum wage?

Bernie Sanders? Elizabeth Warren? They already got rid of Kucinich in one of the ugliest betrayals I’ve ever seen. Democrats have to fall in line or else the big scary Republicans will win. And admittedly, nobody wants that. But what do we get in return for our obedience?

Throughout the election of 2012, I was told to fall in line and vote for Obama because the alternative was far worse. I was told to overlook the extrajudicial assassination of an American citizen. I was told to overlook how toothless the Dodd-Frank Act was, even though it was meant as the thin blue line between the American people and another economic collapse. These were Democratic accomplishments, not violations of the public trust, not violations of progressive / leftist values. I should hold these victories high as proof that the Democrats deserved another four years, or at least Obama did. It sounds as ludicrous now as it did then.

But we haven’t rebelled. In the run up to the Second Iraq War, which even teenagers could tell you was started on false premises and flimsy evidence (I was one of the teenagers that did) the Democrats folded. And thousands of American soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, for reasons that even the fathers of that war can’t completely explain. But there were no ferocious primary challenges to pro-war Democrats. We were told to fall in line. And we did. Over and over again.

Compliance to party power has a result that’s actually worse than doing nothing. By vocally proclaiming party loyalty, we neutralize ourselves as instruments of change. They don’t need to win our vote if they already have us. Electoral politics are not the best way to make change (more on that elsewhere), but there’s something to be said for a government that’s afraid of its people. The New Deal happened because FDR and other political and economic elites were terrified of radical change and revolution in the US. That was when working people actually saw some relief from the fallout of capitalism – social welfare, social security, a minimum wage, unemployment.

The Republicans are afraid of losing seats to Tea Party challengers, so they trip all over one another to prove that they’re more conservative than the other guy. Abortion is murder! Food stamps are socialism! Christianity in the schools! Shut down the government! Randism for all!

Could you just IMAGINE if Democrats were being just as extreme to please the left wing part of their base? Green energy now! All troops out of the Middle East! Six month maternity / paternity leave! Break up the big banks! No more oil pipelines! No more drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge!

They don’t have to fight for our votes (and our interests) if we let them fall back on important issues and call these concessions victory. Republicans are good at rebelling. We need to get good at it too. If our government isn’t afraid of us, we’re doing it wrong.