Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Well, the Most Important Election in Modern History is over. America was at a crossroads this year, and the choice we as a nation had to make had never been more clear until yesterday. We have chosen the road that will determine the future course of our lives, our childrens' lives, our grandchildrens' lives....

....at least until 2004, when once again we will face the Most Important Election in Modern History as we again stand at a crossroads, when the choice before us will be clear as it has never been clear before.

And once 2004 is over? Well, it's just four short years to 2006!

I find it strange how we always couch our election rhetoric in the most dire language possible, as if every election that comes along is a moment in time like The Lord of the Rings, when the Third Age is ending and the Elves are leaving and the final reckoning with Sauron is at hand -- but at the same time, we also console ourselves with the other great meme of democracy: that if we decide we don't like what the folks we just put in office do, we just vote them out next time around. Democracy, for all its wonders, is a pretty schizophrenic thing, both profound and banal, both momentous and mundane. Democracy requires us to hold two contradictory beliefs: that everything depends on what choice we make today; and a wrong choice is pretty easily fixed down the road.

I'm a registered Democrat, so yesterday's results are disappointing to me, but they were not totally unexpected. The Democrats seemed to view winning yesterday not so much as a goal to be sought and worked toward, but rather a cosmic reality that demanded lip-service and hushed reverence. They constantly talked about the fact that the party controlling the White House almost always loses seats in Congress come the mid-terms, and yet no one considered the historical reason for that fact: it's generally a corrective act on the part of the public, a reaction to a new Administration's invariable over-reaches and foul-ups. The problem for the Democrats here was twofold: they already managed to take control of the Senate a year and a half ago, providing that very correction; and a war erupted. So in the former case the Democrats were partly victims of their own success; in the latter case, the Democrats simply messed up by acting the part of opposition in foggy, undefined fashion that never looked all that genuine (except in the case of Paul Wellstone).

So the Democrats over the last two years -- since the inauguration of President Bush -- have been a party of "against", of "opposition", of "No". All those have their place, but the election was a time for them to be "for" something and to advance real, alternative ideas. The "I'm not that guy" strategy, in politics, is always risky: just ask Doug Forrester, the Republican Senate candidate in New Jersey, whose entire strategy was "I'm not Torricelli" -- and whose entire strategy evaporated when Torricelli bailed out. "We're not Bill Clinton" was the Republican strategy in 1998, and it was a disaster. "I'm not Bill Clinton" was the unstated premise of Al Gore's campaign, and he's now a private citizen (although not by much). George W. Bush also used "I'm not Bill Clinton", but he did it in a positive way (and, anyway, he really lost). So, along came the Democrats with their "We're not Republicans" strategy this year. OK, fair enough -- but they never offered any answer to the follow-up question, "So what are you, then?"

Yes, I found yesterday's results disappointing. No, I don't see them as unmitigated disaster. Democrats who act as if the country has just made some horrible turn to the right and that liberalism is dead are as wrongheaded as Republicans who act as if they've just been given the Keys to the Kingdom. For all the sports metaphors we inject into our political debate in this country, the fact is that democracy is not the Super Bowl. The game is not over. The game is never over. So, Democrats, stop acting like you've just lost everything you've ever dreamed of. And Republicans, stop acting like you've just won everything you've ever dreamed of. Both of you, get up off the damn bench and get back in the game, because the game never ends. Only the players do.