As I suspected going into this primary season, I recently re-registered as a democrat in order to support progressive challenges to DC’s entrenched dysfunction in the only way possible. DC republicans are as crazy as the national party and the only republican running that I could even stomach voting for is running for school board in another ward of the city than the one I live in, so there is no sense in voting republican in the primary this year.
The nation’s capital is a great example of why all political change must come by way of the primary election system as well as by shedding of party identity as our primary motive for voting.
I have long been accused of being a “typical republican” (basically since I joined the party’s moderates in August of 2008 in a sincere effort to help change the GOP from within) not withstanding my actual ideas which are anything but standard republican fare. That I don’t really fall into the standard mold of either party is an additional confusion my trolls can’t seem to pass up as a starting point for the caricatures of my blogs and comments.
That Americans practice politics in such a naive and ham-fisted fashion is the real on-going tragedy of the commons. Barack Obama’s election offered a rare chance for us to turn back the rank tide of partisanship that has defined our political sphere for far too long and yet the party faithful on both sides of the fence pretty much guaranteed that the president’s new project would be dead on arrival in a Washington still bitterly divided along stark ideological lines.
As our “elected” Neros fiddle their schizoid refrain, America’s grassroots burn with disaffection and angst. We The People once again march into the breach, flailing at anything that moves if it is of a differing political hue, with little to no provocation. We are willing to engage in countless hours of on-line or in-person sniping yet can’t be bothered to vote in primary elections with anything resembling consistency much less intelligence.
The same group of clowns have been in charge of both parties as well as the national agenda for decades, yet somehow they always end up more powerful than the previous election no matter how badly they screwed the pooch for the previous two or four or six years. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am going to vote a straight anti-incumbent ticket for whichever party seems most likely to retain control of whatever location I am living.
Getting new blood through the primary election and into the fait accompli general seems the only way to actually fix what ails us, regardless of party.