Looking over Twitter yesterday, I came across a Twit-snit in which an angry Clintonite was raging against those she characterized as white, self-absorbed, entitled Millennials who failed to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and were threatening not to vote for Joe Biden in 2024. She said these things as part of a rant in which she--herself white--was arguing that the shitty Clintonite-right candidates she favors are entitled to the votes of Millennials who didn't wish to vote for such candidates. In the midst of her tantrum, she characterized declining to vote for candidates who don't represent one's views and/or interests as "throwing a tantrum," said "being able to throwing[sic] a tantrum is white emtitlement[sic]" and other such things. She'd named her account, apparently without irony, "Democracy Rules."
This stuff is, of course, par for the course on Twitter and across social media, literally the sort of thing some quart-low pundit is pushing somewhere every minute of every day, and perhaps it's not even worthy of much attention--stupid gonna stupid--but there is, beneath the frequent and amusing lack of self-awareness in such commentary, something that perhaps is: a complete lack of understanding of, often outright contempt for, the basics of liberal democracy. The casualness and persistence of it and the often weak pushback against it are all symptomatic of why liberal democracy is presently failing and in increasing danger of ending.
A basic civics lesson: In the liberal democracy, political candidates and factions present their respective competing programs to the public. Every candidate for public office has the responsibility of making a good enough case for his own program that he's able to assemble around it a coalition sufficient to overcome his competitors. Among the public, every person weighs these programs then, in a democratic process, votes for whichever he or she prefers. Those who are elected aren't royalty; they're representatives, stand-ins for their constituents in the business of governing, there because it isn't practical to have every person in a large nation vote on every little thing government does.
Pretty basic stuff. The problems of liberal democracy seem almost infinite but for those who believe in it, that's the theory.[1]
Part of why it's now in danger is that to many of those, like "Democracy Rules," who profess their adherence to it and present themselves as its defenders are, in fact, enemies of liberal democracy and in their commentary on public affairs are, in effect, actively inveighing against it.
"Democracy Rules" engages in that perennial elitist favorite, voter-blaming. Favored elites can, by this "logic," never fail; they can only be failed. Everyone on social media has seen this routine: Everything bad that has happened in the world since--yes, this again--2016 is the result of those who failed to vote for Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton isn't responsible for her bad behavior over the years. She isn't responsible for the awful campaign she ran. She isn't responsible for failing to build a sufficient coalition to win the presidency. She isn't responsible for, well, anything. No, it was the voters' fault. "Democracy Rules" attacks Millennials for failing to vote for Clinton (even though most of them did vote for her).[2] Others attack those who supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries or those who voted for a 3rd-party candidate or those who sat out the general election. The terminally online Clinton cult despises progressives more than anything in this world and has obsessively targeted them with these attacks every hour of every day for nearly 7 years now. The cult's narrative on this is logically indefensible but as much as the cultists often try to make it look like one, it isn't an effort at a logical analysis; it's just an emotional outburst. A really long one.[3] More importantly, one that--like every other voter-blaming effort--is rooted in the complete abandonment of liberal democratic principles.
Politics is about assembling winning coalitions, and voter-blaming, to the extent that it has any effect at all, merely acts as an obstacle to assembling the next one. Is someone who is blamed, in so outlandishly unfair, unjustifiable and relentless a fashion, for every bad thing that happens more or less likely to want to team up the next time around with those doing the blaming? Bitching about politics is a very democratic thing to do, to be sure, but this particular species of bitching is actively counterproductive. More to the point, it bespeaks a complete ignorance of and/or aggressive indifference toward how the system works, as it doesn't just pointlessly alienate potential allies in a strategically stupid way; it's a very straightforward, in-your-face argument that you aren't entitled to vote (or not vote) as you wish. The elite candidate favored by those like "Democracy Rules" is absolved of any responsibility for doing anything to earn enough votes to win. Those who make their vote conditional on their representatives actually representing their views or interests are, in fact, angrily denounced by the "Democracy Rules" of social media for doing so, as if it was a completely inappropriate practice, rather than a basic democratic one. Progressives are denounced, condemned, damned to Hell in the Dog Days Of Summer for not voting for candidates who offer them absolutely nothing in the way of policies those progressives support. And then the progressives are blamed when a bad, conservative candidate--the one that didn't offer them anything and whom the finger-pointers chose--loses. That's even sweeter when those bad, conservative candidates employed unethical, corrupt tactics in the primaries to take out better, stronger candidates preferred by the progressives.
The "argument" proffered by those like "Democracy Rules" takes several forms. Some say refusing to vote for the candidate they favor makes one responsible for ___ (fill in the blank with bad things that happened after said candidate failed to win or could happen in the future if said candidate fails to win). Others say refusing to vote for the candidate they favor is a product of one's "white privilege," even when those so refusing aren't white and those making the accusation are. Or just "privilege." But when one strips away all the fancy rhetorical packaging, the only real "argument" by those who so casually throw around this language of "privilege" and "entitlement" is simply that a particular candidate is entitled to your vote, regardless of what you may prefer. And--wouldn't you know it?--it's always the candidate favored by those making this "argument"!
Shocking, right?
Fail to acknowledge their "wisdom" in this matter, fail to recognize that the candidate they favor is entitled to your vote, insist on exercising your own criteria and your own judgment and deciding for yourself how you vote or don't vote or, worse yet, don't vote for the candidate they favor, you're said to be "throwing a tantrum." And bringing on ruin.
Our age is seeing the emergence of a protofascist faction whose ultimate program is ending liberal democratic society. This faction is always brandished like a voodoo fetish by the "Democracy Rules" of the world as the reason to vote for Democrats, and there is power in that, but the dominant Clintonite-right faction of elected Democrats is a servant of entrenched capital, unresponsive to people's wants and needs, offers no positive alternative to those left behind or crushed by late-stage capitalism and is as opposed to desperately needed progressive reform as the protofascists themselves. Every person has his own criteria for determining how he will vote. If someone decides that merely keeping The Other Side out of power is sufficient to get his vote, that's his call. But that view isn't something that can be imposed, in an authoritarian manner, on anyone else. People can (and should) discuss and debate what the right call may be, but everyone gets to make that same call for themselves. That's liberal democracy. Demanding to keep the Clintonites in power while demanding nothing of them (and demanding that nothing be demanded of them) while the problems pile up and fester unaddressed is obviously not a sustainable course, and, in fact, the dominance of this faction over the Democratic party, insularly pursuing pro-corporate, pro-finance policies that harm wide swathes of the population, has been a major contributor in the rise of that protofascism, breeding apathy toward, even contempt for, an indifferent system and multiplying those in need of reform while providing them with no sane alternative within the political system.
Liberal democracy is, as a consequence of this sad state of affairs, in mortal jeopardy. Toxic, self-serving messaging aimed at trying to guilt or shame others, many of whom are, themselves, drowning, into continuing, year after year, a demonstrably failed course is throwing it an anvil for a lifeline. For those who genuinely want to save it, here's a course of action: dump the Clintonites in the Sewage-Treatment Plant of History and build a progressive politics that materially improves the lives of the people, draining the swamp from which that protofascism arose.
A lot taller order, but maybe the only one.
That's one opinion in a democracy of many.
--j.
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[1] This writer is among those who don't believe in it. I can recognize it as vastly superior to many other forms of governance and will even defend it against bad alternatives but my own views are significantly more radical.
[2] The 2016 exit polling showed 56% of 18-24-year-olds voted for Clinton--the largest percentage of any age-group.
[3] As I've so often noted, if one goes down the dismal, dead-end pig-trail that is the voter-blaming premise, it wouldn't lead to Bernie Sanders supporters. What one would find at the end of it, rather, would be those who, in the 2016 primaries, backed Clinton, a weak, loser candidate who was performing poorly against the Republicans relative to her Democratic opponent and who, up against a joke opponent, neveretheless went on to blow the general.
