I recently had the pleasure of enjoying Dr. Johnson’s accessible yet thorough summation of the upper-left coast’s passionate political dalliance with Marx and his recounting of some very earnest sparks struck in hopes of lighting up a revolution. Unfortunately, it’s a little soggy up in that corner of the country.
But it’s the numbers that really got me. Back a turn of a century or two ago in the rough-n-ready Pacific Northwest, Eugene Debs was able to pull one vote for every ten that went to the ever-heroic, big-game-huntin’, horseback-riddin’, Teddy Roosevelt.
That One-in-Ten/Republican-to-Socialist ratio translates to state vote tallies in the low thousands, not the hundreds-of-thousands like you’d have to win today. In other words, back then you could start spinning national policy with a vote count that would barely qualify you as a mega-church pastor. I guess a little charisma once went a long way.
Furthermore, the Socialist Party was able to achieve this while preaching a red-scary philosophy that would have made Dennis Kucinich look like flip-floppin’, middle-of-the-roadin’, convictionless tool of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
Of all of this, I can conclude only one thing: These were different times.
Today, candidates run focus-group led campaigns to swing the swing vote a percentage point or two in their favor. Today, we have two parties that differ more in theory than practice. (Bush cut taxes for most of us while funding a little make-work program called The War On Terror, Obama pledges to cut taxes for most of us while stimulating us to make some work.)
I suppose it’s nice to have the stability. But how long can it last? I would guess that the gap between the poor and the rich, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, is a greater thing now than it was in a Washington State mining town in 1900. I would also guess that these terms probably don’t translate very well to the average South Dakotan on the job in one of the Call Centers that seem to be holding on just fine despite the recession.
I might even have to admit that compared to the kid in Cambodia that helped Old Navy sow my fancy new t-shirt, that I’m the King Of The Hill with my boot on the necks of the rest of the world.
It’s all somewhere in the numbers.
Outside of soft spot for Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg, I’m no fan of last century’s revolutionaries, but I have to admit it would have been kicks to hear some of the banter bouncing around the room. Now we’ve got bigger numbers. We might need some bigger ideas.
Grant – thanks for the kind review and your interest in my work!
– Jeff
And thank you for putting up with my layman’s interpretation of your academic writing! I usually stick to covering SciFi and touchy-feely stuff for girls.
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