If only Eminem (aka Slim Shady) had released his video a few months before the 2004 elections (instead of the few days before), we might have seen a very different result in Ohio. Well two years later people have finally gotten mr. shady's message. Not as if much is going to change with a new section of the US ruling class now in power of course.
As author JoAnn Wypijewski summed it up in recounting what the Clinton years gave back to the progressive wing of the democratic party during the 1990s (at a time when the democrats really did have 'a progressive wing' highlighted by Jessie Jackson and his 'Rainbow Coalition':
"By a brisk accounting of 1993 to 2000, the black stripe of the Rainbow got the Crime Bill, women got ‘welfare reform’, labor got NAFTA, gays and lesbians got the Defense of Marriage Act. Even with a Democratic Congress in the early years, the peace crowd got no cuts in the military; unions got no help on the right to organize; advocates of dc statehood got nothing (though statehood would virtually guarantee two more Democratic Senate seats and more representation in the House); the single-payer crowd got worse than nothing. Between Clinton’s inaugural and the day he left office, 700,000 more persons were incarcerated, mostly minorities; today one in eight black men is barred from voting because of prison, probation or parole."
But even those of us who understand the true nature of the democratic party, have to admit that it feels better waking up this morning, knowing that the country has made a seemingly conscious decision to not slide further into the tightening grip of the radical right. The midterm elections, in which the democrats, left for dead only a few months earlier, have taken over both the house and the senate, have proven to be a national referendum on the War in Iraq. Unfortunately we live in a country where the only way this can be expressed is through voting for the Democratic party, but still anti-war forces should count that as a victory. Even Rumsfeld has just been told to step down, something unimaginable in the days following September 11th, when aguably he personified the shape of the future of US policy.
4 comments:
Nice post... but I could have sworn that this video had another ending with the crowds going into voting booths... Am I mistaken?
Yeah you know thats funny, i didnt watch it again until the end, this is a different version, seemingly for a post-election (2004) audience. In the original video it looks like they are about to storm the white house and then just go inside and put a ballot in the voting box, it was a pretty lame ending. I guess with this ending the reference to the video does not make as much sense...
I'm sayin, though. You don't really think that Marshall Mathers had much to do with the Republicans loosing these elections? Do you?
nope, just a joke ;)
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