Beating Bush – the neo-neo-Democrats

In my last column, I asked that most pressing of questions: who are the neo-cons and when were they released?

This time, as advertised, I continue my analysis of the political scene in the United States, though I will shift my focus to those wannabe rivals of the neo-cons: Democrats.

I was inspired by this email from a desperate reader in Taiwan.

Dear Mr Dominic Hilton,

openDemocracy’s new service allows me to get your columns sent directly to my inbox. It is an unmissable opportunity to access a mind stretched to its limit by the world’s absurdity.

However, I still have one problem. You explain very well who “neo-cons” are, but you do not explain who “Democrats” are. I hear always about these “Democrats” but I never see one. Do they really exist? And if so, how come they are so useless at democracy?

Thank you, Mr Columnist Man.

Yours truly,

Cheng
Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Mr Cheng makes a common mistake. Not only is he impressed by my analysis of the neo-cons, he confuses Democrats (big ‘D’) with democrats (small ‘d’).

In a democratic system, he asks, how can the Democratic Party fail to win? It’s their system isn’t it?

Well, no, Mr Cheng, it isn’t. Let me explain.

The name “Democrat” is just that: a name. Like the books of Jackie Collins, it should not be read literally.

In America, the name “Democrat” is synonymous with “runner-up”, and is often taken to mean “bleeding-heart liberals who engage in futile quarrelling over insignificant minority issues while conservatives hold office”.

Confusingly for students of politics like Mr Cheng, the name “Democrat” falsely insinuates that non-Democrats are non-democrats – when, in fact, whilst Democrats are indeed democrats, so are Republicans.

Simple, really.

The political system of the United States divides three ways:

• Democrats
• Republicans
• Too fat to vote

The smart reader will note that Republicans are democrats (small ‘d’) but not Democrats (big ‘D’). Similarly, Democrats are republicans (small ‘r’), but not Republicans (big ‘R’). Few Democrats seek a return to monarchical rule, unless you count Camelot.

Now, many experts suggest that the main reason Republicans call themselves Republicans and Democrats call themselves Democrats is so that campaign financiers can tell them apart. If the Republicans called themselves Democrats just because they were democrats, then the corporate giant would have no way of telling who they were buying, and, based on their policies alone, the Republican and Democratic candidates would be indistinguishable from each other.

In political science circles this is known as “The Two-Party Law”.

In real world squares it is known as “A Pile of Horse Shit”.

To gain a basic and limited knowledge of the Democratic Party of the United States I point readers to Everything You Need to Know about Democrats (But Were Afraid to Ask) by the eminent and forever bow-tied historian Arthur M. Schmuck.

Schmuck’s basic thesis is this: Democrats have no unique claim on the loaded term Democrat and from hereon Democrats should be known as “The Kennedys”.

But like Teddy K., Schmuck is getting old, and the question my readers want answered is this: are Democrats relevant in the 21st century?

As my last column so adroitly cashed-in on, all talk in Washington is at present about the “neo-cons”. Getting people interested in the Democrats is no easy task. And that’s why I didn’t even try.

The only way to understand the current climate, I figured, is to head where American politics has the most impact – anywhere but America.

My first stop was Poland, America’s current paramour.

I spoke with Andrzej Has of the University of Bydgoszcz, where everyone smokes high-tar cigarettes.

“Democratic presidents in the US are as rare as herbal cigarettes in Bialystok,” he told me. “Most people can name only two: FDR and JFK, and those aren’t really names, just initials. When it comes to electing a President, America is a Republican country. The rest of the world favours the Democrats, I think, but the rest of the world doesn’t get to vote in US elections. If they did, there’d be a 100% turnout!”

He cackled through the road surface that was his lungs. I asked him about Clinton. Wasn’t he a Democrat?

“No,” said Professor Has. “Clinton was a neo-Democrat – a Democrat who shed all the woolly liberalism. The Democrats were neo before the cons were, though the liberals were neo first.”

With that thought spinning in my mind, I took myself to Argentina, where survival is more on the menu than steaks these days, and neo-connery is in bad odour.

I talked to Jesus, a truck driver who divides his time between Patagonia and a Californian jail. He was surprisingly up to speed on US politics.

“The Democrats now have to become neo-neo Democrats,” he told me as I crouched in the back of his truck with three hundred other migrants, “otherwise they don’t stand a chance of beating around the George W. Bush. 2004 will be a crucial election. The whole world hangs in the balance, like a Floridian chad.”

Once safely smuggled over the border, I hitch-hiked to New Hampshire via Las Vegas, where I posed as a moral crusader and amassed a foreign debt similar in size to that of Argentina.

That night, I attended a debate between potential Democratic presidential candidates that was being broadcast live in Sweden.

As I took notes, pondering the Polish influence on American politics symbolised by Zbigniew Brzezinski becoming national security adviser during the cold war, a few thoughts entered my mental oval office.

There were sixteen candidates, all well-financed and suitably coiffed. They each had a twenty-second window in which to attack or humiliate their Democratic colleagues with cutting soundbites. Insult was followed by insult and after half-an-hour they had me convinced: every last one of them was “an untrustworthy corrupt sordid communist liar who couldn’t be trusted to govern this great country that was going to the dogs with crime on every corner, guns in every cot, the world’s crappiest education system, bulging prisons, crumbling health care, a plummeting economy, a shredded social fabric that was anyway about to be obliterated by terrorists due to the incompetence of its politicians and the dark shadow of the imperialist American eagle being cast across the world by hawks.”

I finally nodded off during a torrid exchange over the key election-swinging issue of gay and bisexual lesbians in the military.

I guess every democrat has their limit. This was mine.