Confession of a Partisan

I confess. It appears that I can indeed be called that awful thing, a partisan.

I notice that in progressive and regressive circles alike, to be a partisan carries strong disapprobrium. Yet I think that a case can be made for saying that that is the most honest and direct way to be, especially in the situation that we're facing.

Partisans have a long and honorable tradition. In the defining war of my lifetime, until the big armies arrived the partisans were the people who fought the Axis most fiercely -- or at all -- in occupied France, Russia, Norway, Yugoslavia, and other countries. Now it is the U.S. that, in a political sense, is occupied.

As a native of Washington, D.C. I wasn't permitted to vote in the national elections or even for mayor of the town until I was well up into adulthood, as I recall not till the early 1960's -- because of D.C.'s status as a Federal enclave and not because of the racial situation --not directly, anyway, though nowadays one has to think that the ethnic coloration of D.C. is very much at the heart, though rarely openly expressed, of the refusal of Americans of enough of the other states to allow D.C. to be represented in Congress by a real Representative and real Senators. Though it has a larger population than at least one state, Wyoming, Washington D.C. has only a single delegate in Congress, and he or she isn't allowed to cast a vote.

An honest Republican -- there may be a few -- will openly tell you that, as long as they have anything to say about it, they will never allow D.C. to have such representation in the Congress, because the town is so overwhelmingly Democrat. So much for the American Way!

When I finally could vote, I thought I'd be sensible and clever and keep all my options open by registering as Independent. But that didn't last long, after seeing that the Democratic party always had the best candidates and the most admirable positions, and meanwhile I had already noticed that the Republicans sided with the Southern Democrats (who later all disappeared into the Great Beyond, the GOP, or other oblivions) in being cold to and in opposing Civil Rights, and in the Executive Branch Eisenhower likewise had been indifferent to those aspirations.

That situation has carried straight through to the present day. Nixon and Reagan weren't any better and various of the Bushes' helpers have been just window dressing, and it has always been Democratic Presidents -- from FDR to Clinton -- who have actively tried to create a better climate for less privileged Americans. Also it didn't help to see the Republicans become the party of choice for the David Dukes, the Strom Thurmonds, and the Jesse Helms' of the world.

So, while progressives and regressives alike can enjoy other options, for someone like me there is only one choice, the Democratic Party. Third parties are a good idea, but the Reform Party and the Green Party were crippled in recent election cycles by serving as little more than personal vehicles for H. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader in their megalomaniac modes -- even though that may have been the only thing that enabled those parties to get as far as they did.

Some could say that, by consistently going with the Democrats, I am actually self-segregating myself, and not taking advantage of the freedom and range of American politics. But first I have to be shown that freedom and range. The stakes have consistently been too high for me to go to a polling place as airily as I would to a race track.