partisan war syndrome.

if you have 15 minutes to spare, check out this article, Partisan War Syndrome (found via Shakespeare's Sister). A snippet:

To be sure, there used to be a powerful ideological force on the left that constituted the Democratic Party base. And there are still remnants of that ideological movement left in various progressive labor, environmental and civil rights organizations, and disparate Internet blogs. But look no further than the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries to see that the ideological movement as a whole is in tatters. In that race, primary voters - supposedly a representation of this “ideological” base -supported John Kerry on the basis of his personal profile as a Vietnam War veteran and his supposed “electability.” It was the most non-ideological of choices in what we were supposed to believe was the most ideological of races.

it's this lack of clear ideology in the democratic party that makes me literally fear 2008. honestly, before the debacle that was the 2004 election, i used to find the idea of hillary clinton running for president freaking delicious. i couldn't wait for it to happen. but then, in 2004, i fell under the sway of "anyone but bush," and i threw my weight behind a candidate that deep down i knew was not the right man for the job. i remember the night of kerry's speech at the democratic convention. BoyCat and i were actually on a cruise with BoyCat's family, and he and i skipped dinner to sit in our closet-sized cabin and watch the speech on one of the three actual channels they had on their TVs. i remember the flickerings of excitement i felt as he was being introduced. i remember feeling like this could be the beginning of something real, if he could just make it all come together for us in those 30-odd minutes. but he didn't. he threw a sad bone to womens rights via some roundabout praise of his mother, and then spent the rest of his time spinning platitudes and bromides, like so many plates on his fingers and toes.

i think i knew then that it wasn't going to work. but too much was at stake, so i was a good little foot soldier anyway, sending small checks and cold-calling people in Ohio the week before the election. then when it was all over, when i had a few weeks to process the awfulness of it all, i realized that i was sort of ashamed of myself. i was ashamed that i had been a foot soldier at all in that sell-out exercise, and ashamed that my party hadn't done more to fight for the things that mattered to me. now, i look at hillary and her DLC endorsements and her support of the iraq war and her little thick-as-thieves routine with Newt Gingrich, and i can only shake my head.

fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, right?