Single Issue - Democrats as Misguided as Their Foes

In the 2004 and midterm elections, Democrats often complained about so-called single-issue voters, i.e., those who voted for George W. Bush simply because he said he was anti-abortion. Those voters happily ignored his other destructive policies and the abundant evidence that he was not at all equipped, mentally or morally, to run the country.

Cut to 2008. The selfsame Democrats who lamented the tunnel vision of Republican voters are displaying their own narrowness by choosing their candidates based on even shallower criteria than the NRA members and Right to Lifers they criticized in 2004.

Taking small notice of policies and voting records, Democrats are lining up to support the minority candidates based solely on their minority status. Barack Obama's biracialness (his mom's genes count too, folks) and Hillary Clinton's gender are, for many voters, their primary qualifications for the office of president.

So-called progressives are ignoring Clinton's longstanding devotion to corporate interests and Obama's fawning over AIPAC because, these voters feel, getting either of them elected is a good way of sticking it to the patriarchy, even though both candidates are at the very least the houseguests of the Rich-Old-White-Guy Establishment. John Edwards, also an ROWGE member, doesn't even figure in, because although his policies are far more progressive than Clinton's or Obama's, he's a boring white lawyer, the kind of guy who always runs for president and therefore one of those who should get stuck.

Because neither Obama or Clinton have indicated any inclination toward instituting policies that will alter the status quo, and because Clinton's quasi-republican and Obama's center-right positions are so similar, perhaps the only way many voters can distinguish between them is by sex and ethnicity. Still, those who vote for Clinton because she's a woman are as misguided as those who won't consider her because she got a bit misty-eyed on television. Likewise, voters who choose Obama based on his perceived race are showing themselves as narrow minded as the people who write him off because his middle name is Hussein.

Although the media would have us believe that Clinton and Obama are the only two candidates being considered by Democrats, it seems a fair number intend to vote outside the party. More disturbing even than unthinking support of media darlings Obama and Clinton is the astonishing number of Democrats who have elected to support Republican candidate Ron Paul, a libertarian whose primary goal is to dismantle the government. Why would they do such a thing? Apparently, simply because he advocates withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel also support troop withdrawal, but it seems vegan Kucinich (whose dietary habits have excited more debate on local news stations than have his policies) and outspoken Gravel just can't compete with Paul's simplistic charm. What the one-issue Democrats have failed to take into account is that, while Gravel and Kucinich support an end to the Iraq debacle on humanistic as well as practical grounds, Paul is simply an isolationist.

Paul has been rightly praised for his call for a more moderate attitude toward Iran, and for finally giving voice to the very reasonable idea that Israel can and should carry on without its yearly billions in U.S. aid. He is, however, staunchly anti-abortion and rejects the fact of evolution, positions that seem hypocritical when taking into account his vision of a nation run on the principles of social Darwinism. The fetuses Paul wishes to "protect" are on their own once they leave the womb and can expect no quarter from the government. No public education, health care, or even social security to look forward to in Paul's twisted vision of a fully privatized America where it's every man, woman and child for himself (though the unborn are protected). Never mind the anti-choice, pro-privatization, anti-gay politics, say the single-issue "liberals," he wants to end the war. He wants to end the war, and otherwise reasonable Democrats join the gun-worshipping, racist, militia-member, survivalist, home-schooling paranoiacs who make up Paul's true base.

Single-issue Democrats obviously learned nothing from two terms worth of a misguided muddler of a president who was "elected," at least the second time, thanks in large part to single-issue voters. We've all paid dearly for those voters' superficiality, and if the single-issue Democrats carry the day in 2008, we will continue to pay.