Lack of Incumbent Creates Unique Election Year
Not many folks remember 1928. The few folks alive today that lived back then were just kids at the time. So you might not know that 1928 was the last time that there was no executive branch incumbent running for president.
See, usually a current or former vice president tries for the top of the ticket.
I fear that’s not the only similarity. It was also the last election before the Great Depression.
Maybe those incumbents knew a thing or two that they weren’t sharing, and that’s why none of them wanted his hands on the wheel when the whole thing crashed.
So once again we’ve got a presidential race with no candidates with a presidential record.
Dick Cheney says he’ll never run for president - some argue that’s because he’s already doing the job.
Others claim that Hillary Clinton has run the executive branch. But a recent Slate magazine article - and a few of my own personal observations - claiming that women don’t think their husbands listen to them ought to disqualify her as an incumbent.
This lack of prior executive experience allows the Democratic and Republican candidates to chant the same mantra: change.
You know what? Change isn’t a message. Change isn’t a plan. Change is a word. It’s easy to promise, because after the fact it’ll be impossible to define.
Heck, I’d argue that after the 1928 election, change was the one thing that the United States got in abundance. From the roaring ’20s to financial ruin - with change like that, who needs enemies?
No, I’m looking for candidates grounded in reality, speaking honestly and espousing a plan. And if you want that sort of clarity and candor, I’m reminded this week that you’ll need a dark horse.
And not just the Ron Paul kind of dark horse: I mean the 2004 Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik kind of dark horse. Did you read his book, “Good to Be King”? He reminds us that we’re all the sovereigns of this country.
Badnarik campaigned reiterating that the Constitution was written by men who risked being hanged for declaring that one man cannot rule as king. And that we’re all “kings” with equal right to self-determination and self-government.
The authorities arrested Badnarik along with Green Presidential candidate David Cobb for trying to enter a 2004 debate thereby silencing this message to the American people. Imagine, arrested just for trying to enter the building; so much for self-determination in the land of the free.
I spent this past week traveling the state with a presidential challenger who in many ways is pretty typical when it comes to presidential candidates. He’s easy on the eyes and easy on the ears. He’s got fabulous hair, a firm handshake and great eye contact. But he’s different from the big guys. He’s no friend of special interest, he doesn’t dine with Halliburton or Exxon-Mobil CEOs and he cuts rapidly to the chase.
Maine’s Green Party is caucusing this month and Jesse Johnson came to town to talk about his bid for the nomination. He spoke to anyone who would listen. He spoke with the media and he spoke with ordinary folks - everywhere he went. I even had to promise workers at one place that I’d return with voter registration cards so two folks who had never voted before could register.
Michael Badnarik would be proud - two more kings.
Johnson’s just one of many alternative candidates. He’s educating folks on the issues that turned him from a Hollywood actor into political activist. Johnson is conversant about the Second Amendment, labor unions, the economy and health care but what really jazzes this guy is a message he brings from his home state of West Virginia.
Did you know that mining companies set off explosions about 800 times the size of the one that Timothy McVeigh used to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to blow the tops off mountains? They blow up everything from trees to wildlife because it’s easier and cheaper to get the coal.
Hey change candidates: that’s something that needs changing.
During this unique year without an incumbent, don’t discriminate. Listen to all the candidates’ messages and then demand that the winner give you the kind of substantive change you want.
Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth, Maine is the author of “Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.”
© 2008 The Bangor Daily News
“Listen to all the candidates’ messages and then demand that the winner give you the kind of substantive change you want.”
And this advice from the author to DEMAND is crucial to progressives. The stars may just align this year to give you Obama and a Dem Congress. If that happens, don’t wait for them to coalesce on compromises. Be ready. Have your agenda at hand and DEMAND IT. You won’t get it all, but you will get some. The fruit of Ralph Naderism, Dennis Kucinichism, and John Edwardsism will be in how many of their ideas can be forced upon Dems in such a public way as to require action on them.
You won’t get them all, you can get some—if, of course, we get the election follow-through now starting to appear possible.
“Listen to all the candidates’ messages and then demand that the winner give you the kind of substantive change you want.”
too late, pat. the dem candidate with the most progressive message has already been kicked to the curb—precisely for the content of his message. and what sort of progressive ideas might live beyond the tightly controlled borders of the dem party? how would the voters know if they never hear them?
as to demanding change, what form might that demand take? it wasn’t so long ago that we demanded no invasion, or later an end to the occupations, or impeachment, or action to stop climate change. what’s wrong with us? can’t we demand any more effectively than that?
Who cares who the Dem candidate is? You know they aren’t going to represent us. That’s the whole point of your last paragraph. We’ve been ‘demanding’ and expecting that the Democrats will listen to us. Obviously they won’t.
The Democrat party of the old FDR coalition is dead and gone. The DLC, the Clintons and Al Gore and the rest of that crew killed it back around 1990. Nowadays the Democrat party is fully funded with corporate money. And of course, they look out for the interests of the people who fund them.
There’s nothing wrong with us and what we are demanding. The problem lies in the mistakes we’ve made in who we vote for to listen to those demands and to implement them for us. The Democrats clearly don’t care and aren’t listening. When you catch them unawares, they call us ‘idiot liberals’ and laugh at us.
The whole point of this article is that we need something different.
Clinton and Obama are the first two contemporary Democratic candidates to avoid sticking their heads directly into the buzz-saw of the Right Wing Noise Machine.
If you don’t like the fact that BigMoney has political discourse trapped in a full headlock, don’t complain about Obama’s rhetoric, do something about Rush Dimbulb and Tim Russert, Fox News and NewsMax.com.
My hometown paper just ran yet another supply-side essay on the opinion page explaining how tax cuts actually increase goverment revenue. Even though I have better things to do, I have to sit down and write yet another rebuttal.
If we let these shills keep getting away with it at the local level, then our “leaders” at the national level remain powerless.
In chess, you have to sacrifice some pawns before your capital pieces can find room to move. So it is in politics.
If George Wanker Bush, without doubt the most stupid person ever to become president of the United States, can learn the rudiments of administering the executive branch of our totally corrupt political system, anyone can.
Well, it looks like Obama will be the Democratic nominee. And it also looks like - nay, it is open and obvious - that McCain is detested by many conservatives. Some of the real reactionaries hate him so much they say they will raise funds for, campaign for, and vote for Clinton if she is the nominee. Yes, many crypto-fascists like Hillary Clinton much more than McCain. She is one of them, apparently, more than McCain is.
Well, here’s a thought: why doesn’t Clinton run in the REPUBLICAN primaries? Yes, let her beat McCain and become the Republican nominee. Then she can run against Obama again - in the general election this time! She’ll have a second chance to beat Obama and may even win the second time around.
Has a candidate ever campaigned on changing nothing?
“If elected, I will make sure that nothing changes at all. Not the cabinet, not agency and department heads, not judges, not a single cop on the beat. I will take no action regarding Global Warming, I will maintain our massive debt, and I promise to keep hundreds of thousands of soldiers in place at our over 700 bases worldwide. I will make sure the rich keep getting richer, the poor poorer, and you can bet that NAFTA and CAFTA will not be touched. I will continue our mission in Iraq, and I will do my best to see that the massive killings continue, as well as the obscene corruption. And, my fellow Americans, you have my guarantee that the Constitution and Bill of Rights will remain inoperative. Thanks you, and God Bless America.”
I never knew until today that if you didn’t support Obama, you were not a progressive and shoud not be blogging comments here.
A ‘unique election year’?
Okay, and however the author says, but it may turn out to be unique in a starkly different and, in this case, horrifying way.
WE DO NOT KNOW THAT THE BUSH administration will not still be occupying the office in JAN. 2009 and onward.
I posted my concern about this potential eventuality a few years ago, for it was very simple to see that this administration is certainly of the soulless and deluded power-mongering kind that was clobbering U.S. law, the Constitution, and more, and that being this way, they could surely have in mind to feverishly, while of course secretly, work to make sure that they are not replaced in Nov. 2008.
There was an article here yesterday, an editorial from the St Louis Post-Dispatch, which says this; saying that it would not be really surprising if Bush et al still occupy the (already HIJACKED, I’ll add) presidency in Jan. 2009.
BEWARE of that [uniqueness] not becoming part of U.S. govt history, people. Don’t be naive; Beware.
They do have the capability to do this. After all, the DoJ and most law enforcement members clearly are NOT working for The People and established law; they are clearly working to help Bush et al hijack the presidency and de-establish the Constitution, etc.
If that was not the case or reality, then Bush et al would already be jailed for life, or the DoJ and law enforcement minimally would not permit the Bush administration to override the Nov. 2008 elections. Well, it’s what happened in 2000, with the hijacking of the presidency, and … etc.
No incumbent candidate running in the election may be unique, but it’s such a non-topic in today’s [real] context or reality that it’s a ho-hum-yawn subject to me, compared to the above potential reality. And the potential isn’t minor or little; it’s significantly much.
@Mike Corbell
Bush will not be president after Jan 2009. He is fed up with the job and wants out. Just listen to him. He hates the job, and wants to go back to Crawford.
Now Cheney, on the other hand…….
look for nader to run very soon. Johnson won’t be the nominee since McKinney is running and she has a much larger backing. Green Party 2008!!
We are indeed sovereign beings abused by the implementation of rules outside our constitutional mandate and intent that is meant to guarantee our freedoms which is not today being upheld.
Ms. LaMarche, thank you for pointing out that ‘sovereign’ Jesse Johnson, ‘citizen’ Jesse Johnson, and ‘candidate’ Jesse Johnson is working hard to speak to folks; he speaks not just of the atrocities in southern West Virginia’s coal fields but speaks to issues of freedom of speech, labor, economic, and health. I’ve had the chance to hear him explain exact ways in which these goals can be reached.
That Bush, who currently occupies the oval office, had previous administrative experience as governor of Texas should be proof enough to every thinking person that ‘previous experience’ is a useless measure and perhaps a detriment.
That Bush, who currently occupies the oval office, had previous administrative experience as governor of Texas should be proof enough to every thinking person that ‘previous experience’ is a useless measure and perhaps a detriment.