Is American Politics Professional Wrestling?
How the Working Families Party Keeps the Democrats’ Fight Real
Back in 1988, my parents and I were watching one of the presidential debates between George H.W. Bush and Mike Dukakis, and my frustration at not being able to vote for Dukakis — I was still just seventeen — was partly mitigated by his off-the-charts, negative charisma. Watching Dukakis get his ass kicked by H. W. — who was himself not exactly James Brown at The Apollo — felt like watching Mister Rogers slowly strangle a comatose child, prompting my mom, Jacqueline, to exclaim this:
“I wonder if this is all just theater.”
I didn’t want to think that.
Newly passionate about politics, I didn’t want to think that American politics might be professional wrestling any more than when I was twelve, and my VCR’s slo-mo plainly revealed that “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka was landing on padded knees before falling over his defeated mark.
At seventeen, I already identified as a Democrat, although being a Democrat is not something I actively chose any more than I chose to be a boy. And that’s largely because of the Kennedys. Despite John and Bobby’s mortal flaws, I loved their mystique and their soaring rhetoric, and I just thought they were so cool. And back during the 1980s, Republicans didn’t come in Cool flavor. (They just came in Ranch.) Since I couldn’t understand then why the Democratic Establishment would consolidate around such an uninspiring candidate, I wrote off lifeless Dukakis as a one-off mistake.
Holy crap was I in for a rough adulthood.
Obviously, Democrats would post up wins with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and I’d describe all three as competent corporate middle managers, which you could argue is the primary responsibility of POTUS. And which might best explain why I feel like our state of affairs and the cost of living never cumulatively improved under Democratic leadership (despite real accomplishments) so much as they just seemed to get worse at a slower pace. And it is shameful and tragic that I have NEVER ONCE had the opportunity to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate who meaningfully challenged our corporate masters. And that’s not because candidates with the courage to call out their kamikaze greed and excesses (and with impassioned clarity) have not emerged — candidates including Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — it’s that those more capable and inspiring candidates have systemically been hobbled by the Democratic Establishment, which then propped up uninspiring candidates that couldn’t get us over the line, despite going up against dim or grotesque opponents.
Only what if the Democratic Establishment’s first order of business is not to win, but to ensure that Americans NEVER get to choose a presidential candidate who will first fight for regular people? (And actually give working-class Republicans a tangible reason to consider them?) Even now, at the eleventh hour, the priorities couldn’t be more dysfunctional or feel less urgent. If a child was drowning a hundred yards out, Chuck Schumer would put forth a plan to toss that kid a life preserver by 2030.
You may have noticed that Republicans are way better at winning elections, but then horrible at governing, and that our country and the planet have paid a terrible price for having elevated two of the most destructive presidents in American history within a span of sixteen years. It’s painful to wonder what might have happened had the Democratic Establishment never put its thumb on the primary scale. And that raw and frustrating repetition — that we’re now paying for on so many levels — is precisely why I never forgot my mom’s comment back in 1988.
What if this IS all just theater?
What if American politics really is just professional wrestling, with Republicans as Heels and Democrats as Marks — a sideshow designed to pit us peons against one another, distracting us while a tiny group of sick people with so, so much continue to take more? Ronald Reagan famously said that “Politics is show business for ugly people,” and this is starting to feel like Groundhog Day eternally revived by the ugliest, most depraved actors for the unwitting house that is us.
Unfortunately, there is no conscionable alternative and so Democrats — at least right now — are all we’ve got. Meanwhile, voting is literally the only lever of power we peons have left. So I have no patience for the toxic and lazy argument that voting doesn’t matter. If voting didn’t matter, the fascistic strain that has hijacked the Republican Party wouldn’t be working its ass off to suppress it. Or to elevate childish, belligerent hacks primed to overturn the result when they lose.
Voting is literally the least we can do. Especially as Tuesday could be our last opportunity for all of our votes to actually count. Sometimes it’s tough to live in a country that raises a bigger fuss about potentially losing the McRib forever than it does about losing its right to meaningfully vote.
But there’s ONE MORE THING we can do that couldn’t be easier if you live in a state like New York that permits “fusion voting,” whereby the same candidate appears more than once on a ballot if they are endorsed by more than one party.
That’s why I will be voting for Democrats on the Working Families Party line.
While the Working Families Party (WFP) supports and promotes an array of grass-roots candidates across the country, they do not field spoiler candidates. So when I vote for Governor Kathy Hochul on the WFP line (or for my fellow Beaconite Julie Shiroishi in the State Senate) my vote counts just as much as if I voted for them on the Democratic Party line, while sending a message that I want the public interest to come first.
When I think back to that moment in 1988, when we blithely thought the country had simply been through eight years of Reaganomics — as opposed to the first round of a forty-year bombardment of the working and middle classes with economic brute force — my father, Frank, was there on the couch, too, all of us watching Dukakis try to make like it was just a flesh wound, but it doesn’t surprise me, in retrospect, that my mom’s bell went off. She’s often been able to read the writing on the wall, and it’s hard not to wonder whether her exasperated comment was driven by fear of what her generation was handing down to her sons. Perhaps that’s just a thing of moms, wired as most are to first take care of you. I personally know very few moms who put on their yoga pants and then go make sure that Exxon-Mobile and Elon Musk have a million times more than they’ll ever need before feeding their own kids. Now it feels like my mom has tagged out and ducked under the ropes, and now I’m standing in the ring, blinded by klieg lights and scared to let go of the turnbuckle as The Road Warriors lunge toward me. I’ll plainly admit that I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what we are handing down to my nieces and my nephew and to all of your kids. You may not share my fears — but do you really think that this is the best that our rich, powerful country can do?
If you have fusion voting in your state, please consider voting on the Working Families Party line and I so appreciate your consideration.
Nevertheless, I hate that despite my perspective, despite how I know that it’s not the wrestlers that need to change, but us in the stands who must meaningfully demand more and better, there is some part of me — perhaps the part that just can’t bear to be demoralized and so needs to perpetuate the fantasy instead — that is still stuck back in 1984, hoping and waiting for Hulk Hogan to arrive on the scene, electrifying the crowd before saving us all.
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