Illinois Primary Ballot
The phoenix from the flame
I have learned, I will rise
You'll see me return
Being what I am
There is no other Troy
For me to burn
Friday was one of those brutal days in Chicago, 40 degrees, wind, and pissing rain, weather for a good thick wool coat. Them sheeps know something. Long ago I figured out better to not live in such a climate, though Chicago didn't have a winter this year. Only one week was really cold.
I was heading downtown to meet a nephew for lunch and getting off the L at Lake and blundered upon an early voting station. “Now’s good as time as any,” I thought. Plus, I could duck out of this miserable atmosphere. Walked into a room with dozen voting booths and saddled up to the accreditation table. An elderly woman turned a screen asking what ballot I wanted. The screen offered me a choice of Rep, Dem, and Unaffiliated. Without thinking and out of bad habit, I pressed Dem. I haven't been a registered Dem for 30 years when I switched my registration to get the Greens on the ballot in California. Phew! Talk about your futile political actions. The first Green party meeting I attended was in 1990 San Diego. I remember going back home and saying, “This will take 30 years” — and counting.
I quickly thought and asked the pleasant woman, “When did they change so you could choose a ballot?” Lord knows, long ago in Illinois, you could only get the primary ballot of the party you were registered. Heavens, the honorable Mayor of Chicago and Cook County Democratic Party Chairman Richard J. Daley would have never, and rightly so, let a Republican vote to decide who would be a Democratic candidate for any office. Saints preserve us!
But that was a long time ago. They've done nothing but hollow out the parties ever since. Tocqueville noted the old standing feudal institutions of Ancien Regime France still existing, hollowed out, and powerless. No political institutions better fit that bill today than America’s parties. In 1992, former California Governor Jerry Brown, who had just served two years as Chairman of the California Democratic party, would say the parties were nothing more than “a postage stamp and bank account.” It ain't got no better, no way, no how, since.
I was handed a card to stick into the screen, ballot revealed, and vote. You, those who call yourselves Democrats, if you only offer me the farcical and fantastical choice for presidential nominee of old warmongering Joe, doesn't play well with others star-child Marianne, and some dimwit Congressman from Minnesota, well I can make up my own choice. I wrote-in Mother Sinead — the phoenix from the flame.
The next choice was five term incumbent Congressman Bill Foster. Out with that! Ten years is far too long for anyone to hold any office, but you have to greatly restructure power in America to make that work well. Using the advise my mother gave me when I asked her about voting on the list of judges, “Vote for the Irish names.” I voted for Qasim Rashid. If nothing else, I wanted to at least have once voted for a Qasim. I figured he was African American, but discovered after he was from Pakistan, so I got a twofer.
I would say half the candidates had no opposition. I have never cast a vote for an unopposed candidate. No choice? What sort of democracy is that? There were six delegates for the convention. Six delegates to be elected. Again no choice, no vote.
96 delegates are elected with the ballot, the other 82 are in some ways assigned to and by the political class. As a member of the Illinois Democratic party voting, or I should say if you request a Democratic ballot tomorrow, you’ll be choosing, or in this case simply approving, just over half the delegates. Maybe they think it unseemly appointing over half, it's just a matter of time. As the Boomers slowly leave the scene, far too slowly, this is the political system they leave. They entered the public stage a half-century ago appalled. A generation born into historically unprecedented material wealth and military might. Nonetheless, they entered in full whine about how unfair everything was for me. Paraphrasing Tacitus, they created a farce and called it democracy.
When I was once concerned about the fate of the Democratic party, I pointed to many that the party “reforms” only concentrated power. The reply was always, “That's process, no one's interested in process.” With what Americans aren't interested in, you can destroy a republic.
You’d never know from our corporate media or the American political class that the only trend in party politics for the last half-century has been decline of both parties. Today, self-identified Dems and Reps are at 27% each, with 43% identifying as Independents — the highest ever. In a party system, that's no politics at all. The party era is over, but if you want democracy, it has to be organized, parties as we’ve known them not required.
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