On being right vs. winning

People have long said that one of the great flaws of the passionate is that they would rather be right than win. I understand that dilemma when I hear Barack Obama discuss our need to overcome our "partisan" divide. "Our" partisan divide isn't so equal. The supreme failure of the conservative movement over the past three decades to acutally improve the lives of the majority of Americans is stunning; and their reliance on distraction and thugish politics to win is disgusting. And yet here is a L-I-B-E-R-A-L politician, perhaps the greatest orator of his generation, talking about overcoming "partisan bickering," instead of assigning credit where credit is due, to the conservative movement that has destoryed the commons.

The conservative movement has used lies, innuendos, racist and sexist coded language, and disasters (natural, terrorist, and constructed) to implement a radical neoliberal agenda of deregulation and privitization that has gutted the public sphere. Thirty years of conservative movement politics has given us a polarized public discourse, massive media consolidation, financial ruin, legalized public corruption, crumbling public infrastructure, crumbling public schools, and crumbling public housing. They have mounted a full-throttle attack against the entire notion of the "public." The prefer the "private." The "private" meaning an ideological legitimization of a policy of disinvestment and inequality.

I understand that offering this counter-narrative to the "Age of Markets" and Neo-Liberalism doesn't win elections, but if you want to enact a progressive agenda making "conservative" a dirty word might be necessary. That is why I pray for a full-telling of the crimes of the Age of Markets, and a Obama "You're God-Damned Right I'm a Progressive" moment. But all I do is pray, and say while I wait, "it's more important to win, than to be right." But that's what we all said with Bill Clinton, and Al Gore, and John Kerry. Maybe it's time to be right.

Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Forgiving.