Is Rush Limbaugh Right?

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The Democratic party cannot revive itself simply by raising more money and playing it even safer in 2004. To stage a comeback, they must stand up and speak boldly about what they believe is best for our country. Commentators on the left have been saying this for years, and now so are mainstream observers, who pin the party’s 2002 losses on Democrats’ failure to convince voters that they differ from Republicans in any significant way. One prescription drug plan for seniors looks pretty much like another. Where was the vision, the emotion, the detailed blueprint? That’s the legacy bequeathed by Paul Wellstone, who was pulling strongly ahead in the Minnesota senate race at the time of his death—a rise in popularity that began with his courageous vote against war in Iraq.

For most of us, social change is bigger than party politics. It’s what we do the morning after election day and all those that follow. It’s the causes we support in our community and the world, the choices we make to live our values—even when what we believe seems fundamentally out of fashion.

I don’t want to minimize the consequences of the Republicans’ resounding victory, especially with war looming and so many people being left behind in our society. I simply want to remind the rest of us that we are not out of power. There is power in joining together with neighbors to make a difference in your community, power in turning out thousands to march in the streets, power in talking about what you believe any way you can.

History is not made only by the George Bushes of America; it is also made by the Martin Luther Kings, Rachel Carsons, union activists, feminists, populist agitators, community organizers, and patrons of a Greenwich Village gay bar resisting police abuse. None of them saw a clear path to political victory when they began, and I’ll bet they often felt despairing and defeated. But they kept at it and later, sometimes much later, politicians took up their cause and enacted it as legislation.

Let’s keep this in mind as we sort out our feelings and our future after this election. History moves onward according to its own peculiar path. At the dawn of the 1960s few could predict the tremendous social changes that would be underway in just a few years. In 1991 no one dreamed that George W. Bush’s father, the triumphant victor of the Gulf War, would lose his reelection bid. We haven’t a clear picture of what the world will look like in 2004 or 2009. But in sharing our ideas and speaking up about our values, not just in letters to the editor and at meetings but in conversation with the people around us, we may help influence the course of the 21st century in ways that cannot be imagined right now.

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