Today is Super Tuesday. Colorado is holding its Democratic Party caucuses tonight. And I am choosing not to participate.
Eight years ago, it felt very important to participate. I sat in a room at the local high school and listened to people, good solid citizens, make semi-coherent speeches in support of their favored candidate, and then all of us in the room voted not for a specific candidate but for someone who promised to support one candidate or the other, or something like that. (No one actually knows how the hell caucuses work. Democracy in action!) I threw my weight behind Barack Obama and his promise of change. Obama won Colorado and, a few months later, the nomination. In November, on election night, when he was declared the winner, I wept and whispered to myself, "We did it."
After the election but well before his inauguration, Obama announced that he would nominate Timothy Geitner as Treasury Secretary, and I realized I'd been naive. He was promising change but was going to do nothing to challenge the power structures already in place.
Interestingly, I think Bernie Sanders really would try to bring change. And his politics align closely with mine. But I'm nevertheless staying home tonight.
I would participate if I believed a Sanders presidency would be good for the country, but I do not. Congress will continue to be controlled by the far-right wing of the Republican Party. A self-proclaimed socialist in the Oval Office would only increase the corrosiveness of their power.
But more fully, I believe that whatever the final outcome of the general election is, it will be bad for the country, because "bad for the country" is at this point built into the process. It will take much deeper reform than a new president to begin to make things better.
I'm choosing to not participate in the caucus tonight because I only have so much time. I'm not saying it doesn't matter who wins; that's just denying reality. I'm simply saying my time will be better spent elsewhere. If we're going to make things better, we're going to have to find some pan-partisan way of tackling the issues facing us. The 'Bama-versus-Auburn-type hatred that characterizes the American political system right now needs to end, or we're done.
If I'm going to put any time into the political process, it has to be toward that goal.