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| Do you know the man in the blue tie? |
Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a Democrat; I’m a registered Independent. I usually vote for Democrats, especially in and around my adopted hometown of Northampton (MA). If you can find anyone more honorable than our local state senator Jo Comerford, state rep Lindsay Sabadosa, or Congressman Jim McGovern please me know who they are. But, like younger voters, I’m unafraid to say that, like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and NY Mayor Mamdani, I’m a democratic socialist and it’s high time Americans learn that socialists are not the same as communists.
Nonetheless, I cheered the results of last week’s elections. It felt as if we were truly upon the verge of sacrificing democracy in the belief that robber barons would suddenly remember the masses. The unbridled greed, self-aggrandizement, toxicity, spite, and ethnocentrism of the Trump administration made me fear the United States was slipping into fascist slime for the rest of my life.
We are still in for a few more years of Trump, but I dare believe we have weathered the worst. Donald J. (for Jackass) Trump is now viewed as a clown in much of the world and approximately two-thirds of the United States. I’m not ecstatic, though, as Democrats make me nervous; they’re better at talking than doing.
But my message today is that we shouldn’t demonize all Republicans. The GOP of the past had a wide range of ideologies. Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon was one of the earliest opponents of the Vietnam War, I voted several times for Jim Jeffords when I lived in Vermont, and Silvio Conte when I moved to Massachusetts. (Conte was an environmentalist in the days when the Dems were trying to transform into technocrats.)
Speaking of Vermont, in my professor days of 2016, I gave a May Day lecture in Barre, Vermont’s Socialist Labor Hall. I had done research on two Green Mountain socialist mayors –Robert Gordon and Fred Suitor–decades before Bernie Sanders banged the mayoral gavel in Burlington. Despite occasional inflated rhetoric, they were not wild-eyed revolutionaries. Each was more interested in civic improvement and fairness to all rather than pie-in-the-sky dreams. All three left city government in much better shape when they left. (Alas, their successors from both major parties failed to build upon their scaffolding.)
Now a little quiz. Now that the loathsome Greg Abbott has been given a big Texas boot, who is the longest-serving GOP governor? The answer is another Vermonter: Phil Scott, who has held his office since 2017. I left Vermont before Scott was elected, but if I could, I would have voted for him in 2016. Democrat Peter Shumlin mismanaged so badly that he chose not to run in 2016, but that didn’t help Democratic candidate Sue Minter.
I didn’t know Mr. Scott when I met him in 2016. Guess where we met. Pat yourself on the back if you guessed the Socialist Labor Hall in Barre! He introduced himself after my talk and told me how informative it was. I was quite surprised to see a Republican setting foot in a place where Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and Bernie Sanders had spoken before, or at an event in which “Solidarity Forever” was sung in multiple languages. Our time was too brief for an extended political conversation, but I was mightily impressed by how comfortable he was outside of his comfort zone. I was also surprised when he told me that though his own viewpoint was different from mine on several issues, that I made him think about how a politician should help others. I viewed him as a man of integrity. That, after all, ought to be our measure of any human being.
Trite though it sounds, I have several close friends who are Republicans, and others with whom I serve in volunteer roles that are thoughtful, pleasant, and grounded. We should remember that political parties are made up of individuals. Like the proverbial kettle of fish, some are good and the ones at the bottom stink to high heaven. Right now, there are more smelly fish in the GOP kettle, but don’t for a second believe that the Democrats couldn’t benefit from cleaning out the bottom of their own.
Rob Weir
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