Read Reid's Blog

November 29, 2004

What a long and busy day!

First dumb blunder of the day…
So I went to bed around 4AM after finishing my paper.  I wake up and try to see what time it is, but my alarm clock doesn’t have the time displayed!  I freak out, thinking the power has gone out or something, meaning I might have missed my alarm and therefore missed class.  I get out of bed and check my cell phone – it’s luckily 7AM.  Since my alarm wasn’t working, I decide to sleep on the futon with a trusty cell phone alarm next to me.  Then, I wake up to my clock alarm blaring from my bed.  It turns out that my alarm was just turned around and that’s why I didn’t see the time.  This reveals two things.  It firstly reaffirms that I am quite blind without my glasses and two, I am a dumbass sometimes.

Class was nothing exciting.  I took notes and paid attention.  I finished up my paper and skipped PoliSci lecture while Andrea was nice enough to read most of my paper and offer some really helpful grammar corrections.  I turned the paper in and worked at the MLK PP for 2 hours.  Dinner at Wilbur where I got steak and then I headed off to see Howard Dean with Nancy, John, and Peter (Nancy’s friend from Roble). 

It was the first time I heard Dean speak in person, and he’s pretty entertaining.  His first words “I have some good news…51% is not a mandate”  The crowd went wild.  Dean was pretty harsh on Bush and Republicans, which made me feel proud to be a liberal at that moment “We all know Karl Rove runs the White House…” “Bush said Saddam doesn’t have WMDs under his breath when Cheny isn’t looking…” “Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld all haven’t served a day in the military…” “They have no moral values…”  Etc.

The main message was Dean’s hope of restructuring the Democratic party – he was strong on saying that Democrats shouldn’t try and imitate Republicans.  Democrats cannot try and act like the Republicans and hope to get some “scraps from the table” in Congress just to retain a few seats in government.  We need to have grassroots support and win from the bottom up.  We need to take back America by winning local elections and doing what’s right.  We need to speak on what we believe in and not try and do what gets you re-elected.  Dean spoke a lot about his Civil-Union bill he signed in Vermont (interesting it was authored by a Republican judge and legislator so hmm) but that was a sign of him doing the right thing (even though the public didn’t like the bill) and that’s how he jepordized his career as governor.  He said Al Gore’s father did the same thing in Tennessee with the Civil Rights Bill.  It’s a pretty compelling argument, about doing the right thing…yet aren’t elected officials supposed to act in the interest of the constituents?  Aren’t politicians supposed to do what their constituents want – therefore if 100% of a community wants to ban gay marriage, then the politician should vote against it.  The politician has a vested interest in listening to his or her constituents – they can easily revoke his or her seat in the coming election.  But, for the time being, this is what people see as representative democracy – to act for personal beliefs instead of what the majority thinks seems to be wrong. 

But (and I can’t believe I’m actually quoting this, because it’s Colonial American history which I’m not particularly fond of), James Madison argued in Federalist no. 51 that “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”  The argument is a fear of majority tyranny – although I won’t develop this argument here, it seems to me that this argument reconciles the tension I see in Dean’s assertion of doing the right thing.  Government needs to protect against majority tyranny.  Perhaps right now that majority tyranny is homophobia and fear of a terrorist attack and the like. 

Dean’s final message was that we should all run for office.  We need more Democrats.  We can vote, but we need people to vote for.  That’s us…it’s our generation.  I think that’s something I clearly want to do before I die – to hold an elected office, even on the local level sometime in my life, probably after I retire from my future vocation and have time to do things like that.  Dean reminded us that we’re people who get our news from the internet and Jon Stewart (cue laughter) – the point is that 50 years from now, if this trend continues, Republicans are going to have a lot to worry about.  But, why not start now?  2008 is closer than we think and we all know that Bush cannot run again.  Thank goodness.

So the rest of the evening I worked on a policy brief, wrote a news journal, and hung out with friends.  I played some fooseball and kind of got out of my room by briefly visiting other people in my hall.  Still, it’s going to be a long two weeks.  Finals that I’m not prepared for yet.  We’ll see how much my brain will retain.  Hopefully a lot.