October 21, 2004

• Democracy? Oh yeah, I remember that...
  

  [..]

  Going to school full-time and working nights, the single mother says that the last time she tried to vote she left much of the ballot incomplete because she was terrified her unminded toddler would fall off the stage upon which the booths sat. So with three other working moms, Alejandre sued in federal court to order the state legislature to revisit its horse-and-buggy absentee statute to make reasonable provisions -- whether by extending voting hours, changing absentee requirements, or instituting a universal vote-by-mail system like the one that's worked well in Oregon.

  This past Friday, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit, a prominent conservative intellectual and vocal Bush supporter, handed down a capricious, flippant dismissal of the complaint, ignoring key portions of its argument and simply inventing others.

  [..]

  For his alternative, "Concept 2 democracy," Posner draws on the work of Joseph Schumpeter. This is a brazenly unromantic vision of democracy - one that treats politics "as a competition among self-interested politicians, constituting a ruling class, for the support of the people, also assumed to be self-interested, and to be none too interested in or well informed about politics."

  Not surprisingly, Posner's model of democracy looks not to ancient Athens but to the market, Posner's favorite model. It divides our democracy into two distinct classes: the class of voters-as-consumers, and the "sellers" - the elite class of elected officials and their appointees. These elite rulers market their views to the voters and so compete for electoral advantage.

  What Posner advocates is not democracy. It is plutocracy. And if the anti-democratic forces behind Team Bush have their way, they will be able to point to Posner's ruling as the roadmap for installing it.

  Our only hope, really, is a massive tide of Americans coming out to the polls on Nov. 2 in such numbers that they overpower the Republican strategy. Democracy itself is at stake.

  And on a lighter note: Lie Girls. Phone sex for Republicans. "These girls pose a grave and gathering threat... to your pants!"

  • 10:46 pm
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