A Farewell To Arms

Tue Mar 4, 03:40 PM by Gordon Wood

Here, on the precipice of history, Texas Democrats truly know what it means to be cursed with blessings. The wild machine of national politics winds up its Texas tenure today, and it will leave behind a state that has been politically changed in improbable ways, changed to an extent that is difficult to imagine before a full accounting has been performed. Texas matters, but more than that, Texas has mattered and that importance has resulted in two weeks of stratification and campaigning that neither Democratic candidate likely imagined as far back as four weeks ago.

As a state, we will not roll out tidy results tonight, and the allocation of all of the delegates will not be decided for weeks. Nor will the national campaigns end after tonight, barring some sea change that has happened under our feet and eyes in the last few days without notice. This is not outside the realm of possibility — observe Iowa. Observe New Hampshire. Observe, if you will, every other day in the ever-ending process that has brought us to this point.

We have covered the campaigns here in Texas over the last few weeks, and we have seen what these candidates have to offer. We have heard the arguments that each candidate has made on his or her own behalf — change versus experience — and we have seen ardent supporters of each writhe and holler in joy and exultation as the spirit has taken them to rally and chant and cheer. We have also seen the machinery of these national campaigns complemented and augmented by a state party organization deep in the serious business of picking a president and finally coming into its own, proving its efficacy and efficiency in the field of a battle that seems epic and intimate at the same time.

It is after these many years that many Democrats in Texas have worked that, when national politics came to town, so much of that work has borne unexpected fruit. The organizing and fundraising and blockwalking and phone banking and training has shaken out to a greater, unplanned purpose. The people who answered the phone in years past are now showing up to help, and the people who wouldn’t answer the phone are now listening to what the callers have to say.

The presidential campaigns descended on Texas and unlocked a sleeping second world of young and old infrastructures that, to the untrained eye, seemed invisible or impossible before the crushing excitement of this election opened the eyes of everyone to what has been happening here.

The hard work of months and years paid off at the nexus of something totally unique in American politics, and it paid off here in Texas, and why not? The toil of these many years was known to be righteous by those that took on the challenge. Those same people knew that not all toil is righteous, or good; some toil is just slavery. But this is not that. The process of the presidential campaign coming to town, lasting all of three weeks, started as a slow realization, came on like rust. That two incredible people asked for help and votes in the same year is a curse of blessings, but it is not a curse the Democrats, in the end, would seek to remove from this time and this place.

The Texas Republican Party is running silent these days, and they ruefully cast eyes out their office windows and sense something bad in the air. Suddenly the Democratic Party can no longer be passed off like some Tex-Mex equivalent of the New Whigs. The preachers and proselytizers were suddenly proven right, and all the money and sweat put into maintaining the machine and forcing it to build on itself proved out to be the correct choice in a game with unknowable stakes. Now the hottentots are full-on amok and the GOP is starting to get the cold sweat of a deep internal illness that has thus far been masked by booze and climate control. Now they know they have been sick and weak, and the mirror is unforgiving.

The idea of stomping the earth has grown unfamiliar, and in some cases is new for the old guard. The initiates who have started to climb the masts and run the boats have the look of new cops at a riot. They are hungry for battle and feel the rhythm of yet-begun protracted streetfights thrumming in their veins. This is the day they told themselves would come, whether through clenched teeth or tightened eyes, like some sort of political apocalypse, a partisan version of Revelations.

The Republican Party is not destroyed in Texas, and in these final days it may become more dangerous than ever before, like a wounded animal caught in a trap. A generation of politicians who battled each other over who had the most hate-filled heart has finally run aground, after coring any vestige of reconciliation out of their own party, along with everyone who might have been reasonable. They failed to learn or even pay attention to the world around them, and now they are doomed to lose on every issue and destruct from the top down, like an over-zealous virus that eats all available cells and perishes as a result. The blatantly corrupt among them will be driven out as offerings while the mundane ones pack and hope to get out of town without scars or other marks. They failed to learn and now they will die out like dinosaurs who couldn’t grow feathers or fur fast enough.

There are lessons within this for Democrats who have seized the reins of time and space and are driving towards glory. If this year is handled right, the Republican Party may be driven before the Democrats like a conquered army for forty years, and the eldest among them will recall Roosevelt and Truman and shutter as they realize that every day that follows will be longer than the last. Or, if the Democrats cannot resist the temptation to eat their own and throw away the goodwill by fighting over which half of the conquered hill to stand on, it may be that they are the ones who failed to learn, and will be punished for it, possibly forever.

This election will save the Democratic Party and probably the world. This is the breaking point we’ve been waiting for since Ed Muskey wept and Nixon laid his dark magic on American politics for generations. The chronicling is important, but the road is long and the knives are sharp. Take a moment to recognize where you are in the grand scheme of things, and what today means. There is no time to sit back and watch history happen.

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