Many years ago, a month or so before his was elected to his second term in the House of Representatives Barney Frank wrote a funny piece in The New Republic about his first term in office. Unfortunately it is not yet in the TNR archives. I recall, however, that Barney wrote something like this:
“After looking over my first term, I have to say that I’ve cast a few votes that I find myself disapproving. And I certainly missed some opportunities to speak out on some important issues. But, taking my record as a whole, and especially after comparing it to that of my opponent, I believe I’m certainly the lesser of two evils and maybe even a bit better than that. So I intend to vote for myself in November.”
I recall this now because there is a dispute in Neighborhood Networks about whether to endorse Casey for Senate or just call for Santorum’s defeat.
(Some folks want to endorse Romanelli. For reasons I’ve given before, I think this is utterly wrong choice)
I know that some people think that endorsing Casey is a betrayal of our ideals. And the NN platform does contradict Casey’s position on many important issues. As I have mentioned before in this space, Casey is not my ideal Senate candidate.
But—assuming you think that we should try to defeat Santorum—I think this whole question of whether to endorse Casey is, for a couple of reasons, a little silly.
It is silly, first, because it misunderstands what “endorsement” means. An endorsement of Casey means that we want people to vote for him. It does not mean we love everything—or anything—about him. It just means we want him to win the election.
It is silly, second, because we progressives really should be acting like grown-ups. The world, in case folks haven’t noticed, rarely works exactly the way we want it. While we’re here, we have to make the best of the situations in which we find ourselves. And that means making choices between two not so great alternatives. Is that really so hard to do? I’m fifty years old and I’ve probably made that kind of choice—in politics and even more in my personal life—roughly 36,000 times, that is about twice a day.
Politicians regularly appall me because they are so reluctant to honestly say what they think about issues and candidates. Isn’t the first thing we reformers need to do is stand for an honest and forthright politics in which we look the world in the face and say what we want do to and why and then try do to it?
In this case we can say that we don’t like Casey all that much and that we want to elect him. That’s the honest and straightforward approach. If we say we don’t endorse Casey but we want him to win the election, how are we different from all the pols who are always trying to have it both ways?
As far as I’m concerned, NN and other progressive organizations need to do everything we can to make sure Casey win’s this election. Santorum is just horrible. Casey is not great, but he is better than Santorum in many ways that will make an actual, concrete difference in the lives of people. We have a responsibility to those people, and to our ideals, to try to make the Senate–and the world–a little bit better even if the world will still not be all we want it to be.
Progressive people in this city are ready to work to defeat Santorum. Mobilizing those people is critical, not only to defeating Santorum, but to building the progressive movement in the city. But you can’t organize people politically without giving them something to work for. So let’s endorse Casey and start working to make him our next Senator.
And, if you have to hold your nose while your working for him, that’s OK, too. Just keep working, for Casey, and for better, more progressive Democratic candidates in the future.