Granny D’s American Century

18 | Shared Courage

Shared Courage Our relationship with the state party was rocky. They didn’t take me seriously as a candidate, even as we started to attract big news stories. I was by rights the head of the New Hampshire delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, being the candidate for the highest office, yet the party didn’t even invite me to come as a part of the delegation. It was the old populist/elite split, I suppose. My age, of course, made me something of a sideshow in some eyes. We went to the convention anyway and crashed the party. I only wish we had taken the band. We actually went to Boston for a good reason: to recruit staff and advisers. I somehow got an invitation to the Bloggers’ Ball and there had a drink with Joe Trippi. Blue went on a charm offensive with Joe: Yes, he might be willing to share some advice. Yes, we could list him as a campaign adviser. Finally, yes, he would come up to New Hampshire. Nicco Melle, a superstar of political website engineering and the man, like Trippi, behind the web success of the Dean campaign, also agreed to help. It was a good evening. The Dean rank-and-file were quickly hired up by the Kerry people. The Kucinich people, poor dears, were entirely available. We hired a few. The big joint gathering of Kucinich and Dean volunteers that I had encouraged months earlier—that Blue and I had hitchhiked to promote back in Gainesville—actually happened as a side event of the Democratic Convention. This is what I said from that podium: There are so many things that I do not have to say to the people in this room. I do not have to go on and on about the danger our democracy faces right now. I do not have to lay out the case for the Bill of Rights or the environment or fair trade or world peace. I do not have to reason with you as to the case against torture or dictator18 160 granny d’s american century ship. I do not have to speak to you about how we must not split our vote this year. I don’t like preaching to the faithful, so let me tell you something you may not have thought about. Our present emergency is upon us because our civic society has been dumbed down by dumbed-down newspapers, radio, and television news, by dumbed-down schools, and by a corporate-run economic rat race that keeps people so busy trying to make ends meet that they have no time nor energy left for the civic affairs of their town or nation. You certainly know all this, and we celebrate the rise of independent media and the use of books and films to fill in some of the gaps. But the gaps are awesome, and democracy cannot long survive when the people are not well informed, interested, and supplied with sufficient time and resources to participate. But there is another thing that has been dumbed down over the past two or three generations, and that is the art of politics itself. If the politics of a century ago can be likened to a banquet, the politics of today is like a fast-food burger. I am going to try to sell you on the idea of a richer politics, so let me tell you what it used to be like. Everybody used to be involved. You went to your Elks Club or your Women’s Club, but you went to your party meetings, too. You worked your neighborhoods. You talked up your issues and candidates. It was a fairly constant thing, not just during the election season. Why? Because democracy is a lifestyle, not a fringe benefit of paying your taxes. Self-governance is a lot of work, but it’s where you make your best friends and have your deepest satisfactions, after your family. Just before I declared for the u.s. Senate last month, I was on a twenty-three-thousand-mile road trip to register voters. There were many housing projects and low-income neighborhoods where the people had seen nobody dropping by to talk politics since the last election. The Democrats only come around, we were told, every few years to ask for their votes, but they weren’t there to listen to their problems or to help them craft political solutions. These people...