After the Nazi takeover of Poland in 1939, a man risked his life by listening to foreign broadcast (possession of radio receivers was banned by the Nazis) and hoping to hear the news of the allies launching the promised invasion of Germany. The winter had passed and the invasion had not materialized. Then came the spring, and the Nazis invaded Western Europe. Upon hearing the news of Nazi troops entering Paris, the man hanged himself. The fall of Paris was the end of civilization as he knew it, and all his hopes were extinguished.
Why does this story of one wartime suicide amidst the death of millions capture my attention? Well, from the hindsight we know that after Paris came Stalingrad, which rendered that act of despair pathetically shortsighted and futile. Why could not he see Stalingrad after Paris? The wisdom is to see the difference between a lost battle and the end of the civilisation as we know it.
The last twenty years saw a progressing defeat of what once was social democracy and its few strands that found their way to this side of Atlantic. The electoral politics played the role of the Maginot line - a bulwark of false sense of security that was easily outmaneuvered by the advancing armies. In the end, the Democrat party turned to be a Vichy - capitulating and being coopted as a Nazi ally.
Yet, in the great scheme of life, the fall of Paris was not caused by the faults in the Maginot line, but by structural changes that the allies failed to acknowledge: the rebirth of German militarism, the invention of mobile warfare, the vulnerability of the allied states (Belgium, the Netherlands), and the temporary pacification of the USSR. In the same vein, the neoliberal "Drang nach Wohlfahrstaat," the breakdown of the electoral process, and the almost total collapse of social democracy is an outcome of structural changes in economy and society underway for the past 30 or so years: deindustrialization, fragementation of the working class and society, co-optation of the academic institutions, knowledge-based middle class, and large chunks of downwardly mobile lower-middle class, suburbanization, the plague of religion and identity politics, takeover of the media, inculcation of public discourse on social science with meritocratic and market ideologies, and the pacification of any serious challenge to US imperialism.
Neither Vichy nor DLC and its rightwing policies are acts of treason (in the sense of abandoning a fight that might have a chance of victory) but mere acceptance of a fait accompli - a defeat in the field. The Democrats did not shoot themselves in the foot by betraying the progressive ideals - they simply realized that these ideals are not defensible anymore, the power has shifted to the right, so all they can do is to capitulate and try to salvage as much as they can.
It makes little sense to reproach the Petainesque Dems for capitulating to the Hitleresque Repugs. The Maginot line of the electoral process has been outflanked, and no words or political maneuvers can stop Repug panzer divisions from taking Washington next week, just as nothing could stop Wehrmacht from taking Paris in May of 1940. The only relevant question is whether the Repug takeover is the end of the social democracy as we know it, or whether there is a Stalingrad after all, some time down the line.
My reading of history is that local politics are almost never decided locally - they are the ricochet of world events. The seeds of Russian revolution and what followed were sowed by Bismarck in 1880s, the ascent of social democracy in Europe has its roots in Stalingrad, the end of McCarthyism and Great Society we precipitated by Sputnik, and the disintegration of the New Deal was sealed by the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and Gorbachev's perestroika. That makes me believe that there will be a Stalingrad, after all - not Seattle, Boston or San Francisco, but Beijing, Moscow, or Brussels. Anyone willing to bet for Cairo, Teheran or New Delhi?
In the meanwhile, the US progressives may play deGaulle's Resistance to Vichyesque henchmen of neoliberalism in the Democrat party, but they are not Tito's partisans, they will not keep the panzer divisions of Repug neoliberalism at bay. Their only hope is to find a strong ally who will defeat neoliberalism outside the United States. So the best thing we can do, my friends, in those sad and depressing times is to wait for Stalingrad, enjoy the relics of the past glory: wine, cafe life, literature, and classical music, and hope to live long enough to see better times.