| Republicans
dominate Texas politics, but the national Democrats could learn a simple
lesson from the state: Before you can become the party in power, you have
to be a real opposition party.
When 51 Democratic members of the Texas House of
Representatives left for Oklahoma earlier this month to derail a
Republican redistricting plan, they did something that - for Democrats
these days - seems radical: They stood up for themselves and for the
democratic process.
The national Democrats have caved in to the Bush
administration on every front - most notably an obscene tax cut that
benefits the wealthiest and a war based on lies about terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction. The Democrats' status-quo politics has
allowed the ideologically fanatical Republican leadership to push the
status quo ever further to the right.
In Texas, it's been an ugly year for centrist, let
alone progressive, politics. With majorities of 88-62 in the state House
and 19-12 in the state Senate, Republicans have been gutting health and
human-services programs, undermining environmental regulation and pushing
bogus tort-reform measures - all of which will reward the rich and punish
the poor.
Texas Democrats were getting nowhere in attempts
to slow down this right-wing juggernaut. The Republican House speaker, Tom
Craddick of Midland, played Bush's game: Talk bipartisanship but wield
power harshly. Some of the reactionary right's agenda was advanced under
the cover of a projected $10-billion shortfall for the next two fiscal
years, but much of the legislative agenda was independent of the budget
crisis.
Enter U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his
plan to redistrict the Texas congressional delegation. If his
gerrymandering had succeeded, the current balance of 17 Democrats to 15
Republicans could have shifted to 22 Republicans and 10 Democrats.
Three federal judges drew the current boundaries
when the legislature failed to do so after the 2000 census. There's no
principled or legal reason the districts need to be redrawn before 2010;
at least DeLay was honest about that. "I'm the majority leader and we
want more seats," he said.
That's what Texas Democrats faced when they
boarded a bus for the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Okla. Their absence denied
the state House a quorum, and they didn't return until after the May 15
deadline for passage of House bills, guaranteeing that the redistricting
plan was dead.
They've been called cowards for leaving, but their
action took real political courage. Yes, they were trying to protect the
last remnant of Democratic political power in a state with a Republican
executive and legislature, and two Republican U.S. senators. But there
also was a question of fair play.
Lon Burnam, one of the Democratic refugees, said
the walkout was born partly of outrage at GOP tactics: "For three
months the Republicans refused to deal with fundamental issues - the
deficit, funding for public schools, a homeowners' insurance crisis ...
And then they wanted to let Tom DeLay define the state's agenda during the
last week that House bills could be considered. It was absolutely
unnecessary and would have seriously undermined the Voting Rights Act in
Texas."
Will the Democrats' gambit pay off politically?
The next election will provide the answer, but as one letter-writer in
Austin put it, "I was ecstatic to see that Texas Democrats still have
guts."
And Erin Rogers, who handles organizing and
lobbies the legislature for the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club, said:
"Democrats across the state were cheering, not only because
redistricting failed but because the party found its spine."
Although the current two-party system is killing
real democracy, the Democrats should heed this: If you want to be
something more than Karl Rove's doormat, keep more of an eye on Texas in
the coming months than on the polls. Taking risks might prove to be
politically effective. And even if it doesn't win votes in the short term,
it will win back some self-respect.
Robert Jensen is a founding member of the Nowar
Collective (www.nowarcollective.com), a journalism professor at the
University of Texas at Austin, and author of "Writing Dissent: Taking
Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream." He can be reached
at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. |
