Vote in moderation: the parable of Galifianakis
September 18, 2018
By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com
- The Democratic Party should shift to the center and build a tent big enough to accommodate independents, moderates, disenchanted conservatives and the like, right?
- RIGHT?
- Go out of its way to accommodate that significant percentage of the electorate with the ability to tilt elections one side or the other, sometimes by staying at home.
- The oblivious kingmakers.
- No election can be won without a substantial support of the silent, ambivalent and usually detached silent majorities.
- Granted: independents and/or moderates do not mobilize the base and rarely inspire people to become politically active, particularly at primaries.
- Problem arises when we give way too much attention to loud yet irrelevant ideological minorities.
- Which, IMHO, is exactly what the Democratic party seems to be doing by lining up behind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Julia Salazar and assorted Socialist lightweights (fortunately, Cynthia Nixon lost het bid against New York State governor Mario Cuomo).
- This is mostly taking place in that rarefied atmosphere of liberal folly that is the five boroughs of New York, tru dat.
- Nevertheless, it is grabbing national headlines and marking a troubling trend.
- My guess is that a lot of Dems out there are saying to themselves: hey, if the GOP managed to put the ultimate lightweight, and a hell of a polarizing one, in the White House we can regain territory the same way.
- Really?
- Please reconsider.
- I have nothing against injecting new, diverse blood into the political system.
- Quite the contrary.
- But let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot.
- Let me tell you a story, which we can call The parable of Galifianakis.
- As relayed to yours truly by a professional mentor of mine who went to college in the late 60s and early 70s.
- Those years were marked by civil rights and pacifism.
- In other words: desegregation and opposition to the Vietnam war.
- This man, my mentor who later became an important executive in a multinational Madison Avenue agency, was and still is a liberal.
- A moderate one but a man of the left nevertheless.
- He admits he was a bit more extreme during his youth.
- Yet he learned the lesson of moderation the hard way, to wit.
- During his college days in North Carolina, this gentleman became an activist and community organizer for Democratic Congressman Nick Galifianakis**.
- It was 1972 and Mr. Galifianakis, a vocal Vietnam war critic, was challenging the incumbent Democratic US Senator: B. Everett Jordan.
- Senator Jordan was regarded by “the base” as too moderate, too lukewarm, too conservative.
- A bureaucrat.
- Please note that this was the South in the late 60s.
- North Carolina, however, had been a Democratic stronghold for decades.
- After a close primary, Mr Galifianakis came on top and earned the candidacy.
- So long for moderation.
- It just so happens that the Republican opponent he was to confront was one Jesse Helms, a sharp-tongued and ultraconservative TV talking head.
- His campaign slogan. “Jesse Helms: he’s is one of us”.
- The nativist innuendo against an exceedingly liberal dude with a clunky foreign last name was apparent.
- It worked.
- The rest is history: Helms won the Senate seat, got re-elected four times and reshaped the North Carolinian political landscape forever.
- To this day, my mentor who’s name I’ve chosen to withhold, feels guilty about all this.
- In his mind, his near-sighted, youthful bleeding-heart intransigence was painfully responsible for the appointment of one of the most racist and right-wing politicians ever to set foot in the Capitol and, in the process, for painting a historically blue state blood red for generations to come.
*I hate to say this because these two examples are young people of Hispanic heritage. But, unfortunately, they are lightweights with notoriously thin resumés nevertheless.
**Yup, he was the uncle of comedian Zach Galifianakis. You can read a more detailed account of the Galifianakis rise and fall here: https://www.salon.com/2012/08/10/galifianakis_vs_jesse_helms/