Vote in moderation: the parable of Galifianakis

  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/