Of transcendence

What to do when confronted with unbearable arrogance? Different options work for different people at different times. Without disparaging other reactions, here is the one I recommend for those of us who are now confronted by the breathtaking, appalling, and totally unacceptable arrogance of Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Senator Obama and his campaign.

Transcendence definition: the state of excelling or surpassing or going beyond usual limits

Like the word arrogance, transcendence, from the word transcendent is a very old one in the English language, dating back to the 14th or 15th century. While arrogance is an attitude, however, transcendence is a state of being.



With their arrogance, Dr. Dean, Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, and Senator Obama have indeed pushed me beyond my limits. But not in the way portrayed by the MSM or by Dean, Pelosi, and various others. I am not fanatical. I am not in a bitter rage.

I am transcendent.

This means that I will not engage in the pretense of politics as usual, where year after year, I vote for a Democrat who I know cannot win because I feel that liberalism requires it: I voted for Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, and Al Gore, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and varying degrees of confidence that they might actually win the Oval Office.

I could vote for these candidates because I did not feel that they had been thrust upon me by an illegitimate primary process controlled by people determined to prevent the candidate I though best qualified to be our next president from ever even having a just and fair shot at becoming the Democratic Party nominee. None of these previous Democratic presidential nominees engaged in or tolerated wretchedly sexist and misogynist conduct, none of them associated closely with known racists as their pastors for 20 years, none of them took for granted the votes of Hispanics and Latinos, women, working class Democrats, American Indians, gays and lesbians, and all those who look for a President committed to social equality and truly shared economic prosperity. They may not have been able to convince those groups that they could deliver these goals, but they worked to earn their votes.

This year the Democratic Party seems intent on assuming that I will simply vote for whoever they select - not genuinely elect - as a nominee, by whatever methods they decide to use to install that person as the Democratic nominee.

My response: transcendence.

I have been exceeding and will continue to exceed my own limits to resist this arrogance, to insist that the D.N.C. clean its house immediately. I will not vote for a Democratic nominee who accepts that nomination without there being a real convention in Denver, one where the first vote is a balloted vote, with the serious contenders for this still undecided nomination listed on the ballot. I will not vote for a Democratic candidate who does not himself immediately (as in now, not after Denver) demand that the D.N.C. rid itself of a leadership that has been exceeding hypocritical at best, dishonest at worst. I will not vote for candidate who does not now speak out in the strongest possible terms against the disgraceful treatment of Senator Clinton by himself, his campaign staff, some of his supporters, the D.N.C. elite, and the media throughout this political season and right up until today. A mouthed apology will not do. I will accept nothing less than actions that convince me that any given candidate can be a proper Party leader, let alone leader of the United States of America.

Without serious, even drastic, actions by the presumptive - but not yet actual, let me remind everybody - Democratic nominee and the current D.N.C. leadership, I will transcend a crooked nominating process and the shabby behavior of so many associated with it.

I will not vote for Senator McCain, because I do not agree with his specific policies and overall political outlook. But neither will I vote for a candidate just because he arrives at the general election with the label "Democrat" stamped on him.

Before I am forced to simply sit out this presidential election, I will transcend the machinations of the D.N.C., and the complicity of too many media figures to name, by continuing to support the one candidate who has conducted herself with ever increasing grace and integrity this political season: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Senator Clinton herself has transcended so much. Without rancor and with tremendous intelligence she has resisted and continues to resist being chased out of the Democratic Party. She knows the Party needs to provide voters, at the convention and beyond, with candidates of her high caliber.

I know this too. Hence, my response to arrogance: transcendence.