The Turned Back

Trey Smith

Before the electoral year of 2012 slinks into history, it is worth a comparative glance back to the electoral year of 1912 to give us some jolting perspective on how degraded our contemporary elections, voter performance and election expectations have become.

One hundred years ago, workers were marching, picketing and forming unions. Eugene Debs, the great labor leader and presidential candidate that year, spoke to outdoor labor rallies of 100,000 to 200,000 workers and their families gathered to protest low wages and working conditions.

Farmers were flexing their muscle with vibrant political activity in progressive parties and organizing farm cooperatives, through their granges, and pushing for proper regulation of the banks and railroads.

On the presidential ballot were Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party’s choice former president Theodore Roosevelt. Taft would be repudiated for being far too populist and too critical of corporations by today’s Republican Party. He favored national, not state, charters for “national corporations.”

The Democrats were committed to their platform of 1908 which asked “Shall the people rule? Is the overshadowing issue which manifests itself in all the questions now under discussion.” The context was shaped by the giant corporations (“called the trusts”) and their lobbies in Washington, which had to be curbed. The Supreme Court in 1911 had just ruled to break up the giant Standard Oil trust.

Women’s suffrage, abolition of child labor, workers’ compensation; states adopting the initiative, referendum, and recall; the eight-hour work day, minimum wage laws (Massachusetts was the first in 1912), taxing corporate profits and the “inheritance of fortunes,” were some of the many hot issues of 1912.
~ from The Descent of a Nation by Ralph Nader ~

It really is eye-opening to see how far the Democratic Party has swung to the right in 100 years time. In 1912, the Democratic Party platform was a progressive one. Here we are in 2012 and it is anything but. This is why so many are calling for the formation of a populist third party.

In 1912, big business had one part at their beck and call (GOP). One hundred years later, big business now has two political parties to do their bidding (GOP and the Dems). If we don't hurry up and get to work on forming a party of the people, there is little hope for us (though I personally think we can change far more in the streets than at the ballot box).