If early 1800s represented an Era of Good Feelings, our times should go down in history as the Era of Bad Feelings. Nowhere has that been better exemplified than in the current nastiness pervading the Democratic Party. Although Barack Obama has for all extensive purposes won the nomination, the forces of Hillary Clinton claim she deserves to be the candidate and that they would rather vote for someone else or not vote at all than vote for Obama.

Some Clinton dissidents have formed a 571 group called P.U.M.A., whose initials purportedly stand for “Party Unity My Ass,” but whose official title is People United Means Action. Saying they will not vote for the Democratic Nominee, the group says:

Some of us will stay home. Some of us will vote for a third-party. Some of us will write-in Clinton. Many of us will vote for John McCain. This is a protest. Whatever option our members choose, it does not make us Republicans. Those who vote for John McCain will do so as a strategy, a protest. Those of us who withdraw from the Democratic Party and become Independents are still Democrats in our hearts. We are all Democrats. This is our party. The leaders did us wrong. They did Hillary Clinton wrong. They did our country wrong. But it’s still our party.

Meanwhile on the other side, some Obama supporters see a not-so-subtle racism in the refusal of groups like PUMA to endorse the winner. Tim Wise writes:

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and help ensure Barack Obama’s defeat, as a way to protest what you call Obama’s sexism (examples of which you seem to have difficulty coming up with), all the while claiming to be standing up for women…

Your whiteness is showing.

It all reminds me chillingly of Road Rage, where a real or imagined slight on the highway leads to some serious business. I remember two cars that went at it like gladiators in a chariot race until one of them ended up upside down in a ditch.

Road Rage blatantly severs the social compact that binds us all, asserting with upraised finger that the collective we no longer has any relevance. All that matters is me and mine. Road Rage is shock jocks on radio, Bill O’Reilly rudely interrupting yet another guest, and, most of all, the take no prisoners mentality that rules everything from city council chambers and corporate board rooms to the halls of Congress.

In Strange Death, I viewed our times as a harrowing search for ourselves and for meaning, as if we were trying to find the real us in a maze of mirrors. Identity has become a supreme issue for our times. Crushed by corporate sameness that has our neighborhoods and the places we work and shop becoming interchangeable parts on some ghastly giant assembly line designed to produce androids, a lot of us feel anonymous–a theme that is making certain Hollywood movie-makers quite rich.

This last quarter of a century or so is probably the first time in our history that a large number of people we deal with each day are people we do not know. As we venture about, we carry our identity with us, like pioneers and their covered wagons, knowing that at any time the winds may shift and suddenly sweep down on us, or some unforeseen disaster may thrust its serpent head and deadly fangs from behind a rock, rattles singing a warning to back off.

This engenders a modern clannishness in which we seek safety and identity among people with the same taste in blogs. Micro-targeting is not just an analytical technique it is a social phenomenon. The reality show Survivor is right on target with this, choosing its cast members to represent certain well-known social stereotypes, then placing them in artificial groups where they are supposed to collaborate but the real game is to stab people in the back. In this world our group allegiances engender certain social and media-driven behaviors where it becomes ok to plot and even attack members of an opposite group. That the show has been so popular attests to the responsive chord this has struck in Americans who recognize it in their work, their neighborhood, their politics.

To be heard these days it seems you have to shout or no one will listen. The more outrageous and inflammatory the opinion the more likely it is someone will hear it and pass it on. Today the bad feelings engendered by this atmosphere lie right on the surface. More than anything else the political equivalent to Road Rage occupies center stage in Washington, like a rude guest invited to an exclusive party, who eats with his fingers, belches after every bite, punctuates every sentence with a profanity, tries to grope the hostess, tells all the other guests where they can go and when he isn’t doing any of the above makes sure to fart as loud as he can so we know he is still there. Insults, hard-ball legislative maneuvering, and it’s my way or the highway tactics, fill the bag of tricks of many a person who occupies a seat in Congress much as they fill the bag of tricks of any third-grade bully worth his reputation.

Everywhere the put-down, the insult, is the stock in trade. If you do not see one in an hour of television-watching you are either watching Leave it to Beaver or an old movie. Nastiness has even become the prime tool of sports writers, who seem determined to bring Limbaugh journalism to the locker room. And one cannot get through even part of a day without being either the victim of or witness to some form of intimidation or deliberate nastiness.

We all have our favorite moments when we have realized this is true of events of our times, whether public or private. Maybe it was when someone cut in front of you in the supermarket just once too many times. Maybe it was after receiving some particularly vicious piece of spam mingled with email from your friends and relatives. Maybe it was a steady diet of attack ad commercials that had you grabbing whatever was handy and throwing it at the television screen. Maybe it was the last time you watched C-Span and saw how those so-called people in Congress actually behave. Maybe you happened to catch one of those purveyors of vitriol who now clog the airwaves, causing a bad sewage backup that stinks so foully no one will even come fix it.

For neutral observers of the Road Rage of the current Democratic dust-up must seem positively irrational. Feminists are so angry about what happened to Hillary Clinton they are willing to aid in the victory of a candidate was party platform has advocated the nomination of pro-life justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile the rigid Obama types seem determined to so anger the Clinton forces that it will make such a scenario all but inevitable.

Yet, as is often the case with Road Rage the real culprit was the driver who tried to merge across four lanes of freeway leaving a mess behind while driving off into the sunset. In the coming weeks I will explore some of these real culprits and their role in causing the current feud in the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile the forces of the Republican Counterrevolution must be laughing and rejoicing at the situation that has driven a wedge into the Democratic Party and between two key groups the Counterrevolution has worked so hard against. Not long ago the pundits were writing articles about how the McCain nomination had driven a wedge through the Republican Party, but now John McCain must be wondering if his destiny is being guided by some other force, for he has one from being the last choice of many key Republican groups to winning the nomination and then from inheriting the mess George Bush has left the country in to watching the Democrats self-destruct.

Since Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond made state’s rights and the provisions of his Southern Manifesto part of Barry Goldwater’s campaign and the Nixon Southern Strategy, the Counterrevolution has sought to diminish the voting power and rights of people of color. In the 2000 Florida debacle no less than the Civil Rights Commission found evidence of deliberate attempts to keep African Americans from the polls. Then the GOP sought to overturn one of the most important pieces of legislation in American History–the Voting Rights Bill.

On top of this have come deliberate impacts on the other cornerstones of Liberal America including Social and Economic Justice, Educational Equity and Media Fairness. The Counterrevolution has fought Affirmative Action from the beginning. It has gutted government programs designed to help people of color and other low-income Americans. Along with its Supreme Court, the Counterrevolution is looking to overturn one of the most hallowed of all Supreme Court decisions: Brown v. Board. Maybe someone should ask John McCain if he favors the opinions of Thomas and Scalia and will appoint others like them. Finally the Counterrevolution has supported an increasing media concentration that has had the impact of lessening the percentage of people of color who own mass media outlets.

As for women, just who do you think built and is maintaining the glass ceiling Hillary Clinton spoke out against? It has been paid for by the corporate plutocrats who have been a key constituency of the Counterrevolution since dating back to their opposition to the reforms of the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Then there is the Religious Right. Have those who threaten to put John McCain in the White House as a “protest” forgotten how the fundamentalists rewrote the Baptist Faith and Message that served as the central creed of the organization, a move that had occurred only twice before in the century. Have they forgotten this passage from Section XVII:

A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.

Have they forgotten how just as the Counterrevolution has moved to weaken the cornerstones for people of color they have done the same thing to women? If you are a single woman with children trying to make a life for yourself and your family has your life become better or worse under the Counterrevolution, to revise an old campaign slogan? As for education who is it that has gutted the college loan program? You may see more women in the media, but one of the biggest complaints of Clinton supporters was what they felt was the overt sexism of the media toward their candidate. Did the Woman’s Movement fight to bring forth Michelle Malkin?

In a paragraph that captures how the Counterrevolution has had an impact on both women and people of color, the WomenMatter web site writes since the days of the Dixiecrats:

Republicans focused on guidelines for the states rather than detailed rules, wishing to leave to the states the choice of specific kinds of machines and training. Those states where race history makes for competitive voting patterns between whites and blacks have been dominated by the Republican Party since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

As happens too much these days, the Democratic Party seems to have forgotten what the Counterrevolution has done to America. Let us hope that America remembers.