Pro-Green, Pro-Nader bias, so brace yourself. This article is massive, so I've edited some of it out. For the complete version, click here.
Discussions of the 2004 presidential race often leave out the very important question of whether it is in the best interest of progressive movements for the Democratic Party to run someone for president. I believe that the Democratic Party should stand down in 2004. Here are 10 reasons why.
Reason No. 1. The Democratic Party was responsible for the election of George W. Bush in the 2000 election.
In the 2000 elections, the Green Party brought at least a million voters to the polls who would have selected the Democratic Party candidate as their second choice if they had been able to. For years, Greens have been advocating "Instant Runoff Voting," (IRV) which lets voters rank order candidates and, if their first choice is not among the top contenders, transfers their vote to another choice.
But the Democratic Party power brokers also knew that if voters had access to IRV, tens of millions would have shown their disgust with Gore by ranking him below Nader.
Reason No. 2. The Democratic Party opposes Bush but does not oppose Bush's political program.
Their mantra "Anyone but Bush" blurs and confuses these two concepts. The average person thinks, "Stop the horrible things Bush is doing; anyone who replaces him will act differently." But smoke-filled Democratic Party plotting sessions will select a candidate who can capitalize on anti-Bush sentiment and what he would do in office would be irrelevant. In fact, "Anyone but Bush" ignores that the Democratic Party is responsible for each and every one of the atrocities associated with the one they demonize.
Democratic candidates pretend to be less pro-war, more pro-labor, and more pro-human rights; then they move to the right to get the nomination, and further to the right to win the election. The Democrats only nominate a 2004 presidential candidate to lull voters into believing they are an alternative. Voters need an honest choice in 2004, therefore the Democratic Party should stay out of the presidential race.
Reason No. 3. The Democratic Party made Richard Nixon the most progressive president in the last 30 years.
The following occurred during the Nixon reign:
a. an end to the Vietnam War;
b. beginning of the Food Stamp program;
c. creation of the Environmental Protection Agency;
d. recognition of China;
e. passage of the Freedom of Information Act;
f. formal dismantling of the FBI's COINTEL program;
g. decriminalization of abortion;
h. creation of Earned Income Tax Credits;
i. formal ban on biological weapons; and,
j. passage of the Clean Water Act.
These did not happen because Nixon and Kissinger tiptoed through the tulips concluding that warm fuzzy feelings beat genocide in Southeast Asia. They happened because corporate heads and agents in government were terrified of the convergence of anti-war, Black power, women's and environmental movements and their potential impact on the labor movement. The Nixon years prove beyond a doubt that mass movements can force good things from horrible people in power.
[T]he Democratic Party defuses mass movements and channels them into dead-end politics.
Reason No. 4. The Democratic Party is responsible for the non-stop attack on labor.
A symbiotic relationship exists between the Democratic and Republican parties. When elected, Democrats strengthen the labor bureaucracy, undermining the will of the rank and file to organize and resist. When Republicans are in power, they reap the benefits of the Democrats' work by attacking and crushing the weakened unions. Then business unionists tell their members Republicans are responsible, therefore they must vote Democratic. The cycle repeats and union activism and membership decline.
Reason No. 5. The Democratic Party is responsible for cutbacks in social services at the federal, state and local levels.
Cutbacks began during the final years of the Carter presidency, not during the first year of Reagan, as is often claimed. The Democratic Party, over decades, designed, voted for and implemented cutbacks that destroyed jobs, pensions, medical coverage, public transportation and schools.
Reason No. 6. The Democratic Party is responsible for attacks on civil liberties such as the PATRIOT Act.
The Democrats wrote it. They voted for it. The PATRIOT Act was a bipartisan attack on civil liberties fully supported by the Democratic Party. It was a continuation of legislation from the Clinton years, and its history goes much further back.
Reason No. 7. The Democratic Party is the Party of environmental destruction.
The Democratic Party co-opts environmental movements by cultivating Washington DC-based bureaucrats more interested in their own salaries than in stopping environmental destruction. Whether by supporting Clinton's "salvage logging" or fawning over genetic engineering or supporting nuclear plants, nuclear transportation and nuclear weapons, Democrats destroy any meaningful distinction between themselves and the Republicans.
In 1992 Al Gore promised to stop the East Liverpool incinerator, whose poisonous fumes blew directly into an Ohio working class elementary school. After the elections, the promise was history.
In the 1980s, a flood washed dioxin-laced oil onto the working class town of Times Beach, Missouri. It was the second dioxin poisoning for those exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and the third dioxin poisoning for many who had worked in industrial settings. Democrats Clinton, Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, and County Executive Buzz Westfall helped ensure that they would be poisoned a fourth time by a dioxin incinerator in the 90s.
Similar episodes fill volumes. If undeterred, the Democratic Party will turn the globe into a toxic wasteland.
Reason No. 8. The Democratic Party is the grand chef, the big cheese, the glory hog of international trade deals.
In the early 1990s, George Bush Sr. was not able to push NAFTA through Congress. So big business decided that a back-stabbing Democrat would serve its interests better than the iron-fisted Republican. Enough money poured into Democratic Party coffers to make Bill Clinton president.
Dick Gephardt of St. Louis supposedly led efforts to stop congressional passage of NAFTA. I wrote an article documenting that when Gephardt spoke in Mexico, he said that he would help get NAFTA approved. It was a pleasant surprise when St. Louis' corporate paper, the Post-Dispatch, published it. I waited for Gephardt's denunciation. It never came. To this day, Gephardt has not refuted my documentation that he faked his resistance to protect his union base in St. Louis.
The Clinton regime was so incredibly successful at pushing trade deals to subjugate the global South to the greed of the US, EU and Japan that it rushed ahead of the mechanisms of violence needed to enforce those deals. Bush's attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq warn the rest of the world that the US will back up the Democrats' negotiated control of trade and economics with violence.
Therefore the brutal assaults of the Bush Republicans are the natural outgrowth of the slick deals of the Clinton Democrats. It is false to claim that George W. Bush breaks qualitatively from the Democrat preceeding him or that his presidency is uniquely dangerous. One can only believe that falsity by ignoring what has gone on during Democratic administrations.
Reason No. 9. The Democratic Party is the party of war.
The Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to lead the US into war.
Those who disagree with this should remember Democrat Woodrow Wilson won reelection with the slogan "He kept us out of war" and then promptly went to war and jailed anyone who didn't like it. They should remember that the only leader of any nation who ever ordered the use of a nuclear bomb was Democrat Harry Truman. Democrat Truman bombed Hiroshima after ignoring Japan's attempts to surrender, and, just to see if plutonium worked as well as uranium, ordered the bombing of Nagasaki three days later.
Any who hallucinate that "progressive" Democrats are peaceful should remember that Democrat John Kennedy risked global nuclear war over USSR missiles in Cuba that were further from the US than US missiles in Turkey were from the USSR. They should remember that Democrat Lyndon Johnson won reelection ridiculing Barry Goldwater's promise to bomb Vietnam back to the stone age and then attempted to implement Goldwater's program.
The illusion of the peace-loving Democratic Party requires a failure to recall that the Clinton-Gore regime was responsible for the murder of 5000 Iraqi children per month by sanctions. As hideous as the current administration is, Clinton-Gore's silent slaughter exceeded the number of deaths caused by Bush.
Reason No. 10. The Democratic Party matches the Republican party in treason while exceeding it in cowardice.
Any who find it severe to charge the Democrats and Republicans with "treason" should ponder the fact that current international trade deals allow secret tribunals of bureaucrats to trump US laws.
Republicans [through policies which threaten the environment] may well eliminate humanity in 10 to 30 years. The Democrats claim that they are far more reasonable, which means that their policies might result in human life limping along for 50 to 100 years. This is what we are supposed to be excited about.
The Democratic Party warns that we must not campaign against corporate power and for the complete reversal needed to stop the advance of biodevastation. They suggest that a Green program will "scare people" and get Republicans elected. Their basic plan is to accept destruction of the planet but try to make sure it doesn't happen until we are all dead and gone, leaving the devastation for our children or grandchildren. That is the Ultimate Cowardice of the Democratic Party.
"A Seat at the Table"
The major parties differ in the way they dispense with opposition to corporate objectives. The Democrats co-opt organizational leaders to sign onto whatever they are maneuvering. They believe this will win wider acceptance. The Republicans believe it is more efficient to go directly to the public with rhetoric of nationalism and racism.
There is no better example of the self-interests of Washington lobbyists than the seven "environmental" organizations that helped Clinton/Gore pass NAFTA. They preached to their members the necessity of accepting "regulated" clear-cuts, "acceptable" levels of toxic poisons, "the best-we-can-negotiate" labor give-aways, "unfortunate" slashes in social services, and bipartisan PATRIOT Acts.
A political party is more than the individuals it nominates for public office. A party is also its political program: both its formally declared program and its informal program consisting of its relationships with economic classes and social groups. The Democratic Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.
Discussions of the 2004 presidential race often leave out the very important question of whether it is in the best interest of progressive movements for the Democratic Party to run someone for president. I believe that the Democratic Party should stand down in 2004. Here are 10 reasons why.
Reason No. 1. The Democratic Party was responsible for the election of George W. Bush in the 2000 election.
In the 2000 elections, the Green Party brought at least a million voters to the polls who would have selected the Democratic Party candidate as their second choice if they had been able to. For years, Greens have been advocating "Instant Runoff Voting," (IRV) which lets voters rank order candidates and, if their first choice is not among the top contenders, transfers their vote to another choice.
But the Democratic Party power brokers also knew that if voters had access to IRV, tens of millions would have shown their disgust with Gore by ranking him below Nader.
Reason No. 2. The Democratic Party opposes Bush but does not oppose Bush's political program.
Their mantra "Anyone but Bush" blurs and confuses these two concepts. The average person thinks, "Stop the horrible things Bush is doing; anyone who replaces him will act differently." But smoke-filled Democratic Party plotting sessions will select a candidate who can capitalize on anti-Bush sentiment and what he would do in office would be irrelevant. In fact, "Anyone but Bush" ignores that the Democratic Party is responsible for each and every one of the atrocities associated with the one they demonize.
Democratic candidates pretend to be less pro-war, more pro-labor, and more pro-human rights; then they move to the right to get the nomination, and further to the right to win the election. The Democrats only nominate a 2004 presidential candidate to lull voters into believing they are an alternative. Voters need an honest choice in 2004, therefore the Democratic Party should stay out of the presidential race.
Reason No. 3. The Democratic Party made Richard Nixon the most progressive president in the last 30 years.
The following occurred during the Nixon reign:
a. an end to the Vietnam War;
b. beginning of the Food Stamp program;
c. creation of the Environmental Protection Agency;
d. recognition of China;
e. passage of the Freedom of Information Act;
f. formal dismantling of the FBI's COINTEL program;
g. decriminalization of abortion;
h. creation of Earned Income Tax Credits;
i. formal ban on biological weapons; and,
j. passage of the Clean Water Act.
These did not happen because Nixon and Kissinger tiptoed through the tulips concluding that warm fuzzy feelings beat genocide in Southeast Asia. They happened because corporate heads and agents in government were terrified of the convergence of anti-war, Black power, women's and environmental movements and their potential impact on the labor movement. The Nixon years prove beyond a doubt that mass movements can force good things from horrible people in power.
[T]he Democratic Party defuses mass movements and channels them into dead-end politics.
Reason No. 4. The Democratic Party is responsible for the non-stop attack on labor.
A symbiotic relationship exists between the Democratic and Republican parties. When elected, Democrats strengthen the labor bureaucracy, undermining the will of the rank and file to organize and resist. When Republicans are in power, they reap the benefits of the Democrats' work by attacking and crushing the weakened unions. Then business unionists tell their members Republicans are responsible, therefore they must vote Democratic. The cycle repeats and union activism and membership decline.
Reason No. 5. The Democratic Party is responsible for cutbacks in social services at the federal, state and local levels.
Cutbacks began during the final years of the Carter presidency, not during the first year of Reagan, as is often claimed. The Democratic Party, over decades, designed, voted for and implemented cutbacks that destroyed jobs, pensions, medical coverage, public transportation and schools.
Reason No. 6. The Democratic Party is responsible for attacks on civil liberties such as the PATRIOT Act.
The Democrats wrote it. They voted for it. The PATRIOT Act was a bipartisan attack on civil liberties fully supported by the Democratic Party. It was a continuation of legislation from the Clinton years, and its history goes much further back.
Reason No. 7. The Democratic Party is the Party of environmental destruction.
The Democratic Party co-opts environmental movements by cultivating Washington DC-based bureaucrats more interested in their own salaries than in stopping environmental destruction. Whether by supporting Clinton's "salvage logging" or fawning over genetic engineering or supporting nuclear plants, nuclear transportation and nuclear weapons, Democrats destroy any meaningful distinction between themselves and the Republicans.
In 1992 Al Gore promised to stop the East Liverpool incinerator, whose poisonous fumes blew directly into an Ohio working class elementary school. After the elections, the promise was history.
In the 1980s, a flood washed dioxin-laced oil onto the working class town of Times Beach, Missouri. It was the second dioxin poisoning for those exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and the third dioxin poisoning for many who had worked in industrial settings. Democrats Clinton, Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, and County Executive Buzz Westfall helped ensure that they would be poisoned a fourth time by a dioxin incinerator in the 90s.
Similar episodes fill volumes. If undeterred, the Democratic Party will turn the globe into a toxic wasteland.
Reason No. 8. The Democratic Party is the grand chef, the big cheese, the glory hog of international trade deals.
In the early 1990s, George Bush Sr. was not able to push NAFTA through Congress. So big business decided that a back-stabbing Democrat would serve its interests better than the iron-fisted Republican. Enough money poured into Democratic Party coffers to make Bill Clinton president.
Dick Gephardt of St. Louis supposedly led efforts to stop congressional passage of NAFTA. I wrote an article documenting that when Gephardt spoke in Mexico, he said that he would help get NAFTA approved. It was a pleasant surprise when St. Louis' corporate paper, the Post-Dispatch, published it. I waited for Gephardt's denunciation. It never came. To this day, Gephardt has not refuted my documentation that he faked his resistance to protect his union base in St. Louis.
The Clinton regime was so incredibly successful at pushing trade deals to subjugate the global South to the greed of the US, EU and Japan that it rushed ahead of the mechanisms of violence needed to enforce those deals. Bush's attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq warn the rest of the world that the US will back up the Democrats' negotiated control of trade and economics with violence.
Therefore the brutal assaults of the Bush Republicans are the natural outgrowth of the slick deals of the Clinton Democrats. It is false to claim that George W. Bush breaks qualitatively from the Democrat preceeding him or that his presidency is uniquely dangerous. One can only believe that falsity by ignoring what has gone on during Democratic administrations.
Reason No. 9. The Democratic Party is the party of war.
The Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to lead the US into war.
Those who disagree with this should remember Democrat Woodrow Wilson won reelection with the slogan "He kept us out of war" and then promptly went to war and jailed anyone who didn't like it. They should remember that the only leader of any nation who ever ordered the use of a nuclear bomb was Democrat Harry Truman. Democrat Truman bombed Hiroshima after ignoring Japan's attempts to surrender, and, just to see if plutonium worked as well as uranium, ordered the bombing of Nagasaki three days later.
Any who hallucinate that "progressive" Democrats are peaceful should remember that Democrat John Kennedy risked global nuclear war over USSR missiles in Cuba that were further from the US than US missiles in Turkey were from the USSR. They should remember that Democrat Lyndon Johnson won reelection ridiculing Barry Goldwater's promise to bomb Vietnam back to the stone age and then attempted to implement Goldwater's program.
The illusion of the peace-loving Democratic Party requires a failure to recall that the Clinton-Gore regime was responsible for the murder of 5000 Iraqi children per month by sanctions. As hideous as the current administration is, Clinton-Gore's silent slaughter exceeded the number of deaths caused by Bush.
Reason No. 10. The Democratic Party matches the Republican party in treason while exceeding it in cowardice.
Any who find it severe to charge the Democrats and Republicans with "treason" should ponder the fact that current international trade deals allow secret tribunals of bureaucrats to trump US laws.
Republicans [through policies which threaten the environment] may well eliminate humanity in 10 to 30 years. The Democrats claim that they are far more reasonable, which means that their policies might result in human life limping along for 50 to 100 years. This is what we are supposed to be excited about.
The Democratic Party warns that we must not campaign against corporate power and for the complete reversal needed to stop the advance of biodevastation. They suggest that a Green program will "scare people" and get Republicans elected. Their basic plan is to accept destruction of the planet but try to make sure it doesn't happen until we are all dead and gone, leaving the devastation for our children or grandchildren. That is the Ultimate Cowardice of the Democratic Party.
"A Seat at the Table"
The major parties differ in the way they dispense with opposition to corporate objectives. The Democrats co-opt organizational leaders to sign onto whatever they are maneuvering. They believe this will win wider acceptance. The Republicans believe it is more efficient to go directly to the public with rhetoric of nationalism and racism.
There is no better example of the self-interests of Washington lobbyists than the seven "environmental" organizations that helped Clinton/Gore pass NAFTA. They preached to their members the necessity of accepting "regulated" clear-cuts, "acceptable" levels of toxic poisons, "the best-we-can-negotiate" labor give-aways, "unfortunate" slashes in social services, and bipartisan PATRIOT Acts.
A political party is more than the individuals it nominates for public office. A party is also its political program: both its formally declared program and its informal program consisting of its relationships with economic classes and social groups. The Democratic Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.
