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Today's
Stories
February
3, 2004
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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February
3, 2004
The Democrats' New
Mantra
What
They Really Mean by "Electability"
By ALAN MAASS
Forget whether they supported the war on Iraq.
Doesn't matter if they voted for USA PATRIOT. Who cares what
they say about health care. The only thing that seems to matter
in the race for the 2004 Democratic Party presidential nomination
is "electability."
After the surprise one-two finish of
Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards in the Iowa caucuses last week,
you could barely find any other subject in the mainstream media's
coverage of the Democratic primaries following. Kerry rode the
momentum from his Iowa victory to a win in the New Hampshire
primary, too.
Passing him in the polls going the other
way was Howard Dean, though Dean managed to do slightly better
in New Hampshire. Still, only a few weeks before was thought
by pundits to be a good bet to win big in both states--and gain
a virtual lock on the nomination. Then Dean got trounced in Iowa--and
made matters worse with an out-of-control "concession"
speech that ended with the now infamous howl heard around the
world.
The speech, and especially Dean's frenzied
yell, was seized on as the perfect illustration of his "angry"
style--which, according to fellow Democrats and media commentators,
had alienated voters looking for a more moderate candidate who
looked "presidential."
Less talked about was the fact that both
Kerry and Edwards had overhauled their campaign messages to make
sharper criticisms of Bush and use more populist rhetoric--prompting
the Dean campaign to accuse both of trying to steal its message.
Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom
was that the Iowa caucuses were "a moment of pragmatism"
in which voters supported the two contenders who "looked
most electable," as a New York Times editorial put it.
* * *
ALL THIS is music to the ears of the
Democratic Party establishment. To them, an "electable"
candidate tailors their positions to be as close to the Republicans
as possible, in order to appeal to conservative "swing voters."
The party's voting base may like a more liberal appeal, goes
the reasoning, but they will vote Democratic no matter what.
Elections are won and lost by who wins over the narrow group
of voters in the middle--and you can only get their support by
playing to conservative issues.
This has been a losing strategy for Democrats.
The same party leaders who talk about electability today are
responsible for Democrats being "unelected" from control
of the Senate in the 2002 congressional elections--and the White
House in 2000, for that matter.
In both cases, the party leadership's
approach was to take liberal support for granted and tailor a
message that would to appeal to the "center." That
allowed Republicans to appear more decisive--and gave Democratic
voters no reason to show up on Election Day. As Democratic strategist
James Carville put it in the post-election spin: "We've
got to just stand for something. No one made the case."
Party leaders in Congress have used the
same logic to justify their total failure to stand up to the
Republicans. From tax cuts for the rich, to the war on Iraq,
to new restrictions on abortion rights, the Democrats have provided
Bush with his margin of victory again and again during the first
three years of his reign.
Kerry fits right in with the program--which
explains why he was the early favorite for the nomination a year
ago. He may have a liberal voting record as a senator from Massachusetts--traditionally,
a Democratic stronghold. But he's a professional politician who
doesn't hesitate to pander to his right.
When asked whether he was too liberal
at last week's debate, for example, Kerry happily declared that
he was anything but--emphasizing his support for a capital gains
tax cut, his record as a prosecutor who "sent people to
jail for the rest of their life," and his love of...yes,
hunting. His favorite line about foreign policy is that he would
wage a more effective "war on terror" than Bush.
Kerry will talk left if he thinks that
will win votes. But he's as two-faced as any Democrat around.
* * *
SO HOW did Howard Dean come to be seen
as an "unelectable" radical? It's certainly not because
of his political positions. On the issues, Dean is hard to distinguish
from his opponents.
Though he opposed George Bush's unilateral
invasion of Iraq--on the grounds that the United Nations and
other U.S. allies should have been involved--he supports the
continued occupation of Iraq "now that we're there."
Dean is actually to the right of other Democratic contenders
on questions concerning government spending. He insists that
balancing the budget--rather than restoring desperately needed
social programs--would be the priority of his administration.
In last week's debate, he claimed to be "much more conservative
with money than George Bush."
What originally set Dean apart from the
pack was his willingness to be openly critical of the Bush White
House--and of Democratic leaders in Washington who retreated
without a fight from the Republican assault.
This fiery style was grounded in a campaign
strategy that looked to inspire the party's base. "Our strategy
is not to go to swing voters first and hope everybody else will
come along," Dean said at one appearance. "The reason
[youth] don't vote is because they can't tell the difference
between Democrats and Republicans, and we're going to show them
that there really is a difference."
This was really a matter of style, rather
than substance, as a look at Dean's policy positions shows. But
for many Democratic leaders whose power and influence is tied
up with the party's increasingly conservative approach--from
Bill Clinton's Democratic Leadership Council that led the way
in pulling the Democrats to the right during the 1990s, to all
the former Clinton administration officials who hop between party
officialdom and lucrative gigs as lobbyists or media celebrities--Dean
represented a threat. They heaped abuse on him, which helped
form the false media picture of Dean as an "angry"
radical.
But for every attack from a fellow Democrat,
Dean hurt himself in other ways. For one thing, when he ended
up the acknowledged frontrunner because of his widespread support,
Dean's campaign set out to court well-known Democrats like Al
Gore. Here was a candidate who won his support by insisting that
the Democratic Party would have to change course and be more
combative...looking for endorsements from Democrats who are as
responsible as any for the party's move to the right.
"Dean's decision to surround himself
with well-known politicians has muddled his message," the
Los Angeles Times reported, "leaving him to condemn 'the
Washington establishment' while joined on stage by some of its
members."
Much has been made of the "movement"
feel of Dean's campaign--because it did win such a groundswell
of grassroots support outside the normal Washington channels.
But the Dean campaign itself is entirely insulated from its grassroots
supporters--and has made it a point to stress to the media that
it hasn't been pulled by the ideas of its supporters.
By the time the new year rolled around--and
many voters in Iowa and elsewhere began paying attention to the
candidates for the first time--the Dean campaign was acting and
sounding like the same old Washington-dominated campaign. It
used its huge fundraising advantage to fill the air with negative
attack ads against other candidates--while Dean himself moved
to the right to defend himself.
Perhaps the true measure of Dean's "radicalism"
has been his response to the talk about "electability."
Rather than defend his campaign and his criticisms of the Bush
administration, Dean has tried to promote a kinder, gentler image
of himself, while stressing that he is the toughest fiscal conservative
among the contenders. That's a far cry from what won him support
in the first place.
* * *
THE WHOLE discussion about "electability"
seems weirdly distant from what people say they feel about the
important political issues.
Recent opinion polls show that the Bush
administration's approval ratings are split down the middle on
virtually every issue--the occupation of Iraq, the economy, abortion,
gay marriage. Attitudes are hardening on both sides. The Pew
Research Center said in a recent report that political opinion
in the U.S. is the most polarized it has ever witnessed.
In other words, people feel strongly
about politics--and are feeling forced to take a side. Yet we're
told that primary voters don't like Dean's "anger"--and
prefer a more moderate candidate. Something doesn't add up.
One part of the explanation for this
contradiction is the way that the primary season opens. As far
as the media are concerned, the terms for the whole contest were
set in Iowa--at a caucus with bizarrely complicated and totally
undemocratic rules that involved only 20 percent of registered
Democrats in a thinly populated state. Iowa is also one of the
whitest states in the country--along with New Hampshire. Yet
based on his showing in these two states-with the combined participation
of less than 0.2 percent of the voting age population-Kerry is
being anointed as the all-but-certain winner of the party nomination.
They call this a "democracy"?
Where the Democrats' candidate against Bush is determined, for
all intents and purposes, long before the vast majority of Democrats
have a chance to vote?
This is precisely why so many people
sit out elections in the U.S. They rightly feel that their vote
doesn't matter much.
At the same time, for those who are taking
the primaries seriously--and this includes a disproportionately
large number of progressives and even radicals who have decided
to go with the Democrats in 2004 in the hope of getting rid of
Bush--the issue of "electability" has clearly become
the main consideration.
Kerry's surge of support in Iowa and
New Hampshire comes from people who don't necessarily agree with
his stand on the issues--for example, his support for the congressional
resolution that gave Bush the authority to go to war on Iraq.
"I've been very much pro-Dean,"
one New Hampshire Democrat told a Washington Post reporter. "I
don't see why everyone isn't outraged like he is, and I like
a show of emotion. But it all does come down to electability,
and Kerry comes off as more level-headed. It's not me that has
to be won over, it's all the people who voted for Bush, and all
the people who are still on the fence...It's not about me anymore."
This comment seems to speak for countless
Democratic voters. It represents an extension of the pessimistic
logic of "lesser evilism."
At every election, we hear the argument
that people who want to see real changes in the way society is
run should nevertheless vote for Democratic candidates who don't
share their views at all--in order to prevent the "greater
evil" of a Republican victory.
The Democrats count on lesser evilism.
They count on their most loyal supporters--who are miles to their
left--believing that they have no other choice at election time.
That frees Democratic candidates to move to the right, in the
hopes of winning more votes from conservatives.
The talk about "electability"
is an acknowledgement of all this--that the Democrats are likely
to choose a presidential candidate that millions of the party's
most loyal voters will have to hold their nose to vote for.
"The point is that it is the question
which is a disaster, not the answer," the late American
socialist Hal Draper wrote about lesser evilism. "In setups
where the choice is between one capitalist politician and another,
the defeat comes in accepting the limitation to this choice...[It]
is not that the Lesser Evil is the same as the Greater Evil--this
is just as nonsensical as the liberals argue it to be--but rather
this: that you can't fight the victory of the rightmost forces
by sacrificing your own independent strength to support elements
just the next step away from them."
Alan Maass
is the editor of Socialist
Worker. He can be reached at: alanmaass@sbcglobal.net
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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