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November 3,
2000
Democrats Carpetbomb
Idealists
Political Sadism
By Jeffrey St.
Clair
In the third presidential debate, Al Gore tried
to intimidate George W. Bush, stalking him around the stage,
getting into his space, trash talking. He was Alpha on steroids.
It didn't work. Bush simply gave Gore the once over and smirked,
as if he'd seen tougher acts at Yale frat parties. For people
watching the debate, it surely confirmed their early impressions
of Gore as something of a goon, a mean-spirited and desperate
politician. Though Bush bumbled through the debate, his poll
numbers shot up afterwards--solely because seeing the real Gore
up close and personal turned so many people off.
This same brand
of thuggishness is playing itself out now in the Goreites unceasing
and disgusting attacks on Ralph Nader. The Republicans used to
be the party of dirty tricks. In fact, a dirty trick campaign
called Operation Townhouse, run out of the basement of the Nixon
White House, helped defeat Al Gore's father in 1970. In the
past couple of weeks, we've seen Nader's website hacked, Green
Party email lists spammed, press conferences infiltrated by Gore
backers, a scurrilous whispering campaign about Nader's sexuality,
hypocritical attacks on his personal finances, and parade of
high-paid inside the Beltway loyalists masquerading as defenders
of the public interest as they subvert the only man in the race
who is talking seriously about the great issues of our time.
All this from a party that was too scared to let Nader in a single
debate-even as an observer.
Is this much different
than when the Republican campaign guru Ed Rollins handed out
"walking around money" to urban blacks to keep them
from voting in the New Jersey governor's race a few years ago?
Yes. Rollins' handouts actually gave people something for their
time. All that will remain from the Democrats' gutter politics
will be a foul taste in the mouth of progressives.
This is a kind of
political sadism, where Democratic Party attack dogs are feasting
on one of the nation's greatest citizens. And the attack is predicated
on a double lie: a lie about Gore's record; and a lie about Nader's
intentions.
Even Rep. John Conyers has shamefully plunged
a knife in Ralph Nader's back, accusing Nader of being weak on
civil rights, abortion and gun control. But Conyers is wrong
on every point. Take abortion rights. Nader is and has been unwavering
on the subject, though correctly noting that the Republicans
would be insane to even attempt to overturn Roe. Gore is the
panderer on this issue (a subject Bush, by the way, never even
mentions on the campaign trail.) Gore has called abortion "immoral."
He has vowed to reduce the number of abortions drastically. He
voted for several incarnations of the infamous Hyde Amendment
and for the even more noxious Siljander Amendment, which sought
to subvert Roe v. Wade by defining life as beginning at conception.
When these flirtations with the religious right (during the height
of Reagantime) ran aground, Gore joined forces with the likes
of Jesse Helms to deny abortions to poor women. He says he would
support a ban on partial birth abortions. That's his record and
you don't hear NARAL or Gloria Steinem saying a word about it.
Civil rights? It
was Gore who voted to stop the IRS from yanking the tax-exempt
status of religious schools that denied entry to blacks. It was
Gore who played cheerleader for the destruction of welfare. It
is Gore who continues to call for the ratcheting up of the war
on drugs that has put two million citizens behind bars. It is
Gore who advocates expanding the death penalty in the face of
overwhelming evidence that it kills innocent people and that
it is biased against blacks. (A recent Justice Department report
revealed that since 1995 more than 75 percent of those put on
federal death row have been minorities.) It was Gore who tried
to end affirmative action for federal contractors through his
Reinventing Government scheme, a project that Blacks in Government,
a group of black civil service workers, called the "ethnic
cleansing" of the federal workforce.
Gay rights? Gore
has been a gay basher his entire career. In 1976 during his first
campaign, he lashed out at gays for engaging in an "abnormal"
lifestyle. In 1984, during his first senate run Gore boasted
that he would never accept money from gay political groups, then
he greedily solicited contributions from homophobic preachers-not
to mention tobacco companies, chemical and oil companies, weapons
manufacturers. In congress, Gore once again teamed up with Helms
to pursue anti-gay measures. When the DC city council voted to
purge from the books archaic sodomy statutes, the US senate intervened,
passing a measure overturning the DC city council's action. Al
Gore voted with Helms. Later Gore joined with Helms again to
support a nasty measure that would have prohibited the Legal
Services Corporation from representing gays and lesbians who
wanted to file civil rights actions charging discrimination based
on sexual preference. Doing the bidding of the drug giants, Vice
President Gore kept Africa from getting cheap drugs to fight
the rampaging AIDS epidemic-until Nader called him on it. Gore
has stood silent as the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy
in the military has been used by the military brass to go on
search-and-discharge mission that has seen a shocking increase
from the Bush era in the number of gays evicted from their jobs
in the military.
And on and on.
We've had our chances over the years. Citizen
campaigns that have geared up to challenge a corrupt and enervated
system: Gene McCarthy in the 1968 primaries. George McGovern
in 1972. John Anderson in 1980. Jesse Jackson in 1988. Ventura
in 1998. Nader in 2000. Those are the kind of campaigns that
attract young people to politics; that energize them and feed
their thirst for optimism and idealism. Young voters have been
ignored in this campaign by every candidate except Ralph Nader.
Until now. Now the Democrats have noticed them-as a threat. And
they are trying to carpet bomb them out of the election, sullying
them for being naïve and idealistic.
All this is a sign
of how depraved the Democratic establishment has become and how
frightened they are that a new party could rise up out of its
wreckage. That's the long-term threat the insiders are trying
to suppress or buy-off-the same way they undermined the Rainbow
Coalition after the 1988 campaign. Even if Gore wins, the DNC
and their acolytes in the public interest sector of official
Washington are desperate to keep Nader from getting five percent
and federal party-building funds. Having betrayed their own base
for the past eight years, the party could never stand such real
competition.
So here's some last minute advice to West Coast
voters who still feel queasy under the nonstop scaremongering:
delay casting your vote. The presidential election will be decided
before polls close in Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska
and Hawai'i. By all accounts, George W. Bush will have vanquished
Gore. Or Gore may have pulled it out over his cretinous opponent.
It doesn't matter. By 6 pm, Pacific Coast time the networks will
have called the election and millions of voters out West will
be free to vote their conscience: that is pull the lever for
Ralph Nader and the Green Party. No vote switching. No elaborate
trading schemes required. Just cast a guilt free vote that will
send a message and help empower a new political movement in this
country. Vote late and vote Nader. CP
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