Almost
Home, CounterPunchers! Annual
Fundraising Appeal
We interrupt your regular reading
habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch
needs your financial support!
We're not in the habit of making
idle threats and this isn't one. Either we meet our fundraising
goal of $60,000 over the next three weeks or we'll be forced
to drastically curtail the operation of our website. It's near
the end of our year and the wolves are gathering at the door.
CounterPunch's website is supported
almost entirely by subscribers to the print edition of our newsletter.
We don't clutter the site by selling annoying popup ads. We tried
getting money out of Google, but they gave us the boot. We aren't
on the receiving end of six-figure grants from big foundations.
George Soros doesn't have us on retainer. And we don't sell tickets
on cruiseliners.
The continued existence of
CounterPunch depends solely on the support and dedication of
our readers. And we know there are a lot of you. We get thousands
of emails from you every day. Our website receives nearly 100,000
visits each day-and those numbers grow by the month. Of course,
all these readers chew up a lot of bandwidth and that costs money.
Through the Iraq war, the daily
traumas of the Bush administration, hurricanes, earthquakes and
the disappearance of the Democrats, many of you have found a
refuge at CounterPunch and made us your homepage. You tell us
that you love CounterPunch because the quality of writing you
find here every day and because we never flinch under fire. We
appreciate the support and are prepared for the fierce battles
to come as the Bush administration expands its wars abroad and
at home.
To contribute by phone you
can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683
or mail contribution to:
CounterPunch
PO Box 228
Petrolia, CA 95558
Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
November
15, 2006
What Eugene Debs Think of Bernard Sanders?
A
Socialist in the Senate?
By ASHLEY SMITH
ON THE surface, the election in Vermont
to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords was a classic battle
between capitalists and workers.
In one corner loomed the Republican's
forward Richard Tarrant, a multimillionaire and former CEO of
the software company IDX. Nicknamed "Richie" Rich,
he spent nearly $7 million of his own money to create the illusion
of popular support, blanketing the state with obnoxiously large
campaign signs.
In the other corner thundered
Independent Bernard Sanders, known throughout Vermont as simply
"Bernie." Sanders served four terms as mayor of "the
People's Republic of Burlington" during the 1980s, and eight
terms after that as Vermont's lone representative in the House
of Representatives. He built a reputation for attacking corporate
interests, supporting universal health care and defending union
jobs.
* * *
Sanders knocked out "Richie"
Rich, winning the vote by a whopping 2-to-1 margin. Everyone--from
the British newspaper, the Guardian, to Democracy Now's
Amy Goodman--has heralded the election of the first socialist
senator in U.S. history, an independent who will stand up to
the two mainstream parties, oppose war, roll back corporate power
and lead the fight for workers and the oppressed.
While it was fantastic to see
Tarrant humiliated, Sanders' election to the Senate doesn't represent
a radical departure from politics as usual. He may have a portrait
of Eugene Debs hanging in his office, but his politics have little
in common with that great American socialist.
* *
*
IN THE 1980s, as Burlington's
mayor, Sanders mounted a challenge to the Democrats and Republicans,
maintaining a consistent anti-imperialist position in solidarity
with the Nicaraguan Revolution and trying to implement pro-worker
policies.
But that was long ago. Now
Sanders is independent in name only--he in fact supports the
Democratic Party.
As his long-time antagonist
and now ally, Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean,
said on the NBC's Meet the Press, "He is basically
a liberal Democrat, and he is a Democrat at that--he runs as
an Independent because he doesn't like the structure and money
that gets involved...The bottom line is that Bernie Sanders votes
with the Democrats 98 percent of the time." Ironically,
that's more often than most Democrats vote with the Democrats.
Sanders' voting record is also
not so very left wing; one study found that 38 other congressional
representatives had a more progressive voting record.
Sanders' relationship to the
Democrats has been developing for many years. In 1992, he supported
Bill Clinton as a "lesser evil," though he later abandoned
this impolite phrase to unapologetically endorse Democrats for
the White House ever since.
In the 2006 Senate election,
he didn't even really run as an independent. The Democrats cut
a deal with Sanders--they wouldn't run a candidate against him,
in exchange for him supporting Democrats in other races.
The Democrats backed up their
word by nominating Sanders in their primary, which he refused
to accept to preserve his nominal independence. But Sanders did
accept support from national Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Harry
Reid, Barack Obama and Barbara Boxer. He also accepted a large
donation from Hillary Clinton's Political Action Committee, HILLPAC,
which featured him as one of its most important candidates.
Sanders in turn backed Democrats
against third-party alternatives. In the election to fill his
House seat, he and his supporters helped dissuade Progressive
Party hopeful David Zuckerman from running, and went on to support
the Democrat Peter Welch, who eventually won.
Sanders' endorsement of the
Democrats no doubt helped him build his war chest of about $5
million, over 80 percent of which came from out of state.
To put an exclamation point
on his all-but-declared membership in the Democratic Party, Sanders
celebrated his election victory, contrary to his tradition of
hosting a separate party, with the Democrats. He has promised
to caucus with the Democrats in the Senate, and the media thus
takes him for granted as part of the new majority in the Senate.
For veteran Sanders watchers,
this capitulation to the corporate Democrats and their apparatchiks
is nothing new. He has made it one of his missions to agitate
against voting for Ralph Nader, the Green Party and, in some
cases, Vermont's Progressive Party.
During the 2004 election, Sanders
announced on Vermont Public Television, "Not only am I going
to vote for John Kerry, I am going to run around this country
and do everything I can to dissuade people from voting for Ralph
Nader... I am going to do everything I can, while I have differences
with John Kerry, to make sure that he is elected."
The political consequence of
his capitulation to the Democrats has been a long list of unnecessary
compromises and outright betrayals that will only mount in the
Senate.
* *
*
DESPITE HIS own claims, Sanders
has not been an antiwar leader. Ever since he won election to
the House, he has taken either equivocal positions on U.S. wars
or outright supported them.
His hawkish positions--especially
his decision to support Bill Clinton's 1999 Kosovo War--drove
one of his key advisers, Jeremy Brecher, to resign from his staff.
Brecher wrote in his resignation letter, "Is there a moral
limit to the military violence you are willing to participate
in or support?"
So outraged were peace activists
over Sanders' support of the Kosovo War that they occupied his
office in 1999. Sanders had them arrested.
Under the Bush regime, Sanders'
militarism has only grown worse. While he called for alternative
approaches to the war on Afghanistan, he failed to join the sole
Democrat, Barbara Lee, to vote against Congress' resolution that
gave George Bush a blank check to launch war on any country he
deemed connected to the September 11 attacks.
Ever since, he has voted for
appropriations bills to fund the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,
despite their horrific toll on the occupied peoples as well as
U.S. soldiers.
Sanders has been critical of
the war on Iraq, but he has supported pro-war measures--such
as a March 21, 2003, resolution stating, "Congress expresses
the unequivocal support and appreciation of the nation to the
President as Commander-in-Chief for his firm leadership and decisive
action in the conduct of military operations in Iraq as part
of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism."
He also opposes immediate withdrawal
from Iraq, despite the fact that a majority of residents in his
home city of Burlington voted for such a position in a town meeting
resolution in February 2005.
The day after his election
to the Senate, Sanders declared, "I don't think you can
do a quote-unquote immediate withdrawal. I think the policy has
got to be we will withdraw our troops as soon as possible, and
by that, I mean that I believe we can have our troops out in
the next year, and maybe a significant number of them before
that. I don't think you can snap your fingers and just bring
all the troops home tomorrow. I just don't think that's practical."
Even more shocking, Sanders
scuttled any action on a wave of Bush impeachment resolutions
that swept Vermont towns in 2006. Like House Majority Leader-to-be
Nancy Pelosi, who has promised not to impeach Bush, Sanders argued
that impeachment was impractical, and that activists should put
energy into electing Democrats.
Outraged, Dan Dewalt, the organizer
of the impeachment resolution campaign in Vermont, said, "We
think we have quality politicians in Vermont. We're wrong. We
have politics as usual in Vermont. Our so-called independent
congressman, Bernie Sanders, can't get far enough away from impeachment."
This summer, Sanders voted
for House Resolution 921, which gave full support to Israel's
murderous war on Lebanon. He also voted for HR 4681 that imposed
sanctions on the Palestinian Authority with the aim of removing
the democratically elected Hamas government.
In response, longtime War Resisters
League leader, David McReynolds sent a public letter to Sanders,
stating, "Because of your vote of support for the Israeli
actions, I would hope any friends and contacts of mine would
not send you funds, nor give you their votes."
Indeed, Sanders has consistently
defended Israel through it worst crimes against Palestinians
and Arabs. Unsurprisingly, some Sanders staffers have also worked
with the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC)--including
David Sirota, now a Democratic Party strategist, and Sanders'
former communications director Joel Barkin.
Finally, in perhaps his worst
betrayal yet, Sanders joined a host of liberal Democrats including
Barbara Lee and John Conyers to vote for HR 282, the Iran Freedom
Support Act--which bears a striking resemblance to the resolutions
that set up the framework for the war on Iraq.
The act stipulates that the
U.S. should impose sanctions on Iran to prevent it from developing
weapons of mass destruction and distributing them to aid international
terrorism. It also calls for the U.S. to support democratic change
in the country, thereby establishing all necessary pretexts for
a war on Iran. Democrat Dennis Kucinich voted against the act
and denounced it as a "stepping stone to war."
* *
*
SANDERS--like many liberal
Democrats--rightly calls attention to the plight of workers and
the poor in Vermont and across the U.S., demanding reforms to
address low wages, lack of health care and the absence of a social
safety net.
He argues that much of this
suffering is the result of U.S. free trade policy. But instead
of agitating for internationalist solutions like cross-border
unionization, as proposed by the global justice movement against
neoliberalism, Sanders argues for protectionist policies and
economic nationalism.
Sanders' support for the Democrats
confounds his position. After all, it was the Democratic Party
under Bill Clinton that passed NAFTA, established the WTO, cut
the big deals with China and imposed some of the worst IMF structural
adjustments programs on developing countries.
Ominously, Sanders' economic
nationalism has led him to look for allies among Republican right-wingers
like Lou Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan, who see China as a rival
to U.S. power and are looking for political justification for
a new Cold War.
In denouncing Permanent Normalized
Trade Relations (PNTR) with China, Sanders wrote, "As the
greatest democracy on Earth, we must ask why American companies
are turning communist China into the new superpower of the 21st
century? While Microsoft is 'saving a dollar,' it is helping
undermine our economic and military security by gutting our manufacturing
and technological infrastructure, and moving it lock, stock,
and barrel to one of our major international rivals."
Sanders defends his alliances
with protectionist Republicans. He told the Nation magazine,
"In the sense that we are trying to develop left-right coalitions,
we also trying to redefine American politics." Thus, he
appeared on a China-bashing panel organized by the Teamsters'
Jimmy Hoffa along with Patrick Buchanan in 2000 during a union-sponsored
demonstration against PNTR for China.
One of his former staffers,
David Sirota, recently wrote a glowing review of Lou Dobbs' book,
War on the Middle Class. Dobbs mixes populist rhetoric
about deteriorating living standards for workers with some of
the worst anti-immigrant racism and China-bashing around. Yet
Sirota writes, "It is undeniable that aside from Dobbs and
a few politicians, America's political debate is devoid of economic
populists. War on the Middle Class confronts this problem
head on--and thanks to Dobbs' passion and charisma, it succeeds
in sounding the alarm that cannot be ignored."
In cooperating with right-wing
populists, Sanders reinforces American nationalism and its attendant
racism toward immigrants. Such ideas are an impediment to workers
forging solidarity against both American empire and the corporations'
divide-and-conquer strategy to drive wages down inside the US
and around the globe.
* *
*
SANDERS CAN boast of a good
voting record in defending the rights of the oppressed. He has
consistently voted for the rights of women, gays and lesbians,
and racial minorities.
However, he downplays all these
questions in favor of a populist appeal on economic issues. As
one Progressive Party activist told the Nation, "Sometimes,
Bernie's biggest critics are on the left. Some social liberals
quietly grumble that Sanders maintains too rigid a focus on economic
issues."
On some pivotal issues, Sanders
does worse than subordinate the demands of the oppressed--he
joins in the attack.
For example, Sanders claims
to oppose the death penalty, but he voted for Bill Clinton's
1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which broadened
the scope of the federal death penalty and laid the foundation
for Bush's "war on terror" and attacks on civil liberties.
In 2004, Sanders was put to
the test of whether he would stand up against state-sanctioned
murder, and he failed. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft used
Clinton's act to override Vermont law and force a federal death
penalty trial for Donald Fell, who was eventually convicted and
sentenced to die. Throughout this trial, Sanders remained on
the sidelines._Said Nancy Welch of Vermonters Against the Death
Penalty,
"We repeatedly called
on Congressman Sanders to join us in decrying the imposition
of a death penalty trial on a state that had abolished capital
punishment," said Nancy Welch of Vermonters Against the
Death Penalty. "We asked him to participate in a press conference
with other political, religious, and labor leaders, but he declined.
Even when we directly asked him, on a public radio call-in program,
if he would join us in saying Vermont should stay death penalty-free,
Bernie wouldn't take a stand."
Meanwhile, on the issue of
immigration, Sanders has joined the Democratic Party in its attacks
on immigrant rights. While he voted against the reactionary bill
sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner and passed by the House
last year, he has supported other anti-immigrant bills.
He has consistently voted to
restrict visas for skilled workers--like the L-1 Nonimmigrant
Reform Act, which he himself cosponsored, arguing that it was
wrong for corporations to import workers when they are laying
off U.S. employees. He voted for the Goodlatte Amendment to eliminate
the visa lottery that distributes 55,000 visas a year to foreign
workers on a random basis.
Sanders voted for the Border
Tunnel Protection Act that criminalizes digging tunnels under
the border, and anyone who uses them. And he voted for the Marshall
Amendment to the 2007 Homeland Security bill that funds electronic
verification of employment eligibility.
With Bush promising to work
with the Democratic majority in Congress to pass anti-immigrant
legislation, including more aggressive border enforcement as
well as a new guest-worker program, Sanders will be pressed to
line up with a lesser-evil attack on some of the most oppressed
workers in the country.
* *
*
LIKE AL Gore's attempt to rehabilitate
himself through environmentalism, Sanders has begun to trumpet
green issues, especially global warming. But while his voting
record is good on this issue, Sanders has long antagonized environmental
activists.
After getting elected mayor
with the slogan "Burlington's Not for Sale," Sanders
attempted to cut a deal with developers for hotel construction
on the city's waterfront and other projects in its wetlands.
Activists built a campaign with the slogan "Burlington's
Still Not for Sale" that effectively halted the worst development
plans.
Once in the House, Sanders
made one of his worst environmental decisions. He worked with
then-Texas Gov. George Bush to lead the charge for dumping nuclear
waste from Vermont's Vernon reactor in Sierra Blanca, an impoverished
town inhabited mainly by Chicanos on the border with Mexico.
Together, they worked to pass
the Maine-Vermont-Texas nuclear waste compact, and then took
advantage of Bill Clinton's decision to allow interstate transportation
of low-level nuclear waste. Sierra Blanca, already a toxic waste
dump, has thus been poisoned for generations.
However much Sanders may oppose
the transportation and dumping of nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain
for threatening the health of people in Las Vegas, he and the
Toxic Texan, George Bush, established the precedent for this
with their compact in the 1990s.
Sanders' positions on energy
are also tinged with nationalism. He repeatedly calls for US
energy independence from the Middle East, even though most U.S.
oil comes from other countries like Venezuela. Such demagogy
plays into the widespread anti-Arab racism that surrounds oil
politics.
Even with these faults, Sanders'
overall record looks good, but his support for the Democrats
compromises even his best positions. As Jeffrey St. Clair has
documented in Been Brown So Long It Looks Green To Me,
the Democrats are every much a part of the destruction of the
environment as the Republicans.
* *
*
AS IT was with Howard Dean,
it is a bit hard for Vermont leftists to believe the national
reaction to Bernie Sanders.
As Vermont's long-time political
commentator Peter Freyne noted, "He will not leave a party
behind him. So what will be his legacy? I don't see a next Bernie
on the horizon. I don't see what comes after him. There's a lot
wrapped up in one man, and I don't know where that gets you in
the long run."
But, in truth, Sanders is leaving
a party behind--the Democratic Party.
Whatever his betrayals, Sanders
can still give an excellent speech about the evils of corporate
power and the barbarity of class inequality, but he does so as
a fellow traveler of the corporate Democrats, who he supports
even as they move further and further to the right.
Figures like Bernie Sanders
could help workers form a party of their own to challenge the
corporate duopoly, and build a more politically self-conscious
working-class movement. Instead, like Jesse Jackson and other
Democratic liberals, he is the progressive bait on this capitalist
party's hook--to tempt people who would otherwise want a genuine
alternative into supporting a party opposed to their demands
and aspirations.
Anything we want from Sanders
or the Democrats we will have to fight for. And if we want a
genuine socialist alternative, we should follow the lead of Sanders'
hero, Eugene Debs, who said, "The differences between the
Republican and Democratic Parties involve no issue, no principle
in which the working class have any interest."
Instead of capitulating to
the corporate parties, Debs spent his life building the Socialist
Party and the struggles of the working class and the oppressed
for our own self-emancipation.
What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
A Special Investigation:
China's Mass Murder for Body Parts
CounterPunch
outlines the terrible evidence that thousands of Falun Gong members
have been killed to supply China's body parts trade with the
West. Larry Lack reviews
the evidence and explains why the US government is keeping its
mouth shut. CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month But remember, we are
funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch.
Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
