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The Democrats need to win just 15 seats
in the House and six seats in the Senate to win majorities in
both houses of Congress, making George Bush a badly battered
lame duck for the next two years.
This is Hillary Clinton's,
Al Gore's, John Kerry's and John Edwards' dream scenario. Likewise,
many liberal and progressive activists who seek to end the war
in Iraq are putting their hopes in this outcome as well.
But how likely is a Democratic
victory--and would it have anything to do with ending the war?
Recent polls show a 40 percent-to-30
percent preference for Democrats over Republicans in the mid-term
elections. Over the spring and summer, Bush's polls sank below
35 percent, a large majority of people grew disgusted with the
war in Iraq, and falling wages and living standards were weighing
heavily on workers' minds.
Republican scandals are the
talk of the town, and the festering sore of New Orleans following
Hurricane Katrina remains unhealed. Topping it all off, millions
of immigrants took to the streets to protest a racist bill passed
by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
This would be welcome news
to any genuine opposition party. But the Democrats seem as nervous
about the brewing class anger as their counterparts across the
aisle, and they continue to cling tightly to their "Republican
Lite" strategy--portraying themselves as the party that
can "win" the "war on terror."
Thus, the election campaign
of the next eight weeks will be very predictable. George Bush
and the Republicans will raise security threats to orange and
red, accuse the Democrats of wanting to "cut and run"
from Iraq, and preach the old-time religion of tax cuts.
The Democrats will complain
that Bush isn't enacting enough Homeland Security measures (guarding
our ports, bus stations, etc.) and that he bungled the war in
Iraq. They will accuse Bush of giving away the farm to his wealthy
pals, but they won't propose transferring much more than pocket
change from rich to poor.
And on Election Day, more than
half of those eligible won't vote.
In the past month, the Democrats'
full-throated cheering of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, their
cooperation with Bush to push through anti-immigrant legislation
in the Senate, and their inability to articulate a plan to bring
economic relief to the working class majority has opened the
door to a Bush recovery of sorts. Bush's poll numbers are back
up over 40 percent.
With Congress so thoroughly
gerrymandered that winning even 15 House seats is difficult,
the chances of a Democratic sweep are far from certain.
Pure-and-simple
lesser evilism
SOME SECTIONS of the liberal
establishment agree that the Democrats are acting too conservatively,
but will organize support for them anyway on the grounds that
anyone is better than the Republicans--that the Democrats are
at least a "lesser evil."
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
clearly expressed this line of thought, saying, "George
Bush isn't on the ballot this November, but his agenda is, and
the Republicans in Congress who have rubber-stamped his priorities
are." He went on to pledge $40 million in union members'
dues money to help Democrats in 80 targeted congressional races.
This strategy doesn't even
make the pretense of supporting "progressive" Democrats.
Rather, the AFL-CIO will throw cash at any Democrat who has a
chance to win.
But it isn't just Republicans
who have been, as Sweeny put it, "rubber-stamping"
Bush's agenda. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate voted 98-0
for Bush's latest $450 billion Pentagon budget--the latest unanimous
vote for Bush's outrageous military spending requests. Similarly,
the Senate voted 99-1 for the USA PATRIOT Act and 100-0 to invade
Afghanistan.
In May, 38 out of 45 Democratic
senators voted for so-called compromise legislation on immigration,
supported by Bush, that would deport millions of people, build
a bigger wall on the border with Mexico and establish a guest-worker
program. More Democrats voted for the Bush-supported bill
than Republicans!
On Labor Day, Sen. Ted Kennedy
(D-Mass.) told immigrant rights marchers that the Republican
Congressional leaders should "listen" to Bush.
Progressive
lesser evilism
SOME SELF-described progressive
forces, whose main aim is to become players in the Democratic
Party, claim to reject Sweeney's pure-and-simple "lesser
evilism." Instead, they argue that the Democrats can only
win if they are "pushed" to the left by grassroots
pressure.
While accepting the idea that
the Democrats winning is the most important thing, they highlight
so-called "progressive" candidates as part of a plan
to "take back" the Democratic Party.
MoveOn.org exemplifies this
trend, and its current poster boy is Ned Lamont, who beat conservative
Democrat Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate primary election.
But if you scratch the surface, you find that Ned Lamont is not
so much antiwar as he is anti-Lieberman.
This is what Lamont's Web site
said after Israel invaded Lebanon and murdered 1,000 civilians:
"At this critical time in the Middle East, I believe that
when Israel's security is threatened, the United States must
unambiguously stand with our ally to be sure that it is safe
and secure. On this principle, Americans are united."
On Iraq, Lamont says, "I
salute the patriotism and wisdom of Congressman John Murtha and
others who emphasize that 'stay the course' is not a winning
strategy for Iraq or America. While we will continue to provide
logistical and training support as long as we are asked, our
frontline military troops should begin to be redeployed, and
our troops should start heading home."
While this sounds vaguely "antiwar,"
the devil is in the details. "Redeployment" is Murtha's
codeword for pushing the Iraqi puppet-army forward and relying
more on American air power in Iraq.
Moreover, Lamont says only
that "frontline troops" (what about special forces?
the CIA?), should "begin" to "start heading home."
Last December, after the election in Iraq, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld said that American troops could "begin"
to "start heading home." A year later, nothing has
changed.
Just because Lamont is a Democrat,
he shouldn't be permitted to play the same verbal games with
the lives of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers.
Antiwar
lesser evilism
FINALLY, THERE are people who
genuinely want to end the war, but continue to cling to the hope
that a reformed Democratic Party will lead the fight, or at least
believe that supporting "antiwar" Democrats must be
a central component of a successful antiwar strategy.
The Progressive Democrats of
America (PDA) and the leadership of the United for Peace and
Justice antiwar coalition represent these ideas.
One of the PDA's main activities
this fall is Camp Democracy, a two-week-long event in Washington,
D.C., which was billed as a protest of the war featuring prominent
liberal Democrats. Yet while PDA politicians such as Reps. Lynne
Woolsey, Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee can sound very antiwar
sometimes, when push came to shove, all either voted for or abstained
on the House resolution cheering on Israel's assault on Lebanon.
Moreover, they agree with the
more conservative Democrats that one of the big problems with
the war in Iraq is that it is an "ineffective way"
to fight the "war on terror." As Woolsey put it at
Camp Democracy's opening day, the war in Iraq has made "the
world a more dangerous place and increase[d] the terrorist threat...
[It has] created more jihadists and inspire[d] more hatred of
America among Muslim extremists..."
Emphasizing the "terrorist
threat" and "Muslim extremists" is not exactly
a principled basis on which to organize an antiwar movement.
This only goes to show how
little difference there is between the so-called "progressive"
wing of the Democratic Party and the corporate powerbrokers who
run it.
In 2004, Dennis Kucinich campaigned
in the presidential primary for months denouncing John Kerry's
support for the invasion of Iraq. Then, at the Democrats' convention,
he disciplined his supporters to shut up and get in line behind
John "I'll send more troops to Iraq" Kerry.
The PDA politicians put their
loyalty to the Democratic Party above the interests of the movement.
They aren't part of the process of building an antiwar movement
that puts ending the war as its primary goal, but are an obstacle
to it.
The longer it takes our movement
to reject all versions of lesser evilism, the longer it will
take to build a movement powerful enough to win peace and social
justice.
Todd Chretien is the Green Party candidate for US
Senate, running against Sen. Dianne Feinstein in California.
He can be reached at: ToddChretien@mac.com
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