Now
Available!
Dime's
Worth of Difference:
Beyond the
Lesser of Two Evils
Order Here!
Today's
Stories
September 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
The
Expulsion of Cat Stevens
Patrick Cockburn
As British Muslims Plead for Bigley's Life, US Airstrikes Pound
Fallujah
Sam Husseini
The Problem with Public Opinion Polls
Kevin Pina
The Tragedy of Gonaives, Haiti
September 25
/ 26, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
C'mon
Ralph, You've Got Nothing to Lose
Dave Zirin
The Courage of the NBA's Etan Thomas:
"I Am Totally Against This War"
Saul Landau
The Reality of Empire and Campaign Rhetoric
Dave Lindorff
Our Heroic Baby-Killers
Brian J. Foley
Bush at the UN: the Sound of No Hands Clapping
William Blum
Progressives and the Election
Alan Maass
Why is Kerry Running Such a Lame Campaign? You Can't Blame It
All on Bob Shrum
Lucson Pierre-Charles
Haiti: Another Lost Story
Solange Echeverria
An Interview with Kevin Pina on the Floods in Haiti
Nicole Colson
What About the Supreme Court?
Justin Smith
The New Sparta
Joshua Frank
Iraq: From Clinton to Bush
Karyn Strickler
Momma, Don't Let Your Babides Grow Up to be Cannon Fodder
Michael Donnelly
Rather Disingenuous: "Remember in November"
Greg Bates
The Politics of Nader's Republican Support
Todd Chretien
Lesser Evilism: We Are Living in the Logical Conclusion
William Loren
Katz
Dire Warnings from the Past: From Wilson to Bush
Omar Barghouti
Americans, You've Lost Your Alibi!
Poets' Basement
Holt, Clarke, Albert, Laymon and Ford
Website of the Weekend
Carnival of Chaos
September 24,
2004
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Value of One Life: Keeping Up Appearances and Leaving Hostages
to the Wolves
William S.
Lind
Destroying
the National Guard
Mike Whitney
The Bush Tent Show
Nancy Welch
What's
at Stake for Women in 2004?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Logical Limbo
Joshua Frank
Fear Mongering 101
Victor Kattan
An Interview with Afif Safieh
Ben Terrall
Kerry and Haiti: Will He Stand Up?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
"Finally
It Broke My Heart": Random Impressions from Palestine
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 23,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Are They Still Holding "Mrs. Anthrax?"
Christopher Brauchli
Ashcroft's "Distressing Lack of Care": Hamdi and the
Phony War on Terrorism
Derek Seidman
Fighting for a Union at Starbucks: an Interview with Daniel Gross
Michael Neumann
Three
Years and Counting? How Time Flies
September 22,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Zarqawi's
War: the Mysterious Sadist from Jordan
Neve Gordon
The
Wall, the Court and Sharon
Joshua Frank
History Repeating: New York, 1832 and Now
Ron Jacobs
Stormy Seas on the Citizen Ship
Jack Random
Defending Dan? Rather Not
Tarif Abboushi
Kerry's Final Straw: Confessions of a Despairing Voter
Mickey Z
Stupid White Guy Quiz
John L. Hess
Faking the Difference: a Serious Debate?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: The House Rules
September 21,
2004
Gary Leupp
"We
Are Not Secure": Kerry's "Unwavering Commitment"
to Securing a Middle East Realm
Robert Jensen
Large
Dams in India: Temples or Burial Grounds?
Elaine Cassel
Fourth Circuit to Moussouai: Ask Your Questions; Prepare to Die
Stanley Heller
Reagan and the Killing Fields of Lebanon
Adam Federman
America Will Disappoint the World, Again
David Whitehouse
What's Behind the Horror in Darfur?
M. Junaid Alam
How to Avoid Becoming an Anti-American
Paul Craig
Roberts
Attention
Deficit America
Website of the Day
True American War Heroes: the Iraq Refuseniks
September 20,
2004
Cockburn /
Buncombe
Get
Fallujah
David Price
Relying
on Phonies: What If The Problem with Phone Polls is That They
Are Phone Polls
Dave Lindorff
How
Dems Fight: Tigers Against Nader, Pussycats Against Bush
Harry Browne
Pre-Nup at Leeds: Talked Out, But Does IRA Give Up?
Mark Wesibrot
Bush's
Ownership Society: No Taxes for Owners, Only Workers
Karyn Strickler
The Keys to the White House v. the Shrum Curse?
Uri Avnery
The Temple Mount Bombers
September 18
/ 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
Septemeber
17, 2004
Ray McGovern
Gossing
Over the Record
Patrick Cockburn
The New Iraqi Economy: Baghdad's Thriving Kidnapping Industry
Lee Sustar
The State of Working America: an Autopsy of the American Dream
Mike Whitney
John Kerry: 195 Lbs. of Political Helium, Not an Ounce of Sincerity
Victor Kattan
Black September
Ray Hanania
Israel's Demographics
Greg Bates
Nader's Victories: a Mid-Campaign Assessment
Website of
the Day
The Road to Hell
September 16,
2004
Landau / Hassen
Meet
the New Villain: Syria
Joanne Mariner
Inside
Darfur: a Photo Essay
Patrick Cockburn
US
Offers Conflicting Accounts of Baghdad Bloodbath
Greg Moses
Four Million Children Might Be News
Joshua Frank
Nader in the Battleground States
Christopher Brauchli
The Bush Drug Lottery Flops
David Himmelstein
Folke Bernadotte: a Rosh Hashonah Remembrance
Website of the Day
The Abu Ghraib Index
September 15,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Hell
on Haifa Street
Ron Jacobs
Oppose War, Not Just Bush
David Lindorff
Blanking Out Dissent
Joanne Mariner
Talking About Darfur: Is Genocide Just a Word?
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein
An Open Letter to Madonna: Please Don't Support Israeli Apartheid
Dave Zirin
Is the NFL Ready for Us?
Yigal Bronner
"They
Are Building Walls Around Us"
September 14,
2004
Gary Leupp
The
Problem of Chechnya
Jennifer van
Bergen
What's
Wrong with Torture?
Stan Goff
Wake Up and Smell the Jungle Rot
Patrick Cockburn
The
Punishment of Fallujah: US Precision Strickes...on Ambulances
Anis Memon
Nader
in Michigan
Michael Donnelly
The Nuance Comes Off: Former Naderites Beg for Kerry Votes
Werther
Zell Miller: the Peckerwood Pericles
Website of
the Day
Osama Bin Forgotten?
September 13,
2004
Gabriel Kolko
Elections,
Alliances and the American Empire
Phillip Cryan
How Do You Say "Death Squad?": Language in Colombia's
War
Patrick Cockburn
One of Baghdad's Bloodiest Days: "I'm a Journalist! I'm
Dying! I'm Dying"
Noah Leavitt
The War on Civil Liberties
Robert Jensen
Highjacking Catastrophe: Bush, the Neo-Cons and 9/11
Mike Whitney
Alan Greenspan: Fed-Master to the Wealthy
John Chuckman
Stop Talking About the "Election"
Mike Burke
Kerry/Edwards Website Censors Discussion of Israel/Palestine
Issues
CounterPunch
Wire
The Quotations of David Cobb: "I Don't Care How Many Votes
I Get"
Website of the Day
Keep It In Your Pants: the Bush Plan to Combat Teen Promiscuity
September 11
/ 12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Swatting
at Flies
Fred Gardner
Yet Another Prozac Scandal
Saul Landau
When Our Assassins Go Free
Jennifer Van Bergen
How to Beat Bush: a Simple Strategy for the Average American
Roger Burbach
/ Jim Tarbell
The Real Dead Enders: Iraq and the Crisis of Empire
Christopher Reed
9/11 in an Historical Context: a Minor Event When Compared to
Worldwide War Casualties
Francisc Catalin
An ABC of American Interventions
Carl Estabrook
Big Science and Government Terror
Bernard Chazelle
Anti-Americanism: a Clinical Study
Sharon Smith
Third Party Blues
Dave Lindorff
Perhaps This Time We're the Silent Majority
Mike Whitney
Fallujah: an Iraqi Beslan?
Frederick B.
Hudson
Their Sons Perished in the Flames, But Not Their Faith
Mickey Z.
Round Up the Usual Suspects: a Look Back at 9/11
Ron Jacobs
Redneck Music for the New Century
Greg Moses
Soap Opera Moments in Texas School Funding Trial
Benjamin Dangl
/ Andrew Kennis
An Interview with Leslie Cagan
Poets Basement
Del Papa, Albert, Gelman
September 10,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Disappointment
at Samarrah?
Michael Donnelly
Democrats v. Democracy
Alan Farago
Mosquitoes in a Hurricane
Doug Giebel
Karl Rove's Terror Playbook
Mike Whitney
Bob Graham's Political Tsunami
David Domke
God's
Will, According to the Bush Administration
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
Ed Kinane
Abducted in Baghdad
Peter Bohmer
The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future
Todd May
The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
Jeremy Scahill
The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad
Joshua Frank
Green House Party Gasses
Fran Shor
The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist
Act
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome
to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad
Website of
the Day
Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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.
|
September 27, 2004
Keep the Protest
Signs at the Ready
A
Progressive Case for Voting for (Gag) Kerry?
By
DAVE LINDORFF
This isn't easy, for someone who has
long admired Ralph Nader, and who voted for him in 2000: We
progressives need to consider voting for John Kerry.
The sad but obvious reality
is that Ralph Nader offers nothing but a protest vote. And in
this election, a protest vote by a Democrat is a vote for the
candidacy of George Bush and for continued war, at home and abroad.
If the polls are to be believed, Bush is doing well even in some
states where he lost last time, like New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
(There are arguments being made for doubting them, but I suspect
that in the end they will prove to be reasonably accurate in
aggregate) That makes protest voting risky even in Kerry "safe"
states, and doubly dangerous in swing states.
I realize that for many people
it's not going to be easy to vote for Kerry, but before you fire
off an email flaming me, hear me out.
Voting for Kerry is only the
first step. Any progressive who casts a vote for this unprincipled,
calculating, Democratic Leadership Council member needs to simultaneously
take a vow to remain active-no, to become even more active--in
pushing for a progressive, anti-war agenda after November 2.
A President-elect Kerry must be confronted with a million anti-war
demonstrators at his inauguration ceremony. He must face a one-million-member
jobs march in April 2005. Having helped elect Democratic candidates
this November, we on the left also need to get involved at the
grass-roots level in remaking the Democratic Party, which we
have for years left to rot in the hands of the DLC and their
willing accomplices at the ward level.
The mistake that the left made
in 1992, with the election of Bill Clinton, was
that we all breathed a huge sigh of relief at being rid of the
Reagan/Bush era, and went about our business, figuring that we
had a Democrat in the White House, and so all would be well.
But he turned around and screwed us.
Now I know if you're a progressive,
anti-war Democrat, a leftist or independent, or an advocate of
a third party, the thought of voting for Kerry is revolting,
even nauseating. He shamelessly conspired in the trashing of
anti-war candidate Howard Dean in the primaries. He voted for
the war resolution that authorized George Bush to go ahead with
his Iraq invasion plans. He voted for the dreadful and terrifying
USA PATRIOT Act. He continues to advocate U.S. intervention in
Latin America and other parts of the world. He even calls for
continued military operations in Iraq for as long as four more
years.
And yet, if we're honest and
realistic, what is the alternative?
Sitting out the election or
skipping the presidential part of the ballot is a cop-out. Let's
examine the argument for the other option then: voting for Ralph
Nader. (And let me stress here that I'm talking only about the
issue of voting for Ralph, not the issue of whether or not his
name should be on the ballot, which it absolutely should.)
There are three basic arguments
for a Nader candidacy.
One is straight-out principle.
Though he's been kept so busy by the Democratic Party just fighting
to get on ballots that he hasn't had much time to state his
views, Nader stands for everything that a progressive voter could
want-open government, national healthcare, an end to corporate-run
government, serious action on the environment and global warming,
gay rights, equalized funding for education, genuinely progressive
taxation, real Social Security, an end to the war in Iraq and
to American empire, democratic control over corporations and
trade issues, and on and on. There is no question that if you
believe in all these things and want to make that statement,
the only way to do it, at least in 2004, is to vote for him.
Of course, Nader is at best going to win a small percentage
of the vote, so that's all you'll be doing: making a statement.
A very small statement.
Related to this first reason
is a second: pressuring the Democratic Party to move to the left.
The idea here is that by withdrawing our votes from the sell-out
Democrats and casting them for a genuine progressive alternative,
we force the Democratic Party to shift its position more to the
left on a variety of issues. I'm sure there is logic to this
idea, though it seems to me that a better way to go about it
would be to generate more disciplined support around a genuine
liberal or progressive candidate during the primaries so that
the party actually ends up with a progressive nominee. That could
have happened had Nader run in the Democratic primaries instead
of against the party in the general election, but it's too late
for that. The problems with this approach are two-fold. First,
the next presidential election is four years away, and there
is no mechanism for transforming the pressure of a third-party
protest vote in 2004 into a leftward swing by the Democratic
Party in 2008. Second-there is little evidence that prior such
third party efforts have led to shifts in Democratic Party position.
If anything, Nader's 2000 run created a toxic reaction in 2004
among Democratic voters to those who supported Nader in 2000.
If votes for Nader in 2004 swing this election to Bush, the same
reaction can be expected among Democratic voters in 2008, only
worse. (It might even be argued that another 2-3 percent vote
tally this time around for Nader could just convince Democratic
candidates that there's no point trying to win over that group
of voters, so they can just be ignored.)
The third reason to vote Nader
is to help build a third, an anti-corporate party that could
offer a real alternative to the Republicrats. The problem with
this admittedly beautiful idea is that it has been tried many
times and hasn't worked. (A third party alternative had its best
shot in years in California's recent recall election for governor,
when Ralph;s current running mate Peter Miguel Camejo ran as
the Green candidate, and it was a disaster.) We can decry all
we want the stacked deck that locks American politics into a
two-party straightjacket, but the evidence is there that it is.
The courts, the election system, the debates, the media, the
moneyed interests, it's all rigged to keep third parties on the
fringe. Even when they have managed to make significant inroads
into the vote tally, as in the case of George Wallace's American
Party or Ross Perot's Reform Party and their presidential campaigns,
it was a matter of one-shot deals built around a personality,
not a movement. Pretending, or hoping, that Ralph Nader's campaign,
or a Green Party campaign, could somehow grow into an alternative
to the Democratic Party is akin to those Socialist Workers Party
or the Revolutionary Communist Party fantasies of imminent socialist
revolution by the American working class. It ain't gonna happen.
As the fiasco of the Green
Party's convention this year demonstrated, even if a third party
did start to grow, the likelihood of its fracturing into ineffective
factions and self-destruction before it could become a significant
electoral force is almost 100 percent. We're talking about the
American left here, remember, where one person is a party and
two people are two splinter factions. If the U.S. is to have
a third party-one that could aspire to replacing the Democratic
Party, or perhaps to merging with and subsuming it-it would have
to come out of the labor movement, and that work needs to be
done not by helping Republicans win elections, but by helping
to revitalize, democratize and politicize the labor movement
(a movement that only grows weaker the longer Republicans are
in power).
So where does that leave us?
With the Democrats, and this year, that's John Kerry.
(Pause here to gag or upchuck.)
Hopefully the Clinton years
have taught us on the left that a Democrat in the White House
these days doesn't mean much--just that we should, hopefully,
be able to hold rallies in the capital without being subject
to organized police assault and mass arrest. And more importantly,
that there will be someone in the Oval Office who will have to
turn to us for help if he hopes to regain Democratic control
of the Congress. While we can't expect a return to the New Deal,
what we will have is the possibility of regaining some leverage
over White House policy--if we stay organized and focused after
Election Day. How do we know a President Kerry would pay attention
to us? He's already doing it. After having run since he declared
for the presidency as a pro-war candidate, he has finally started
calling the war a mistake-the first step away from the deep hole
he dug himself during the primaries and this past summer. For
the first time, he is openly citing his 1972 anti-war credentials,
instead of just his medals. He has clearly recognized that he
cannot hope to get elected without the support of the anti-war
movement and is belatedly going about trying to win that support.
Even if it's just posturing, this is an enormous rhetorical
shift, and we should recognize it for what it is-evidence of
our power. Faced with a hostile Congress in January, he will
have to do the same thing, not just on the war but on every issue
(but only if we stay organized and in the street).
To those who say, "Talk
is cheap, look at all the cheap talk we got from Clinton,"
all I can say is, yeah, you're right, it is just talk, but what
else do you hope to get during a campaign? The only way we'll
be able to see talk converted into actions will be if Kerry replaces
Bush and we push him to do the right thing in office. We never
really pushed Clinton. We believed his blather (or we were just
too lazy or self-involved to challenge him) and gave him a pass
when he stiffed us.
The other argument made against voting for a DLC Democrat like
Kerry is that he might just copy Clinton, who decided, in a major
betrayal of progressive Democrats just two years into office,
that he'd rather work with a Republican Congress than fight for
a liberal Democratic one. There is this risk with Kerry, but
I suspect that while such a pact with the devil might also seem
attractive to him, the times and the Republican Party are different,
and he wouldn't be able to do this even if he wanted to. Kerry,
if elected, will face open hostility from a Republican Congress,
and will need all the help he can get from the progressive wing
of the Democratic Party. Stymied at every turn by an opposition-run
Congress, he will be desperate to elect a Democratic majority
in 2006, and to widen his base in preparation for a re-election
bid in 2008.
As for the alternative? The
current president, unelected and ruling through the support of
a solid right-wing majority in Congress and the support of a
conservative political base and the corporate elite, will be
increasingly immune to pressure from the left, as he demonstrated
by ignoring an unprecedented domestic and global peace movement
in his rush to war, and by his passage of grotesquely reactionary
legislation such as his tax cuts, his change in overtime policy,
his education bill, etc. We have had no ability to influence
this president, and we should face that reality. George Bush
is no Richard Nixon. He's certainly not trying to go down in
history as some great statesman.
The prospect of possibly having
some small amount of influence on the next president may sound
like small beer, but I think the left needs to face realities
here-not something we with our political weakness, or single-issue
fetishism and our sectarian predilections are very good at.
The right is in a powerful and dangerous position in America
right now. It holds control of all three branches of the central
government, and a majority of state legislatures. We have an
outside shot of taking one piece of that triad away, or at least
making it a bit wobbly, in Washington, and we cannot let that
chance slip. To those who respond, "What makes you think
that the left could pressure a President Kerry to end the war
or to take serious action on global warming or to stop blindly
supporting `free trade' policies?" I have to say this is
a valid concern, but then, what chance is there of getting President
Bush to do any of that? Unless we are saying that democracy
is already dead in the U.S.-and while it may be on life support,
I don't believe it is dead yet--one has to assume that well-organized
citizen campaigns by Democrats and progressives to put pressure
on a Democratic president to do the right thing will work to
some extent at least some of the time. The key word here is organized.
We can't expect the right thing to happen just by casting our
votes. We need to keep the pressure on.
Meanwhile, the alternative
is too horrible to contemplate. With the Justice Department
preparing to push ahead with Patriot II next year, and with Bush
and his neo-con cabinet making war-like noises about Iran and
Syria and even Cuba, while quietly working on plans to restore
a draft, and with the prospect of three or four Supreme Court
vacancies, not to mention the elevating of Antonin Scalia to
Chief Justice, there is a real danger of the country's sliding
into one-party rule. (I should add the apocalyptic note that
there is also a real chance of the Antarctic ice shelf sliding
off into the sea as global warming continues unchecked and the
Bush administration continues to pretend it doesn't exist.)
If that sounds alarmist, it
should, but let me phrase it another way. The chance that this
country will become a one-party state under Republican Party
domination is surely far greater than the chance that a third
party option will develop over the next generation. (Here's
a thought for Nader supporters: If in 2000 you had known that
George Bush, if elected, would initiate a global "War on
Terror", invade Iraq, push through a law undermining half
of the Bill of Rights, scrap the Kyoto Treaty and grant himself
the power to strip the right of citizenship from native-born
Americans, would you have cast a vote for Ralph?)
For progressives, the choice
this November is clear, if stomach-churning. There may, as my
colleagues Alex Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair so eloquently
demonstrate in their new book, only be a "dime's worth of
difference" between the policies of the Republicans and
the policies of the Democrats, but to be honest, as devalued
as the currency is these days, I still bend down and pick up
a dime when I see one on the street.
So vote for Kerry, but keep
those protest signs at the ready in the closet. If he wins, we're
going to have a lot of marching to do.
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new
book of CounterPunch columns titled "This
Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage
Press. Information about both books and other work by Lindorff
can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
/
|