It’s
2004 All Over Again...
By Joshua Frank
05 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Democratic
National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has promised there will not
be a change of course in Iraq if the Democrats take back Congress. Potential
House leader Nancy Pelosi has assured voters that impeachment is not
in the cards for Bush, either. Yet the liberal establishment is beaconing
antiwar voters to clamor for the Democratic Party next Tuesday. It seems
like 2004 all over again.
I recently disparaged the
positions of progressive media critic Jeff Cohen and The Nation magazine
for not supporting independent antiwar candidates, and instead calling
for more of the same: i.e. voting for the Democrats even though we disagree
with them on the war and a host of other issues. If we want to take
on Bush, they argue, the Democrats have to take back Congress, and only
then can we start to build a genuine progressive movement.
In the meantime, however,
the war will rage on and Bush will remain at the helm of Empire with
Congress’s blessing. As the Washington Post reported on August
27, of the 46 candidates in tight House races this year, 29 oppose a
timetable for troop withdraw. That’s a whopping 63% of Democrats
in hotly contested races who have exactly the same position on the war
as our liar-in-chief, George W. Bush.
Even so, Howard Dean offers
up his own deceptive outlook, "[W]e will put some pressure on him
(Bush) to have some benchmarks, some timetables and a real plan other
than stay the course.”
What? Who is going to do
that? The 63% who oppose a timetable? And what plan are the Democrats
going to offer up? They openly refuse to back Rep. Jack Murtha’s
call for redeployment, and won’t even acknowledge Rep. Jim McGovern’s
half-baked plea to replace US forces with another international occupation
cartel.
Besides, even if a withdraw
plan made its way past the House, would the Senate, even if controlled
by Democrats, ever consider putting forward an alternative agenda? It
sure doesn’t look that way. There is not one Democratic Senator
who wants an immediate, unconditional end to this war.
Perhaps even more discouraging
this election season is the way in which the media and mainstream antiwar
movement have collaborated. They have both willfully ignored candidates
running against war supporters from outside the Democratic Party.
Peace Action, the self-proclaimed
largest grassroots peace organization in the US, has refused to supply
antiwar activists with a guide to the midterm elections. They claim
to not have the funds to print them, but still won’t put a voting
pamphlet on their website to inform voters that they indeed have options
on November 7.
The Nation magazine, despite
an editorial last year which claimed they would not support pro-war
Democrats, has provided virtually no coverage of third party antiwar
campaigns. After an editorial staff meeting with Sen. Hillary Clinton’s
antiwar challenger Howie Hawkins, The Nation still wouldn’t write
a word about his campaign, even though he is receiving over 20% of the
independent vote here in New York. Nor would the magazine discuss Kevin
Zeese’s antiwar unity run in Maryland, where Zeese has brought
together a unique alliance of Green, Populists and Libertarians. Then
there is Aaron Dixon, an ex-Black Panther who is running perhaps the
most electric antiwar campaign in the country against Sen. Maria Cantwell.
Dixon’s camp has been met with utter silence from the liberal
antiwar movement -- perhaps because several progressive philanthropists
like Dal LaMagna, support her campaign. And the list of forgotten candidates
goes on.
Predictably MoveOn.org and
the liberal blogsphere like DailyKos would never engage in a debate
about the legitimacy of building an independent antiwar movement, let
alone a third party. Instead they’d rather throw their energy
into campaigns like Ned Lamont’s disaster in Connecticut. Since
Ned defeated Sen. Lieberman in the primary he has changed his tune on
Iraq from reasonable opposition to all-out war hawk. But that’s
where working within the Democratic Party will get you: nowhere.
So perhaps it is not “why”
Peace Now and others in the liberal establishment have silenced antiwar
candidates, but “how”. We know why: they are professional
liberals who see the Democratic Party as an indispensable ally in the
quest for grants, careers and cocktail party networking.
However, the more theoretical
among these liberal careerists have a popular front philosophy: where
they align with the liberal bourgeoisie against the reactionary capitalists.
But when push comes to shove the liberals of the ruling elite always
prefer repression to democracy -- something ol’ Karl Marx recognized
during the 1848 democratic revolutions in Europe and the Left in the
US should have recognized when the industrial wing of the Republican
Party sabotaged Radical Reconstruction last century.
But that may be a bit too
analytical for such an obvious crisis: the Democrats and their patrons
are part of the problem, not the solution.
Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals
Helped Reelect George W. Bush, and edits http://www.BrickBurner.org
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