Part I: Progressives and the Dean Campaign
Let’s take Howard Dean at his word: “I was a triangulator before
Clinton was a triangulator. In my soul, I’m a moderate.”
Plenty of evidence backs up that comment by the former Vermont
governor to the New York Times Magazine a few months ago. The
self-comparison with Clinton is apt. “During his five two-year terms as
governor,” the magazine noted, “Dean was proud to be known as a pragmatic
New Democrat, in the Clinton mold, boasting that neither the far right nor
the far left had much use for him.”
Of course, what a mainstream publication is apt to call “the far left”
often includes large progressive constituencies. In the battle for the ’04
Democratic presidential nomination, Dean clearly finds grassroots
progressives to be quite useful for his purposes. But is he truly useful
for ours?
This summer, many news stories have identified Howard Dean with the
left. But Dean’s actual record verifies this assessment from University of
Vermont political science professor Garrison Nelson: “He’s really a classic
Rockefeller Republican -- a fiscal conservative and social liberal.” After
seven years as governor, the Associated Press described Dean as “a clear
conservative on fiscal issues” and added: “This is, after all, the governor
who has at times tried to cut benefits for the aged, blind and disabled,
whose No. 1 priority is a balanced budget.”
Economic justice has been a much lower priority. During the early
1990s, Dean spearheaded a new “workfare” state law requiring labor from
welfare recipients. The Vermont program later won praise as more humane
“welfare reform” than what occurred in most other states. But in the summer
of 1996, Dean put his weight behind the final push for President Clinton’s
national “welfare reform” law -- a draconian measure, slashing at an
already shabby safety-net while forcing impoverished mothers to work
low-wage jobs.
While some other Democrats angrily opposed Clinton’s welfare reform,
it won avid support from Dean. “Liberals like Marian Wright Edelman are
wrong,” he insisted. “The bill is strong on work, time limits assistance
and provides adequate protection for children.” Dean co-signed a letter to
Clinton calling the measure “a real step forward.”
Gov. Dean did not mind polarizing with poor people, but he got along
better with the corporate sector. “Conservative Vermont business leaders
praise Dean’s record and his unceasing efforts to balance the budget, even
though Vermont is the only state where a balanced budget is not
constitutionally required,” Business Week reported in its August 11 (2003)
edition. “Moreover, they argue that the two most liberal policies adopted
during Dean’s tenure -- the ‘civil unions’ law and a radical revamping of
public school financing -- were instigated by Vermont’s ultraliberal
Supreme Court rather than Dean.” The magazine added: “Business leaders were
especially impressed with the way Dean went to bat for them if they got
snarled in the state’s stringent environmental regulations.”
According to Business Week, “those who know him best believe Dean is
moving to the left to boost his chances of winning the nomination.” A
longtime Dean backer named Bill Stenger, a Vermont Republican who’s
president of Jay Peak Resort, predicted: “If he gets the nomination, he’ll
run back to the center and be more mainstream.”
Dean supporters can point to real pluses in his record; he
accomplished some positive things in Vermont, including programs for the
environment and health care. During the past year, on a wide range of
issues, his tough criticisms of the Bush administration have often been
articulate. And many Dean activists are glad to be supporting a candidate
who came out against the war on Iraq.
Howard Dean does deserve some credit as a foe of the war. Yet it would
be a mistake to view him as an opponent of militarism.
Dean seems to agree. During an August 23 interview with the Washington
Post, he said: “I don’t even consider myself a dove.”
I found it conspicuous that Dean did not include the word “Iraq” in
the 26-minute speech he gave at his official campaign kickoff in late June
(at a time when criticism of the war was generally receding, just before
the uproar over Bush’s State-of-the-Union deception on the Niger uranium
forgery). But some Dean supporters pointed out that the speech had antiwar
themes -- for example, declaring that “we are not to conquer and suppress
other nations to submit to our will” and denouncing the Bush team for “a
form of unilateralism that is even more dangerous than isolationism.”
However, such rhetoric -- much of which has become boilerplate among
several mainstream Democratic candidates -- is not as impressive as it
might appear at first glance.
What if a Washington-driven war is not “unilateral”? What if the U.N.
Security Council can be carrot-and-sticked into a supportive stance? What
about “multilateral” wars -- on Iraq in 1991, on Yugoslavia in 1999, on
Afghanistan -- that gained wide backing from other governments? Dean
expresses support for such wars.
Meanwhile, Dean has declared his opposition to a pullout of U.S.
troops from Iraq -- as though what the Pentagon is doing there now doesn’t
amount to continuation of the war he opposed. “We cannot permit ourselves
to lose the peace in Iraq,” Dean was saying in August. “We cannot withdraw
from Iraq.” But given the illegitimacy of the war on Iraq, what legitimate
right does the U.S. government have to keep military control of Iraq? And
isn’t verbiage about not wanting to “lose the peace” a classic rhetorical
way to rationalize continuation of war by the conquering army?
During a recent interview, reported in the Washington Post on August
25, Dean emphasized that his opposition to the war on Iraq should not be
confused with opposing the current -- and future -- occupation of Iraq.
“Now that we’re there, we’re stuck,” he said. While Dean reiterated that
the war was “foolish” and “wrong,” he staked out a position that the Post
described as “whoever will be elected in 2004 has to live with it.” Dean
said: “We have no choice. It’s a matter of national security. If we leave
and we don’t get a democracy in Iraq, the result is very significant danger
to the United States.”
Dean does not give much indication that he wants to challenge Uncle
Sam’s imperial capabilities. On the contrary: Dean has opposed cutting the
budget for routine U.S. military expenditures that now add up to well over
$1 billion per day. And while his campaign kickoff speech stated that
“there is a fundamental difference between the defense of our nation and
the doctrine of preemptive war espoused by this administration,” surely
Dean knows -- or should know -- that much of the Pentagon’s budget has
absolutely nothing to do with “defense of our nation.”
Actually, Dean has gone out of his way to distance himself from a
straightforward cut-the-military-budget position that should be integral to
any progressive candidacy. At a forum this summer, another presidential
candidate, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, said that “the only way we’re really going
to close the (digital) divide in this country is to start cutting the
Pentagon budget and put that money into education.” Dean’s response was
notable: “I don’t agree with Dennis about cutting the Pentagon budget when
we’re in the middle of a difficulty with terror attacks.”
As if the huge Pentagon budget could not be appreciably cut without
making us more vulnerable to “terror attacks”!
Overall, the problem with puffing up Dean -- or claiming that he
represents progressive values -- goes beyond a failure of
truth-in-labeling. It also involves an insidious redefinition, in public
discourse, of what it means to be progressive in the first place.
Dean activists like to say that their man has the best chance of
beating Bush next year. But supporters of almost every Democratic
presidential hopeful say the same thing -- and, like Dean’s partisans, have
scant basis for making the claim. In fact, it’s mere conjecture that Dean
would be the nominee most likely to defeat Bush.
On a full range of issues -- from international trade to health care
to labor rights to welfare to criminal justice and the drug war to federal
spending priorities to environmental protection to gay rights to the death
penalty to foreign policy -- Dean’s positions are markedly inferior to
Kucinich’s platform. So why not battle to get as many Democratic convention
delegates as possible for Kucinich? Granted, he’s very unlikely to be
nominated. But a hefty Kucinich delegate count would be a strong
progressive statement within the Democratic Party and would provide a
louder national megaphone for the values that we share. Kucinich speaks for
progressives on virtually every issue. In sharp contrast, Dean does not.
I admire the creativity and commitment that many activists have
brought to their work for Dean. Yet his campaign for the nomination offers
few benefits and major pitfalls. If Dean becomes the Democratic
presidential candidate next year, at that point there would be many good
reasons to see him as a practical tool for defeating Bush. But in the
meantime, progressive energies and support should go elsewhere.
Part II: The Green Party and the ’04 Presidential Campaign]
Activists have plenty of good reasons to challenge the liberal
Democratic Party operatives who focus on election strategy while routinely
betraying progressive ideals. Unfortunately, the national Green Party now
shows appreciable signs of the flip side -- focusing on admirable ideals
without plausible strategy. Running Ralph Nader for president is on the
verge of becoming a kind of habitual crutch -- used even when the effect is
more damaging than helpful.
It’s impossible to know whether the vote margin between Bush and his
Democratic challenger will be narrow or wide in November 2004. I’ve never
heard a credible argument that a Nader campaign might help to defeat Bush
next year. A Nader campaign might have no significant effect on Bush’s
chances -- or it could turn out to help Bush win. With so much at stake, do
we really want to roll the dice this way?
We’re told that another Nader campaign will help to build the Green
Party. But Nader’s prospects of coming near his nationwide 2000 vote total
of 2.8 million are very slim; much more probable is that a 2004 campaign
would win far fewer votes -- hardly an indicator of, or contributor to, a
growing national party.
It appears to me that the entire project of running a Green
presidential candidate in 2004 is counter-productive. Some faithful will be
energized, with a number of predictably uplifting “super rallies” along the
way, but many past and potential Green voters are likely to consciously
drift away. Such a campaign will generate much alienation and bitterness
from natural constituencies. Ironically, the current Green party-building
agenda looks like a scenario for actually damaging the party.
Green organizers often insist that another presidential run is
necessary so that the party can energize itself and stay on the ballot in
various states. But it would be much better to find other ways to retain
ballot access while running stronger Green campaigns in selected local
races. Overall, I don’t believe that a Green Party presidential campaign in
2004 will help build a viable political alternative from below.
Some activists contend that the Greens will maintain leverage over the
Democratic Party by conveying a firm intention to run a presidential
candidate. I think that's basically an illusion. The prospect of a Green
presidential campaign is having very little effect on the Democratic
nomination contest, and there’s no reason to expect that to change. The
Democrats are almost certain to nominate a “moderate” corporate flack (in
which category Howard Dean should be included).
A few years ago, Nader and some others articulated the theory that
throwing a scare into the Democrats would move them in a more progressive
direction. That theory was disproved after November 2000. As a whole,
congressional Democrats have not become more progressive since then.
There has been a disturbing tendency among some Greens to conflate the
Democratic and Republican parties. Yes, the agendas of the two major
parties overlap. But they also diverge. And in some important respects, any
of the Democratic presidential contenders would be clearly better than Bush
(with the exception of Joseph Lieberman, whose nomination appears to be
quite unlikely). For the left to be “above the fray” would be a big
mistake. It should be a matter of great concern -- not indifference or mild
interest -- as to whether the Bush gang returns to power for four more
years.
I’m not suggesting that progressives mute their voices about issues.
The imperative remains to keep speaking out and organizing. As Martin
Luther King Jr. said on April 30, 1967: “When machines and computers,
profit motives and property rights are considered more important than
people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation
are incapable of being conquered.”
http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR011603.htm The left should
continue to denounce all destructive policies and proposals, whether being
promoted by Republicans or Democrats.
At the same time, we should not gloss over the reality that the Bush
team has neared some elements of fascism in its day-to-day operations --
and forces inside the Bush administration would be well-positioned to move
it even farther to the right after 2004. We don’t want to find out how
fascistic a second term of George W. Bush’s presidency could become. The
current dire circumstances should bring us up short and cause us to
re-evaluate approaches to ’04. The left has a responsibility to contribute
toward a broad coalition to defeat Bush next year.
There are some Green Party proposals for a “safe states” strategy,
with the party’s presidential nominee concentrating on states that seem
sure to go for either Bush or the Democrat. But it’s not always clear
whether a state is “safe” (for instance, how about California?). And the
very act of a Green campaign focusing on some “safe states” might render a
few of those states more susceptible to a Bush upset win. An additional
factor is that presidential campaigns are largely nationwide.
In 2000, despite unfair exclusion from the debates and the vast
majority of campaign news coverage, Nader did appear on national radio and
TV to a significant extent. And of course, more than ever, the Internet is
teeming with progressive websites, listservs and e-mail forwarding. It
doesn’t seem very practical to run as a national candidate while
effectively urging people in some states not to vote for you when they see
your name on the ballot -- even if the candidate is inclined toward such a
strategy. And that’s a big “if.”
For all its talk of democratic accountability, the Green Party is
hooked into the old-fashioned notion that a candidate, once nominated,
decides how and where to campaign. It’s ironic that the party is likely to
end up with a presidential candidate who will conduct the campaign exactly
as he chooses, with no built-in post-nomination accountability to any
constituency or group decision-making. Kind of sounds like the major
parties in that respect; choose the candidate and the candidate does
whatever he wants from that point forward.
No doubt, too many Democratic Party officials have been arrogant
toward Green Party supporters. “Democrats have to face reality and
understand that if they move too far to the right, millions of voters will
defect or vote for third-party candidates,” Tom Hayden pointed out in a
recent article
www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16584.
“Democrats have to swallow hard and accept the right of the Green Party and
Ralph Nader to exist and compete.” At the same time, Hayden added cogently,
“Nader and the Greens need a reality check. The notion that the two major
parties are somehow identical may be a rationale for building a third
party, but it insults the intelligence of millions of blacks, Latinos,
women, gays, environmentalists and trade unionists who can't afford the
indulgence of Republican rule.”
The presidency of George W. Bush is not a garden-variety Republican
administration. By unleashing its policies in this country and elsewhere in
the world, the Bush gang has greatly raised the stakes of the next
election. The incumbent regime’s blend of extreme militarism and repressive
domestic policy should cause the left to take responsibility for helping to
oust this far-right administration -- rather than deferring to dubious
scenarios for Green party-building.
In an August essay, Michael Albert of Z Magazine wrote: “One post
election result we want is Bush retired. However bad his replacement may
turn out, replacing Bush will improve the subsequent mood of the world and
its prospects of survival. Bush represents not the whole ruling class and
political elite, but a pretty small sector of it. That sector, however, is
trying to reorder events so that the world is run as a U.S. empire, and so
that social programs and relations that have been won over the past century
in the U.S. are rolled back as well. What these parallel international and
domestic aims have in common is to further enrich and empower the already
super rich and super powerful.”
Albert pointed out some of the foreseeable consequences of another
Bush term: “Seeking international Empire means war and more war -- or at
least violent coercion. Seeking domestic redistribution upward of wealth
and power, most likely means assaulting the economy via cutbacks and
deficits, and then entreating the public that the only way to restore
functionality is to terminate government programs that serve sectors other
than the rich, cutting health care, social services, education, etc.” And
Albert added: “These twin scenarios will not be pursued so violently or
aggressively by Democrats due to their historic constituency. More, the
mere removal of Bush will mark a step toward their reversal.”
Looking past the election, Albert is also on target: “We want to have
whatever administration is in power after Election Day saddled by a fired
up movement of opposition that is not content with merely slowing
Armageddon, but that instead seeks innovative and aggressive social gains.
We want a post election movement to have more awareness, more hope, more
infrastructure, and better organization by virtue of the approach it takes
to the election process.”
I’m skeptical that the Green Party’s leadership is open to rigorously
pursue a thoroughgoing safe-states approach along the lines that Albert has
suggested in his essay
www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=4041. Few
of the prominent Green organizers seem sufficiently flexible. For instance,
one Green Party leader who advocates “a Strategic States Plan” for 2004 has
gone only so far as to say that “most” of the party’s resources should be
focused on states “where the Electoral College votes are not ‘in play.’”
Generally the proposals coming from inside the Green Party seem equivocal,
indicating that most party leaders are unwilling to really let go of
traditional notions of running a national presidential campaign.
I’m a green. But these days, in the battle for the presidency, I’m not
a Green. Here in the United States, the Green Party is dealing with an
electoral structure that’s very different from the parliamentary systems
that have provided fertile ground for Green parties in Europe. We’re up
against the winner-take-all U.S. electoral system. Yes, there are efforts
to implement “instant runoff voting,” but those efforts will not transform
the electoral landscape in this decade. And we should focus on this decade
precisely because it will lead the way to the next ones.
By now it’s an open secret that Ralph Nader is almost certain to run
for president again next year. Nader has been a brilliant and inspirational
progressive for several decades. I supported his presidential campaigns in
1996 and 2000. I won’t in 2004. The reasons are not about the past but
about the future.
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This article is not copyrighted. Readers are welcome to forward, post and
reprint.
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Norman Solomon’s latest book, co-authored with Reese Erlich, is “Target
Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You.”
