The Vote for Endless War
On Tuesday, December 18, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate combined to give President Bush $70 billion to carry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into next summer. Only 23 Democrats and one independent supported an amendment by Senator Feingold that would have required the safe redeployment of troops from Iraq. Here are the senators who voted to end the war:
Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
Next summer, when the money runs out, a cutoff of funds will be unimaginable. The election will be too close. So our troops are committed till the end of the president’s term; after all the talk, the Democrats have ended by obeying him. This capitulation marks the climax of one of the most extraordinary displays in history of a complex phenomenon: power wielded in the face of popular rejection, and power surrendered in spite of overwhelming public support. A president whose policy was disapproved by more than half of the American people chose to defy a majority whose midterm victory he himself had called “a rout.” And the majority, saying they wished things were different, pleading the necessity of 60 rather than 50 votes, but never exacting reprisals or driving a hard bargain against defectors from their own ranks–the majority, again and again, backed down.
This definitive result of the 110th Congress will confirm the popular feeling that George W. Bush believes in his disaster more than the Democrats believe in anything.
Some day, an inspired historian will answer the question what the Democrats of the new majority in Congress were thinking in the months of December 2006 and January 2007. For consider their position. The report of the Iraq Study Group had lately told the president to pull back from Iraq; numbers of generals and retired military officers had registered their dissent from the war (a thing unheard-of in earlier wars); the party had on its side the good will of the public and the suffrage of the licensed experts. And then? The Democrats sat, and watched, and waited. They talked about their social policies. They knew if they waited long enough, the next move on Iraq would be the president’s; and this apparently was what they wanted. They knew that his next move would be to widen the war. They had decided by February that they would not stop him.
Those who appeared most consequential in the scene were not the real movers. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi can hardly have carried as much weight in these larger deliberations as Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel. Senator Clinton outranked Senator Reid in fame, fortune, and influence; she was the apparent candidate by acclamation for the presidential race in 2008; and her desires, however conveyed, would count for more than those of an obscure and hesitant lawmaker. Rahm Emanuel had taken credit for the winning election strategy of 2006. Ascending with the majority, he avoided the substantial issue of Iraq, and addressed the need to get the best armor for the soldiers already there. Emanuel talked about armor, and soon Pelosi was talking about armor. All the while, on the floor of the Senate and in public speeches, Hillary Clinton gave her best energies to free the president to go after Iran.
If the Clinton-Emanuel axis is indeed a more accurate clue to the workings of the party than Reid-Pelosi, one may well ask what guided the accommodation of the Bush policy through 2007 by the de facto leaders of the opposition.
The premise on which, in fact, the two parties for all their differences seem now impressively unified, is the projection of American power in the Middle East. Whose interest does that serve? The list is long, and the proportions impossible to gauge. There are the oil companies (the province of Cheney and Bush), greedy for the last of a dwindling resource. Another half-century of profits is worth much more than a war to them. There is also Israel, with its largely uncritical American backers, including political supporters in both parties and financial supporters without whom the Democrats are lost (Senator Clinton in particular). Add to these the arms industry and the security bubble of the 2000s–from cluster bombs to retina scanners–alike dependent on the maintenance of this war and the urgency of the next, whatever the next may be.
Four superbases, we were told in 2003, were to be built for Americans in Iraq, but now there are five or six. As Clinton and Emanuel know, those bases are meant to be permanent. They will not be used only to secure Iraq and intimidate Iran, but to harry Russia by way of the friendly belt of former republics, and to raise a bulwark against the growing power of China. The missile interceptors we want to install in Poland and the radar station in the Czech Republic, about which Vladimir Putin was said to be unreasonably exercised, could indeed seem, to a suspicious eye, part of the same broad strategy. Camp Bondsteel, built on 955 acres in Kosovo, might also be supposed to make some contribution. The vice president is not the only American who does not want the Cold War to be over.
To judge by the votes of the 110th Congress, and by what has and has not been said on the campaign trail, some understandings are now clearly in place. The main agreement concerns what is not to be said. If either Clinton or Obama is the Democratic nominee, and if no new insurgency erupts, the Iraq war will drop away completely as an issue of the presidential race in 2008. To have prophesied this a year ago would have seemed fantastic; but the soothing indications are already being slotted in. Baghdad is now said to be “quieter.” We are shown few pictures of American soldiers and fewer still of Iraqi civilians. The New York Times ran its story about the $70 million appropriations vote on page 24. Nevertheless, December 18 will be remembered. It was the day when a thirteen- month contract was signed, and the domestic powers told us that nothing more could be done about this. Go back to the economy, they said, and the mortgage crisis, and the role of religion in politics and the views of undecided voters about gay marriage. While you are talking, the Vatican-sized embassy in Baghdad will be completed, and the superbases will go up. The next step will have been taken for projection of American power in the Middle East.
When did we agree to this? At what time, and in what place? The United States, for the first time in our history, is more feared than it is trusted, and more hated than it is feared. And the opposition does not dare to think aloud about the reasons.
David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale. He has written on politics and culture for The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and other magazines.
Copyright © 2007 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
No capitulation, no opposition. How about cooperation, co-option and crypto-neocons?
There are some things that a critical mass of Dems and Republicans agree on:
* No single-payer health care.
* No meaningful campaign finance reform.
* No Range or IRV.
* No withdrawal from Iraq. Endless war.
* No dialing back of the wartime economy that Eisenhower warned us about more than half a century ago.
It’s simply a misnomer to keep driving this all as “capitulation”. Their voting records are their artifacts. History will judge them not by presumed intentions, rhetoric, or smoke. It will judge them, forensically, by their voting records — and how widely they have departed from the electorate that put them into office.
Looks to me like the Democrats who voted to end the war should be re-elected and the rest should not.
The Democratic party has not only alienated their progressive base, but they have done so with utter contempt and ridicule. This will backfire in the not-so-distant future, as many progressives, like myself, will not vote for a Democratic candidate, even if it means letting the GOP steal the White House. If the democrats aren’t going to even pretend to represent us, we will look elsewhere.
To the people that voted to cut off funds:
Thank You
To those that voted to continue funding this war:
A lump of shit in your sock.
(I would have said coal, but they would thank me for the “clean-burning”, energy efficient, coal, as if?)
In the smallest possible nutshell, this is why the Democrats will lose the next election. They are the absolute Masters of Political Suicide. They are even more worthless than the Republicans who are pirates and killers but at least cop to it. If you need a definition of the word “pussy” in its non-sexual context, look no farther than the Democratic party.
Manipulation of public sentiment has been a central element of the White House’s entire Iraq war enterprise–and far too many members of Congress continue to serve as enablers. For those interested in a psychological analysis of this warmongering strategy, I have recently completed a brief online video entitled “Resisting the Drums of War.” It examines how the Bush administration’s messaging has targeted five core concerns that often govern our lives–concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. The video examines these warmongering appeals and offers suggestions on how to counter them. It’s available for viewing HERE.
The entire Congress needs to be replaced. It is no longer about them, it is about US. What does it say about the American people that we allow this to continue?
We must become the Congress we deserve.
Watch this video of Katherine Harris and Ted Stevens and realise
“YOU ARE Qualified to Run for Congress”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98_b5JW2CII#GU5U2spHI_4
www.peacecandidates.com
Here are the senators who voted to end the war:
Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
I didn’t see Clinton, Obama, Dodd or Biden in that list of Senators who voted to end the war, did you?
Some day, an inspired historian will answer the question what the Democrats of the new majority in Congress were thinking in the months of December 2006 and January 2007.
I’m not an inspired historian, but I’d have to postulate that it has to do with investments and money and the loss of the which wouldn’t be realistic for those who stand the most to lose of it.
Which mayn’t be the folks posting here who have a differing perspective. Like the obvious solution to the problem being pretty naively simple. If you think about it for a few seconds.
How about Move On asking members to fund calls for US soldiers in iraq?
This is sort of like asking vegetarians to provide extra money to slaughterhouse workers so they dont take their frustrations out on the animals(since slaughterhouse workers are known to torture animals in boredom or because they hate their jobs).
yes, yes…
but if they keep calling ours a democracy, maybe we’ll believe it.
It’s certainly true that Bush-Cheney and the Republicans have sure made a mess of things, both foreign and domestic.
We will, in the months leading up to Nov ‘08, see numerous posts here on CD that say the way to deal with the mess is to elect Dems, the Bush-Cheney enablers (or more accurately, co-conspiritors).
The Democratic Party is a disgrace and has been for years.
It’s time for them to be swept into the dustbin of history where lie the Federalists and the Whigs and the Know-Nothings. Other parties that became irrelevant and if there is anything the Dems are now to Progressive legislation, to a sensible foreign policy, to all that is right and good, it is irrelevant.
Every dollar, every ounce of energy, every bit of talent, every scintilla of media savvy that goes to the Dems is WASTED.
And I’ve been aroung long enough to remember Eisenhower and I have never been as outraged with the Republicans as I am now with the Dems. Why? Well the Republicans are what they are and there is no reason to expect anything else. The Dems on the other hand are FRAUDS and in league with the Republicans.
I think the two most important political steps we can take right now are 1) the complete destruction of the campaign of Hillary Clinton for the Presidency and, 2) the election of Cindy Sheehan to Congress in place of that pimple Pelosi. Onward!
So, we have a list of 23 Democratic senators who “voted to end the war.” There were also other antiwar measures supported by Democratic senators and members of Congress. Other Democrats voted against all these measures, in favor of continued war funding without strings.
So, maybe we can stop writing and thinking in terms of “the Democrats” as if they were all the same, and of “the Democratic Party” as if the Party were a policymaking body which decides how Democratic politicians vote. As if the only choice for voters was to support “the Democrats” and thereby accept complicity in whatever any, or even the majority of Democratic politicians, do or acquiesce to, or else reject “the Democrats” in favor of some fantasy third party, in defiance of how American elections work - and thereby accept complicity in electing Republicans and keeping in power the worst of our nation.
When presented with a choice between a Democrat we don’t like and a Republican who is much worse, we have the responsibility to choose the better and less evil over the worse and more evil. But that is not enough; we have to resolve to keep pushing things forward and try to get a better choice next time. We must support progressive Democrats, challenge conservative Democrats in the primary elections, and pressure all of them all the time.
We must be active participants. That does not make you complicit; on the contrary, trying to opt out, trying to wash your hands with ineffectual protests and pretend politics, makes you a passive accomplice in our national crimes.
Nader2000 said “We must support progressive Democrats, challenge conservative Democrats in the primary elections, and pressure all of them all the time”.
This is true. The fact is, we do have a large number of progressives in office as Democrats now. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. In this two-party system our choices are very limited. A third party, like the Green party, running candidates against dems is only spoiling.
Here is another alternative, have all the progressives in congress sign papers to change their party affiliation to Green just before the elections. Then have all progressive democrats change their registration to Green after the primaries. After the elections we would have a semi-viable three party system, and the Greens would have a good start.
Voting to “end the war” would be a super duper idea if the United States of America were at “war” with any country on Earth, which, in fact, we are NOT. Not officially, not legally, not technically. Congress has not declared “war,” and our Military is not currently defending the “homeland” from an imminent threat.
Wanna “vote” to “end the war?” Vote Dr. Ron Paul - he has vowed to “bring home the troops” from, not only Iraq, but most of the other 750+ military bases worldwide where we don’t phucking belong as well.
See, if you vote for a bad Democrat you aren’t complicit in that particular Democrat’s evil, but if you vote for a good third party candidate, you are complicit in the entire Republican party’s evil.
“Here is another alternative, have all the progressives in congress sign papers to change their party affiliation to Green just before the elections.”
Now I’m not going to vote for collaborator Democrats, but what exactly would be the point of purging that party of good candidates? Hell, there are a few good Republicans I’d like to see have more power in that party and drag it back from fascism. Purge the Democratic party of bad candidates by not voting for those particular candidates!
barely human
I agree with what you said, I think the Naders of the world should run as dems. What I’m saying is that there is no way in our two-party system to start a third party from the ground up, it would have to be an instant change because the dems and repubs would both resist the change to the existing power structure.
I’m not sure I’d vote for Nader if he was a Democrat, after what polsci told me about him. (I’m still not stupid enough to blame him for the Republican’s election fraud, though.)
It just seems to me most of us coming at this… Dare I say it? …like reactionaries. Some say if you vote for anybody but a Democrat, you’re voting for the Republicans. Others say if you vote for any Democrat you’re voting for the Republicans. Neither of those reflexive approaches involve real thought, and both are abdications of our moral responsibility to vote for good candidates and not vote for bad candidates. Yes, I agree, both major parties are run at the top levels by criminal cartels who are dragging them from liberalism and conservatism to neoliberalism and neoconservatism. But not voting for good Democrats is going to strengthen the bad elements of that party, as will voting for bad Democrats.
I’m not suggesting we hold any candidate to some standard of perfection, because no human will meet it. But come on… Hillary Clinton? Please, register as Democrats and vote for Kucinich in the primaries! And if the candidate is someone decent like Edwards or Obama, go ahead and vote for them. But you absolutely cannot get good results by voting for bad people.
And I say that as an imperfect person who reactionarily voted straight Democratic last year. It seems the bad Democrats I voted for are currently holding back the good Democrats I voted for.
Glad one of my senators, Schumer got the message. Too bad Hillary didn’t. The Democrat I support is Kucinich, and the Republican is Paul.
Ken Salazar will not get my vote. I’ll vote for the best Green or independent alternative in Colorado. If there is none, I’ll abstain. I’m calling Salazar now to let him know.
I think that it would likely be easier to clean up the Democratic Party than to try and get a third party off the ground and moving in the midst of the crisis we now find ourselves in. Fixing the Democratic Party also has the advantage of at least keeping majority control away from the known thugs in the Republican Party in the meantime. Even though it appears that the dems are not making much progress, we have at least decreased the acceleration down the road to all out Fascism. Do you remember the mass defections of racist Democrats (Dixiecrats) to the Republican Party in the sixties as part of the Southern Strategy? We need people of conscience on the other side, like Hagle and a few others, to do the right(left) thing, and change their party affiliation.
Nader2000:
“When presented with a choice between a Democrat we don’t like and a Republican who is much worse, we have the responsibility to choose the better and less evil over the worse and more evil.”
This is completely incorrect. We have a responsibility as citizens to express our choices in good faith. This does not include extending special priviliege to the major (corporate) parties.
Similarly, it is grossly irresponsible to hector others into voting against their beliefs. Doing so, sir, is farce, as I have pointed out to you about a dozen times.
Thankfully, third parties are not illegal, and neither is writing in one’s vote, so it is still possible to vote for a candidate who does not oppose one’s beliefs.
Lesser-evilism has driven the Democrats to the right for a generation or more. No one should expect a magical reversal to arise from the same contemptible exercise.
The Demoscrats have supported the Bush agenda on taxes, regulation, health care, you name it. The coup de grace was voting for an illegal and immoral war and continuing to fund it. Corrupt earmarking persists. Farm policy is written by mega-agribusiniess, health policy by insurance companies. The Pentagon is still a revolving door of rich and powerful defense contractors. Prisons are a hot growth industry. Privacy is but a memory. The Dems knew of torture years ago and said nothing. These corrupt bastards will persist as long as they can count on your vote.
I voted for Nader because Dems weren’t voting my interests, and they’ve spent the last seven years proving me right.
seriousprofessor-
Here’s how I figure our responsibility as citizens of the United States of America, the most powerful, most dangerous actor in the world today:
You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your own actions and choices.
If it is predictable, with essentially 100% certainty, as it has been in every case in over a century, that the next President of the United States (world’s most powerful person) is going to be one of two, and you are one of the world’s few who have a vote, you have a responsibility to cast that vote.
More importantly, for those who have done so much to goad others into throwing their votes at Nader and Greens and other third-party soapbox make-believe candidates, if the predictable consequence of your action is to throw the election to someone like George W. Bush, you are responsible for what you have done.
It’s not about your precious beliefs, it’s not about who you are, it’s not about you. It’s about who is going to wield the terrible power of the American White House for four long years. You are responsible for whatever you do that helps to determine that outcome.
Express your beliefs, by all means. Lambaste corporate shills, call for radical change, teach peace and human values.
But when it comes to national elections, whether for the President or for Congress, you must participate in the process and do your limited best to influence the ACTUAL OUTCOME toward the better.
This will require you to hold your snobbish nose and compromise with the 99% of the country that is not as advanced as you are. It will require you to support a candidate who will do some things you detest. That’s the price you pay for being so smart and so moral.
As an American, the rest of the world needs you to do this. It is a responsibility you cannot escape.
“Do you remember the mass defections of racist Democrats (Dixiecrats) to the Republican Party in the sixties as part of the Southern Strategy? We need people of conscience on the other side, like Hagle and a few others, to do the right(left) thing, and change their party affiliation.”
Or maybe we could support them taking back their party. If corporatist criminals have infiltrated both major parties, as the evidence indicates to me, then wouldn’t it be great if principled conservatives and principled liberals united to take both parties back? It would require changing the terms of the debate from R.v.D., which sure seems to be spiraling into the sewer to me.
Why allow corruption to even have a say in U.S. politics? Why concede either major party to it? Why treat lies as an equal side of the discussion? As it is, we’ve let it set the terms of the debate! It seems obvious to me, if we really want to reform our country, then our national debate must be made in good faith. So ultimately the Republican Party itself must be reformed. It’s not like it’s working in the average Republican voter’s best interest, anyway.
Yep, it would a very tall order, and very long term! But I think it would be a more constructive and less sysiphean goal than having to waste all our energy struggling to just beat the Republicans election after election, over and over, forever, and getting mostly lesser evil.
“More importantly, for those who have done so much to goad others into throwing their votes at Nader and Greens and other third-party soapbox make-believe candidates, if the predictable consequence of your action is to throw the election to someone like George W. Bush, you are responsible for what you have done.”
Don’t act like I and others haven’t explained before that Nader and the Greens did not throw the election to Bush. Election fraud did. The election was stolen. You’re laying the blame for an avalanch on a single snowflake again. And when you respond to electoral fraud by calling for the criminalization of third parties, who have not engaged in such criminal activities, I believe your unstated goal is neither democracy nor justice. I doubt your sincerity, sir.
23 Senators
Strange, I’ve seen the number 23 before. Oh, yes. The number of senators who voted against authorization of force , October 11, 2002 was #23. “23 shall be the number thou shall count, and the number of counting shall be….” (reference holy grail, monty python.)
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chafee (R-RI)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (D-FL)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=00237#positionn
“Or maybe we could support them taking back their party.”
We are having enough trouble trying muster the muscle to fix the Democratic Party and make them do the right(left) thing. Those few people of conscience in the Republican Party should leave it and let it shrivel and die on the vine, as their continued presence in it gives some people, who would otherwise vote for progressives, a reason to remain supporters of that party.
I was watching the News Hour on PBS a little while ago, and they had Harry Reid on for a segment. Unbelievably, he praised Joe Liarman(Lieberman), calling him a GOOD DEMOCRAT! And this after Liarman endorsed John McCain.
You may well be right(left), MikeBinSC. The more we discuss trying to reform America, the more it seems to me that the system is set up to prevent any reform. Oddly, it’s Nader2000’s descriptions of how the two party system works that convince me most of all that it must be eradicated. If he’s right that the best we can do is vote for the lesser of two evils, then the last thing we should do is formalize such a system in law.
What would be the result if Al Gore got on the ballot in all 50 states as the Green Party candidate, Hillary was the Democratic candidate, and Huckleberry was the Repug choice?
Then everyone who voted for Gore would have the blood of millions on their hands. Which they wouldn’t if they had voted for Clinton and she continued the war.
@ the idea of “….if Al Gore… as green party candiate”
gore would never work against the party.
I used Al Gore as an example of the person who would have the best chance of winning as a third party candidate. Could he win? Could Bono win? Could anyone else win? If so, who? If not, what are we left with?
We need to press hard for the progressive Democratic candidates, like Edwards and Kucinich, and force other progessives to run as dems.
Someone above suggested supporting progressive Democrats within the party.
Excuse me but maybe if the Democratic Party broke its chains from corporate special interests and got back to its socialist-Roosevelt era roots we’d actually see men like Kucinich rise to the top instead of being constantly pushed aside and ignored as was evidenced recently when the Iowa Democratic Party stood by and allowed Kucinich to be banned from the Iowa debate. And do I even have to go into the fact that the Democratic Party is as guilty as their evil twin when it comes to election reforms. Heck, if progressive Democrats can’t even get support from their own party apparatus when they choose to run for higher office how can they be expected to change their corrupt party from inside?
No thanks, I’ll stay off the merry-go-round and look outside the two parties for a new political direction so direly needed by this country.
since bill clinton remade the party to end welfare as we know it, then maintained the blockade on Iraq that caused the death of all those kids, then bombed Iraq and then Yugoslavia, there has been no real democratic party. this is the real reason hillary must not be elected. no more clinton bush dynasty. i’m begging you.
abuelito
I agree, I’m very tired of the Texas/Arkansas Mafia. Dump Clinton, Biden and all the other status quo establishment candidates and get behind the progressive candidate of your choice.
nader2000,
Very well said. We Americans have a special power to wield. The rest of the world is counting on us. We find ourselves in a tragic game. Many American voters, like seriousprofessor, do not understand the election system we have. It is really, in my opinion, like a parlimentary system, in that the stronger coalition forms the government. Not everyone in the stronger coalition agrees with everything, but they prefer to govern than sit on the sidelines carping.
One must vote with the side (of only two) that is closer to your own beliefs. Anything one does other than that, including not participating, helps your enemies. No amount of wailing or gnashing of teeth will change the rules. We are forced to submit to this game, or rather, as you point out, some are selected as players while the others are powerless onlookers. The selection of voters is almost random, when you think about it.
It doesn’t help that the people running for office are willing to exploit the weaknesses of the system every way possible. If we give W credit for one thing, it is his willingness and ability to game the system.
As you know, nader2000, these democrat haters will never stop. I have come to believe that they may really be republicans that come here to sow discontent among liberals. I wouldn’t put it past them. Does it make sense that someone smart enough to be a liberal can’t figure out our political system? No, it doesn’t. Therefore, seriousprofessor and his ilk are Republican spies. We should disregard them and go about our work.
In this state in the last election, we reduced the Nader vote to a very low percent. Previously, we had not attacked them, but then they got a high percent and we lost. That mistake hasn’t been repeated. Also, this time the right has their own cross to bear in the form of Ron Paul. He will take people out of their coalition, weakening their formerly united front. Also, they are going to have a weak candidate. I don’t think the country is ready for a new president that is sworn in on the bible and then substitutes it for the constitution. But I’ve been wrong before.
Gravel, Kucinich, Paul. Take your pick. Turn off your TV. Talk to your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. This is our last chance. I’m with Mike Gravel.
Give me a break Nader2000 and thedeed. How many presidential elections have you voted in? I have voted in ten. I am sick and tired of being told to select from the lesser of two evils. If you haven’t yet discovered that the current resident of the White House had it handed to him by the SCOTUS then you have been getting all your information from the corporate owned media. I will not vote for Hillary Clinton or any of the other Neocon Democrats. This country is rapidly deteriorating into a totally plutocratic, fascist state. I for one will not vote for any candidate that will continue this abominable Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. If any of the corporate-owned Democrats is nominated, I will definitely be voting for Cynthia McKinney who has announced as a candidate in the Green Party.
The Democrats are the equal of the evils. This is as much Hillary’s, Edwards’s, Biden’s, Obama’s and Dodd’s war as it is Bush’s war.
In 2008 the Republicans will run distancing themselves from Bush, pointing out that all unpopular policies (the assault on the Constitution and the war in Iraq (and perhaps Iran)) were bi-partisan and produce a “secret” plan to be out of Iraq by 2013. As the 3 Democratic frontrunners, the 2013 triplets, cannot commit to being out of Iraq by 2013 or they would be “flip-floppers”, the Republicans will again do the impossible win a nearly unwinnable election, solely because the Democrats are collaborators with everything from Blackwater to Katrina to Iraq.
Vote Richardson or Kucinich if you actually want a Democratic victory in 2008. If neither win, don’t vote or vote 3rd Party, as the Dems are the equal of the evils anyway and the version represented by Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, the 2013 triplets, would make no difference. Maybe they’ll learn their lesson then — that they can’t give the progressive electorate the finger and expect to get their votes anyway.
Nader2000:
This will not be the first time that I must exhort you to stop with the nasty personal comments. They do not make your weak warrants any stronger.
While I appreciate that voting the opposite of your beliefs must produce some inner tension, and that others pointing it out may make you appear foolish, you are not free to seek catharsis by attacking others. Your own magical thinking is the essential cause.
The serious grain of your post is this:
“You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your own actions and choices.”
This is exactly my point.
The difference in our arguments is that yours begins and ends with an election cycle, and mine looks at a longer term. A rational person might ask how we got where we are. I hope I don’t need to explain to you the rightward shift of the US political landscape in the last generation.
Therefore, even if your petty insults could somehow move me to accept your definitions of pragmatism, your refusal to seriously engage questions of cause-and-effect would compel me to discard your rationale.
Enjoy your forthcoming “responsible” vote for a candidate to the right of Nixon. Perhaps said candidate will hear your comment about us all being responsible for our choices.
thedeed:
“Therefore, seriousprofessor and his ilk are Republican spies. We should disregard them and go about our work.”
Sir or madam, you are a liar.
Also, you do not know the difference between reasoned argument and dogmatic assertion.
“Does it make sense that someone smart enough to be a liberal can’t figure out our political system? No, it doesn’t.”
I guess that means nobody actually voted for Nader then. Unless they were stupid Republicans, in which case he only ’stole’ votes from the Republicans. I guess that proves once and for all he didn’t throw the election to Bush, doesn’t it?
“Therefore, seriousprofessor and his ilk are Republican spies. We should disregard them and go about our work.”
“No thanks, I’ll stay off the merry-go-round and look outside the two parties for a new political direction so direly needed by this country.”
There it is! Exactly the kind of left-wing reactionary, black and white non-thinking I’ve been talking about. One one side, people who don’t vote for for each and every Democrat are really Republicans. On the other side, people who vote for any Democrat are really Republicans. I guess that makes us all Republicans!
Except, that is, for those of us who don’t automatically disregard people because of the little letter after their name without thinking and vote for good candidates and refuse to vote for bad candidates regardless of party. Straight party line voting without thought for principle is what the Republicans do.
As I have posted before, there will be no attack against Iran. I also posted that if the American people can’t bring about change, then perhaps the rest of the world will begin to turn against the USA.
Both of these things have occurred. After the recent NIE paper, no military commander is going to back Bush on any aggression against Iran based on false information. I also posted that both China and Russia would derail any further aggression against Iran.
In another post, I wrote that our only hope was that the other countries of the world would stand up against the USA. That is now happening. Bush’s days are over with. We will be side lined as a nation at many levels.
Our sole hope remains in a person such as Dennis Kucinich becoming the president of the USA.
First of all, I have to respond to thedeed; I am one of those “non-thinking supporters of the Republican Party” who refuse to vote for Democrats who are indistinguishable from Republicans–and, by some marvellous coincidence, these DINOs are the only kind we ever have a chance to vote for in the general election (actually, since I live in WV which has a late primary, I often have to vote for someone who already dropped out of the race even in the primary). Since people like you and Nader2000 clearly feel that everyone who is a registered Democrat should be required to vote for all Democrats on the ticket, no matter who they are–I live in Spencer, come and get me. Predictably, I will vote for Kucinich in the primary in May, and then probably write him in if the Democratic candidate is either Hillary or Obama in the general (if it’s Edwards, I would probably vote for him since he is distinguishable from the Republicans). Perhaps you can have a law passed so that any Democrat who votes for a third party candidate can be arrested.
Now, with that out of the way, I want to say that this is getting to be such a stale argument–One side saying that we MUST vote for Democrats, no matter how bad–and they get an increment worse with each election–(except this one, it’s two increments) because no third party candidate can ever win, thus the idea that there could be a third party in the US is a fiction of some sort. Or, on the other side, we must not vote for any Democrats because they just enable the Republicans.
Someone said:
You may well be right(left), MikeBinSC. The more we discuss trying to reform America, the more it seems to me that the system is set up to prevent any reform.
And that is exactly the situation. We can’t get anywhere within this system. Sure, vote–it doesn’t take much time. But don’t waste any additional time or energy on elections as the system is thoroughly rigged. So what alternative for change is there? We need a massive revolt–but the US populace is in a drug-induced haze (the drug is television). They are becoming a little less easily duped, but they are nowhere near ready for a revolution. We need to find some answer, because Nader2000 and thedeed are right about one thing–the rest of the world desperately needs for us to get control over the monster that is “our” government. It’s not just evil wars–it’s also the blocking of desperately needed action to reverse global warming. I’m not sure what we need to do, but we need to get beyond arguing over whether we must stop the Republican cabal’s habit of making every problem worse as rapidly as possible by electing Democrats who make the problems worse somewhat more slowly, or instead vote for a third party candidate who can’t get elected. Folks, this is a false choice! It’s a rigged system! We need to get control over the mass media to unrig the system, and until we do, it doesn’t really matter who we vote for.
Nader2000 (6:56 pm) offers his usual rationalization for why you (the progressive CD reader), as “a responsible world citizen,” should accept the doctrine of lesser-evilism, support Democrats, and “work within the Democratic Party.”
Two elements of Nader2000’s lecture are worth noting. First, with phrases like “…throwing their votes at Nader and Greens and other third-party soapbox make-believe candidates,” and “This will require you to hold your snobbish nose…“, etc, Nader2000 makes clear that he holds genuine progressives in precisely the same contempt that the Democratic Party does. We all know that the DP hasn’t the slightest respect for its own progressive wing, & positively despises everyone to the left of that. Nader2000 demonstrates that he shares this contempt.
Second — like all “lesser-evil’ists”, Nader2000’s basic argument is profoundly anti-democratic. Sanctimoniously, he couches his argument in the lofty-sounding terms of your “citizen’s responsibility” to support the lesser evil. But what he’s really telling you here is that you must surrender your right to stand for your own ideals, & that you must instead permit one of the two pro-war big-business parties to speak & act for you.
By assuming a political universe forever restricted to just D & R, we are guaranteed a future of permanent subservience to the military-industrial complex (MIC), to Wall St, & to other powerful lobbies. Neither party has the slightest capacity to resist these entities — indeed, their evident function is to serve & obey them. In both parties, all talk of resisting big business lobbies & the MIC is “off the table.”
The two-party system, with both parties in thrall to big money, is precisely why the US is becoming an increasingly monstrous tyranny. Nothing in the Constitution ever said there should be only 2 parties — let alone that both should be controlled by the same big-money interests. By accepting the doctrine of lesser-evilism, you accept the framework of permanent rule by big money. This is tyranny, and Nader2000’s argument is the classic “pragmatic” argument of the collaborator.
Past collaborators with tyranny have always sought to justify their positions just as Nader2000 does. Those who went along with American slavery, those who collaborated with Nazis, those who collaborated with apartheid & the tsars — all basically argued that one must be “pragmatic” and accept the ruling but patently undemocratic power structure of their respective eras. It is clear what that kind of thinking leads to.
I am proud that my two senators, Byrd and Rockefeller are on this list, voting to end the war. Unfortunately, their voices are not enough to end this and I am becoming more and more discouraged. I am wondering if anything can be done to get this country on the right track?
RESPONSES
barely human-
> “I… explained before that Nader and the Greens did not throw the election to Bush. Election fraud did. The election was stolen. You’re laying the blame for an avalanch on a single snowflake again.”
In Florida and New Hampshire alone, Nader’s vote was well large enough to have turned the election IN SPITE of any and all vote fraud (and the issue would never have gone to the Supreme or any other Court). But this way understates the Nader factor, because Nader took a huge bite out of the progressive activist base that otherwise might have mobilized to prevent Bush and Dick, whose statements and collection of cronies showed clearly how dangerous they were, from attaining power (and electing Gore, who by now we know would have been a reasonably good president as they go).
So comparing Nader to a snowflake is pretty silly. A balance analogy would be better. First, you have two huge boulders of relatively equal weight - the base votes for Gore and Bush. Then the independents, who again divide about equally. At this point it is close but Gore is the winner. Then Nader comes along and chips a big chunk off Gore’s base, and puts it in his own little pan where it does absolutely nothing. Then Republican dirty tricks take another chunk. Together, the two chunks removed from the Gore pan just barely tip the balance, and the Supremes get a chance to call it.
Any way you look at it, the Nader factor was decisive. It was ONE DECISIVE FACTOR AND NOT THE ONLY DECISIVE FACTOR. That is, it was large enough that had it been absent things would have gone the other way; other factors were also so large but you cannot escape the fact that Nader made a decisive contribution to putting Bush in the White House and he did so knowingly, willingly, and deliberately. Nader and all those who helped him are personally responsible for doing this.
> “And when you respond to electoral fraud by calling for the criminalization of third parties”
That misstates my proposal to ban third parties. It is not a matter of criminalization; the point is, under such a proposal there would simply be two slots on the general election ballot. Nobody would be put in jail for any type of political activity they wanted to engage in, but nobody could get on the ballot except by running in the primary for nomination by one of the two parties - and anybody could run in the primaries, supported by any non-party political organizations (which is essentially how it is already).
Party officers would also be elected directly by voters in the same publicly run primary elections. This would essentially formalize the two-party system as a runoff system, which is pretty much what it is already.
newageartist -
> “Iowa Democratic Party stood by and allowed Kucinich to be banned from the Iowa debate…. if progressive Democrats can’t even get support from their own party apparatus when they choose to run for higher office how can they be expected to change their corrupt party from inside?”
This is an excellent example of why progressives can’t just sit on the sidelines, play protest and pretend politics and watch someone like Kucinich try to carry the progressive banner within the Party. We need to get into the Party machine, put on some weight and start throwing it around.
thedeed -
Thanks for your thoughtful comments but there is one point I disagree with:
> “We are forced to submit to this game, or rather, as you point out, some are selected as players while the others are powerless onlookers.”
I am trying to say that the game is the game, and we can play it as well as anyone else can. I don’t think the rules are the problem, I think the problem is just that corporate forces are so powerful and progressive forces are so disorganized (in no small part thanks to pretend politics). I think we are the ones who decide whether to be players or powerless onlookers. Choosing to be a purist and wearing your beliefs on your shirt as a personal identity statement, as a first priority over meaningful participation in the process of actual decisionmaking in this country, is opting for powerlessness.
seriousprofessor-
> “The difference in our arguments is that yours begins and ends with an election cycle, and mine looks at a longer term. A rational person might ask how we got where we are. I hope I don’t need to explain to you the rightward shift of the US political landscape in the last generation.”
You certainly don’t need to explain this to me. Maybe you should explain it to yourself and friends in the let’s-pretend-we’re-a-party movement. Because it is this overall rightward shift which explains why the Democrats we have are so unsatisfying to those of us on the progressive side. They are running for election in this environment and they either win or they’re out of business. Unlike pretend political parties which stay in (small) business even though they never win at all.
So, what explains the overall rightward shift? A lot of factors. The tightening of corporate control over the mainstream mass media is one, for sure. Pressure from globalization and immigration, deindustrialization, deunionization, urban violence, continuing suburbanization and atomization, electronic entertainment and infotainment, the role of the military complex, the dropping out (and graying) of the turned-on generation, the failure to build a progressive mass movement and link it to some kind of electoral strategy that makes sense.
Politicians go where the votes are. When money and corporate media control votes, guess what happens? The DLC is a symptom more than a cause.
RichM-
> “First, with phrases like “…throwing their votes at Nader and Greens and other third-party soapbox make-believe candidates,” and “This will require you to hold your snobbish nose…“, etc, Nader2000 makes clear that he holds genuine progressives in precisely the same contempt that the Democratic Party does.”
Not at all. My contempt is directed at snobbery and pretense. Genuine progressives act in ways that move us forward. Fake progressives want us all to know how righteous and pure they are.
> “what he’s really telling you here is that you must surrender your right to stand for your own ideals”
Not at all. Stand for your own ideals, please. Speak up in a loud and clear voice, and don’t let them shout you down. EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR.
I am talking about an electoral strategy. Now, it seems that there are a lot of people who find their voices precisely once every four years, when a presidential election cycle comes around. The rest of the time they are silent and sullen. But every four years, they can pack a stadium to hear Ralph Nader, like a televangelist, promising nothing less than a revolution if you’ll only just BELIEVE.
Apologists explain that people only pay attention to politics at election time, so it’s a great opportunity to raise issues and spread progressive ideas. And so it is, except for one thing.
AT ELECTION TIME WE ELECT AN ACTUAL PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
WHO HAS ACTUAL POLICIES AND DROPS ACTUAL BOMBS ON ACTUAL PEOPLE.
So, it seems to me that, while we should all speak up all the time (do some listening to each other, too) and speak for what we believe and try to persuade people to share our ideas, at election time there is something else we should be thinking about, which is how our actions are going to affect millions of people over the coming four years.
And by the way, we ought to be thinking about this in terms of Congressional and state and local elections, too.
> “assuming a political universe forever restricted to just D & R…. Nothing in the Constitution ever said there should be only 2 parties”
The Constitution we have makes the two-party system inevitable, because there is only one president, each state gets only two senators and most states do not get enough representatives to have proportional representation. In actuality, we elect senators, representatives, presidents, governors, and most offices on a distict-by-district, winner-take-all basis. This is what makes a two-party system the only stable arrangement and one that cannot be beaten by trying to organize a third party.
Nader2000:
What a shame that when confronted with your juvenile insults, you take no responsibility for them and in fact resort to more.
This is as unconvincing as your shaky grasp on cause-and-effect.
I could resort to your level, but I’d rather not.
Instead, I remind you yet again that your pose of arrogant presumption and proprietary claim on progressive votes is simpleminded to the point of ridicule.
I also remind you, yet again, that being compelled to vote for those whose positions are opposite the voter makes electoral politics a farce.
Good luck in getting both manners and reason before your next post.
“In Florida and New Hampshire alone, Nader’s vote was well large enough to have turned the election IN SPITE of any and all vote fraud (and the issue would never have gone to the Supreme or any other Court).”
I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here “looking dumb”.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm
Nader got 97,421 “votes,” by the way. Some of those could’ve easily been given to him by Diebold to divert attention from the Republicans. The fraud was easily extensive enough to have turned the election without Nader. He just makes a convenient patsy for the major parties.
I like this thread. Some great points:-
* Electorates that only elect a few representatives always result in a two party system.
I once used to work with a Russian who used to say that the only thing worse than a two party system was a one party system.
* The elections rely on campaign donations from corporations and the super rich.
* The bounds of discourse as well as what facts are considered worth mentioning are controlled by a media controlled, once again by corporations and the super rich.
Oh dear, I am afraid this is almost a democracy of DOLLARs. It is most definitely not the worlds greatest democracy, but a plutocracy. You just cant win with this system. This system guarantees that the rich will have their way.
Consider, on the other hand, a system where people were elected by a lottery ( or lotto where the balls combine to give a social security number. By the laws of of probability, this would guarantee that those elected are a representative sample of the electorate. Think about it. That is a better system. Remeber it next time you get to write a constitution.
braithwe842 (4:52 am) - you’re right. A lottery would in fact be better, in many respects. It would clearly be fairer, & would avoid the problem of plutocracy — which is a serious enough defect to turn society into a tyranny of the rich (not to mention physically destroying the planet).
At first glance, some might object that a lottery would choose stupid and/or uneducated people as representatives. Yet, on balance, it would still be hard to do worse than the current system — which systematically selects cunning & ruthless white-collar criminals, Bible-thumpers, demagogues, & others with no integrity.
If any proof were needed for the proposition that we no longer have a two-party system, but a single corporate party, that our electoral process has become a total farce, the performance of this “Democratic” Congress and the current presidential campaign are the final blows. Clearly, they are all feeding from the same toxic trough. Regard for public opinion has been reduced to considerations of crowd control. What remains to we common folk is to find, to allow to evolve, methods of increasing political and economic pressure upon the powers that be, a growing refusal to recognize and then refusal to cooperate. The first step is easy, begin as my family has, DO NOT PATRONIZE THE CORPORATE MEDIA IN ANY WAY, not even the cable or satellite companies. They have been the major players in the corruption of our nation, without whose complicity we could not fallen so low so fast. They sell lies and compulsive consumption. Note above that the military appropriation bill’s passage was buried in the last pages of the New York Times, our nation’s chief liar. Get your news and entertainment from the internet, independent publications, films, and, gosh, conversation. Let the TV be a monitor for film only. Ban advertisements from your home! This would be a first, great refusal. For what might follow, let us remember Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
@RichM - “At first glance, some might object that a lottery would choose stupid and/or uneducated people as representatives.”
You have identified the most major flaw with such a system. The proposed form of “election” can only be “part” of the solution in order to produce a real democracy.
I have spent some time thinking about alternatives, over a space of a year. One combination might be as follows:-
* The lower parliamentary house, (the one where bills are usually initiated from) can have large electorates. That will result in a true multi party system.
* The upper parliamentary house should be elected by lottery (or televised lotto). Now the party politics driven lower house must persuade the commoner upper house. If the upper house are sworn to uphold the will of the people rather than the will of the parties, this might work. The upper house should also be given the ability to initiate bills.
* But the most important fix has to be one that fixes the media. Corporate ownership of media must be changed to one of distributed ownership of the media. Media shares should only be owned by individuals. One individual may not own more than a single share. The ratio of readership to shares should be kept at 100 to 1. If for example a medium reaches a million people, then there must be ten thousand shares. Ownership of more than a single share by an individual simply voids one share, and the government must create another for sale.
Note that the above solution will still leave the rich as the most powerful people. This is because the lower house would end up being quite good at persuading the upper house. The rich will still control the media to some extent because the corporate world would control the advertising dollars.
But the above solution would reduce the power of the rich to that of a fairer, more tolerable democracy.
The MainStream Media (MSM) tells us to focus on the front runners only and forget about the also rans.
This may be a reasonable strategy if you are gaming the next election only and all humanity depends on that outcome.
Some people don’t like slightly “less evilism” and think in longer terms and want to grow a progressive movement over time. To that end, it would be nice to get an actual count of people who can see past and had enough of the Clintons and other front runners. A third party serves this basic purpose. None of the above as Ralph Nader puts it.
Looking at the third party numbers over the past few elections, it is clear these numbers have been shrinking. Why are third parties shrinking in numbers? A lot has to do with the MSM message mentioned above. Scare tactics by the Dems also works. A bigger issue is that news facts on the ground and actual political messages from third party candidates are garbled or ignored by the MSM.
This third party shrinking trend may not continue because of the Dems failing to fillibuster the Iraq War funding bill or failing to present it without mandatory and complete troop withdrawal. 9/11 being considered as an inside job by more and more people could also stop the shrinkage. To that end, Cynthia McKinney’s candidacy is a good barometer.
The real fight is between the MSM and the news websites, financially independent of the Iraq/class war machine. The MSM is consolidating their battlegrounds and have recently taken to swallowing newspapers.
Register Democrat and vote for the most progressive choice in the primary. Then vote for the best choice in the general election including third party candidates, unless you can have an acceptable second best candidate with a better chance of winning. In other words you have to pre-guess your own ranked choice voting, given that we may never get ranked choice at the federal level. Please check out demochoice.org.
Another progressive hope is to create a system to certify candidates who do not take large money donations, thereby prohibiting the influence of major corporations and other rich doners. It’s not about (R) verses (D) or front runners with the largest donations verses honorable also rans. It should be about clean elections and open access to all the facts.
Unfortunately we could be snookered. Corporations have been labelled as citizens of these United States and are entitled to their own [televised] free speech on public airwaves and larger than large political donations. [While the average American is $8000 in debt, the Fortune 500 had $610 Billion in profits for 2005.] Whose campaign promises will get broken? See “The Corporation” for more details.
FCUK