If anyone harbored even a faint hope that the Democratic Party would fight for the rights of the disenfranchised, that hope has been ground into dust. Not only did Al Gore abandon his constituency by moving his party to the right, he abandoned them again when they had their votes stolen by the Republican machine in Florida.
It's bad enough that Gore refused to fight for the rights of labor, minorities, and women during eight years of the Clinton Administration. That he pushed through NAFTA, broke every promise on the environment, supported the death penalty, abolished welfare, violated everyone's civil rights with a phony war on drugs, and refused to fight for universal health care.
It's bad enough that he accepted the legalized bribes of corporate America and granted every item on their wish list. That he abandoned every principle of progressivism and transformed the Democratic Party into a second right wing of the Republican Party.
It's bad enough that he refused to accept responsibility for his betrayals, and his failure to inspire the voters. That he blamed the Nader campaign for stealing votes from him, and orchestrated a scurrilous attack on the Green Party and its supporters as spoilers.
But the worst betrayal of all came in Florida. Despite violations of the Voting Rights Act and the most blatant denial of civil rights since Jim Crow, despite intimidation and dirty tricks and the ethnic cleansing of voter lists, he constructed a legal strategy based on states' rights rather than voting rights.
And he lost. Poetic justice, really, since he got out-manuevered by the Republicans and
out-conservatived by the Supreme Court. When it came to racial discrimination and voting inequities, the Court looked the other way. But then they pulled a fast one. With a straight face, they invoked the equal protection clause to stop the recount. Republicans are really better at this sort of hypocrisy.
Gore's double betrayal cost him the election. But maybe it's just the political shock treatment this country needs. It shatters any illusions that the Democrats will ever redeem themselves. It opens the way for a long-overdue set of democratic electoral reforms. It just may become the rallying cry of a new multiracial generation, as we cast off the chains of the two-party system. As the last shreds of legitimacy fall away, could it be that we're free at last?
Susan Lina Ruggles is a member of AFT Local 212 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. An edited version of this article ran in the December 21 issue of the Shepherd Express Metro.
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