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What next for the Democrats?
by Joe Auciello
In the coming months the Democrats will battle fiercely over policy,
perspectives, and personalities as they try to understand and place blame
for their debacle in the 2004 presidential and congressional elections.
Any organization that suffers a setback or loss tends to turn in on
itself to find someone or some reason to explain the defeat. In 2000 the
Democrats were spared this painful process by venting their fury on the convenient
target of Ralph Nader and the Greens.
Normally, though, a losing group will fight, factionalize, and fracture.
Failure finds blame—or blame follows failure.
This phenomenon unfolds every Thursday night on television’s “The
Apprentice.” The losing group backstabs each other until, before 17 million
viewers, Donald Trump grandly announces to that week’s scapegoat: “You’re
fired!”
But what happens to the Democrats when America itself “fires” the
party’s presidential nominee? Past experience says the Democrats will turn
inwards. Left, center, and right will battle each other in a dispute as
ugly as any family quarrel can be. Ultimately, a victor will emerge from
this dogfight; unity will be
proclaimed once more, and in 2007-2008 the dance of the two parties
will commence yet again.
And once again, as in 2003-2004, all of the movements for
progressive social change will come under enormous pressure to put aside
political principles for
“practical” politics and to back the Democratic presidential
nominee. It would be the wrong decision.
No matter which wing of the Democrats gets the upper hand in the
party, the Democrats will never become a real alternative to the
Republicans. Despite the misplaced trust many progressive activists place
in the Democrats, this party will continue to be a champion of big
business, racism, and war.
A swing to the
right?
For Peter Beinart, writing in The New Republic, (Nov. 22, 2004), the
duel of left versus right has not begun soon enough. His recommendation? A
leap to the right: “The Democrats need an ideological shift on foreign policy
akin to the domestic policy shift ushered in by Bill Clinton. When that
shift begins, division will replace unity and the bloodletting will begin.
It can’t start a moment too soon.”
A favorable reference to Clinton’s “domestic policy shift” is a
codeword for the wholesale abandonment of the pretense of fulfilling any of
the Democratic
Party’s liberal-sounding past promises to the working class,
oppressed minorities, and the poor. Clinton, after all, created a tax
policy to favor the wealthy and gave tax hikes to the working class while
gutting social programs, including welfare. He signed the Defense of
Marriage Act, supported the death penalty, and the anti-labor free trade
agreements favored by big business.
Many Democratic politicians speak out bluntly for a swing to the
right. Dan Gerstein, a consultant and strategist for Senator Joe Lieberman,
faults his
fellow Democrats for “too often kowtowing to the antiwar wing of the
party” and “showing unease with the use of [military] force.”
He argues that “Democrats have to break out of our stale political
grooves,” which “means declaring our independence from the sclerotic
influence of
progress-blocking interest groups like the teachers unions—and being
willing, as Bill Clinton was, to challenge outdated party orthodoxies” (The
Wall Street
Journal, Nov. 11, 2004).
But exactly what orthodoxies and liberal policies do the Democrats
have left to abandon? They support not only the Iraq war but the underlying
idea of the “Bush doctrine,” that the United States has the right to intervene
militarily anywhere in the world any time the American ruling class demands
it. Democrats and Republicans differed only on the most effective means
of mobilizing domestic and foreign support.
“Take back the
party”
Had Kerry been elected, a movement in opposition to his policies
inevitably would have developed. No doubt many activists would have been
siphoned off into some campaign for a more liberal Democrat. But others
would have learned from their own experience to reject the Democrats
entirely and would have begun looking for an alternative, more effective
means of changing the
world for the better.
Now the Democrats will exploit and benefit from the anger and
outrage likely to follow in the wake of the Republican victories in
Congress and the White House.
The “throw-the-bums-out” sentiment, a hallmark of the two-party
shell game, will swing in favor of the party that lost the presidential
election in 2004.
In the name of “realism,” many activists will continue to shackle
themselves to the Democratic Party. The chains are being forged already.
With blustery
rhetoric, MoveOn, described by the Associated Press as a “liberal
powerhouse,” is stirring its supporters.
An e-mail from MoveOn’s political action committee said, “For years,
the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to
corporate
lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base… But we can’t afford
four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional
election losers.” The
message continued, “Now it’s our party: we bought it, we own it, and
we’re going to take it back.”
Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future,
and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, also try to rally the
troops for a fresh assault to capture the Democratic Party leadership: “Progressives
drive this party now—we provide the energy, the organizers, the ground
forces, the ideas and much of the money. We should organize the opposition.
… We win by being the party of progress, not by blurring differences with
the new
reactionaries” (“Progressives: Get Ready to Fight,” in The Nation,
Nov. 29, 2004).
Of course, progressive activists do not make the fundamental decisions
in the party. The Democratic Party is not democratic, and its leadership
bodies are
not accountable to the members. Party leaders and officeholders are
tied to their corporate masters, who donate millions to their chosen
candidates’ campaigns and who expect a good return on their investment.
Some third-party formations have already indicated an urge to
surrender. The Green Party, whose 2004 candidate, David Cobb, barely
registered in the
national elections, will likely focus on local electoral contests
and cede the presidential ground to the Democrats. Medea Benjamin, Green
party candidate for Senator in California in 2000, explained in a recent
interview, “The whole Presidential campaign has been devastating for the
Greens. … Presidential elections are not where Greens can have an impact
now” (The Progressive, December 2004).
Benjamin does not call for a political break with the Democrats—far
from it: “Dems, Greens and other progressives must not only respect one
another’s
choices, we must start using these different ‘inside-outside’
strategies to our collective advantage. A strategically placed Green/
progressive pull could conceivably prevent a suicidal Democratic lurch to
the right” (The Nation, Dec. 20, 2004).
A “safety valve” for
protest
The Democrats may not regain power, but, despite dire pundit
predictions, they will not commit suicide or disappear. The Democrats will
continue to function as a “safety valve” for popular protest, a vehicle to absorb
and demobilize the mass movements that can be expected to arise in the
future. As Malcolm X once pointed out, “the shrewd capitalists, the shrewd
imperialists knew that the only way people would run toward the fox
would be if you showed them a wolf.”
More than 90 years ago, the founder of Russia’s Bolshevik Party
outlined the political framework that exists today: “Champions of reforms
and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order
until they realize that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten
it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes.
And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those
classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the
forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power
capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and
organize those forces for the struggle” (V.I. Lenin, “The Three Sources and
Three Component Parts of Marxism”).
Socialists, then, will continue to raise the real alternative, the
class alternative. The future will require no less. The struggle against
the Iraq war, a consequence of Republican and Democratic policies, will
continue. As their rights are threatened, women and African Americans will
look for ways to speak up and fight back. Civil liberties will continue to
be threatened—and defended.
As historian Howard Zinn often says, “More important than who sits
in the White House is who sits outside it.”
Socialists will help build all of the social and political struggles
to come. Such efforts will lay the basis for electoral campaigns
independent of the twin
capitalist parties by building a party of the working class.
*This
article first appeared in the January 2005 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper.
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