Socialist Action /September 2002
Hoping not to 'Spoil' the Democrats'
Chances!
By BOB MATTINGLY
Peter Camejo, the Green Party candidate for California's governor, didn't
coin the expression, "I'd rather vote for what I want and not get it,
than vote for what I don't want and get it." But at one time, that
well-known declaration by the U.S. labor leader and socialist presidential
candidate Eugene V. Debs was a principle for Camejo.
In his younger days Camejo (who served as the Socialist Workers Party's
presidential candidate in 1976) argued strenuously that Debs was right,
and to vote for bosses' candidates and their parties strengthened the bosses'
hand at workers' expense.
These days Camejo is promoting a ballot scheme that simultaneously allows
a vote based on conscience, and another based on the lesser-of-two-evils
ballot snare-and-trap that Camejo rightly used to rail against.
As Camejo campaigns for state office, the would-be governor is also campaigning
for Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which means, says Camejo's campaign material,
that "instead of voting for one candidate on a ballot, you get to list
the candidates you like in order of preference. If no candidate gets over
50 percent and your first choice is eliminated, your second choice is counted."
In other words, to go back in time, a class-conscious worker using the
IRV scheme could have cast a ballot for Eugene V. Debs, and then to make
sure that the "lesser of two evils" candidate Republican Charles
Evens Hughes wasn't elected president, the worker could have also voted
for Democrat Woodrow Wilson-notably remembered as the president who led
the U.S. into the "war to save democracy," actually an inter-imperialist
war over the colonies, including the oil rich Middle East.
Wilson also is infamously remembered for imprisoning Debs, his one time
socialist presidential opponent. Debs was arrested in 1918 on charges of
interfering with the federal conscription laws following a speech in which
he declared, "The master class has always declared wars; the subject
class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain
and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
all to lose-especially their lives."
"Gore would have won"
Camejo is telling the Democrats that with the IRV scheme in place, his
campaign and generally the Green Party's election campaigns need not spoil
the Democrats' chances of getting elected-in fact, the IRV proposal may
help them get elected.
"If we had instant runoffs in the 2000 presidential election,"
the Greens say, "Al Gore would have won uncontroversially, because
Nader voters who listed Gore as their second choice would have carried the
vote for Gore."
The Greens are sensitive to the Democratic Party politicians who patronizingly
say that the Greens may be well-meaning folks but they are "spoilers."
Camejo's tact is to urge the Democrats to enact IRV laws, and tell them,
"If you do not, it is you, and not any third party candidates, who
have spoiled the elections."
Perhaps that's a slip of the tongue, or maybe it isn't. If it isn't,
it means that the Greens believe that the Democrats are somehow better for
America's workers than the Republicans. Which is the same as believing that
some corporations are better for American workers than others, since the
Greens say the Democratic Party and the Republican Party both are beholden
to corporate America.
Despite the Democratic Party's fidelity to corporate America's agenda,
the Greens are trying to pressure the Democratic Party to reform. They've
not even given thought to building a party that Debs could have proudly
backed. Instead, they are attempting to build an outside pressure group
that takes the form of a political party in order to get (without being
"spoilers") the influence they haven't able to obtain inside the
Democratic Party.
Coincidently or not, during the past two decades there have been many
attempts by liberals, progressives, populists, and self-styled socialists
to find ways to influence the Democratic Party honchos, even as more and
more disappointed Americans have stopped voting, often not even registering
to vote. Despite all the reformers' efforts, workers' living standards continue
to decline, and wars, not always declared, continue to be waged.
The reformers claim some victories: some living wage measures adopted,
and some municipal offices won; but the profound demobilization of the working-class
majority is unaffected, as is corporate America.
An "inside-outside" maneuver
In New York and in Connecticut, some labor unions have organized what
they call Working Families Parties (WFP). They are unambiguously attempting
to implement an "inside-outside" maneuver to influence the Democrats,
at least on the local level.
They openly say that they do not want to spoil the Democrats' chances
of wielding state power, although they might theoretically back a Republican
politician from time to time. In New York, the sponsoring unions include
state or local affiliates of the autoworkers, communication workers, teachers,
building trades, and Teamsters.
To date, they seem satisfied with their results, which they get by trading
their members' votes in order to get concessions from Democrats.
"To achieve this leverage, the [WFP] has used sophisticated voter
canvassing, populist appeals and lots of shoe leather to draw double-digit
support in many races," writes a sympathetic Michah L. Sirfy in a feature
article for the Nation (Nov. 6, 2000).
Sirfy reports, "What's given Working Families real muscle is the
party's demonstrated ability, in a series of lower-level elections over
the past year, to mobilize blacks, Latinos and other minorities, along with
white blue-collar workers and suburban independents, around an economic
populist agenda as well as the concept of a new independent party."
But of course, the WFP isn't an independent party at all. It's a pressure
group trading the votes of Blacks, Latinos, and blue-collar workers (the
WRP garnered 100,000 votes for Hillary Clinton's senatorial election).
Says the WFP's Connecticut director, "What really made the [New
York WFP] a player was they used their ballot line in a strategic way. ...
It really comes from making strategic decisions about how to use their ballot
line and from doing very good grassroots work. We're capable of doing the
same things here."
The Working Families Party's gimmick of getting workers to vote for Clinton
and other corporate candidates brings to mind the union officials mostly
in the New York garment industry that in the 1930s set up an outfit called
the American Labor Party, in order to curb some workers' lifelong tradition
of refusing to back capitalist candidates, Democrats and Republicans.
Though seemingly a WFP sympathizer, the Nation's Sirfy worries
that the WFD, "especially in the top-of-the ballot-races," might
appear to be "a mere adjunct of the Democratic Party."
Sirfy's concerns however don't disturb the populist jokester Jim Hightower,
who most seriously endorsed the Clinton endorsement gambit: "If people
are going to vote for Hillary over [Republican] Lazio, which certainly makes
sense, what better way to put your vote to work for the long-term progressive
agenda, which the WPF represents in New York than by voting [for Clinton]
on the [WFP] party's Line H."
Of course, what would make better sense than backing corporate candidates,
including Hillary Clinton, would be if union officials took their members'
declining living standards seriously and started strategizing on how to
independently and politically mobilize their members, while they still have
enough members to matter.
If it makes sense not to settle for company unions, certainly it makes
as much sense not to settle for company political parties. Certainly that
notion made sense to Debs and events since his death in 1924 only confirm
the rightness of his political views about the Democratic and the Republican
parties.
Socialist Action /September 2002 |