There is no reason to assume, as many do, that a Gore presidency would have avoided war after September 11. Clinton oversaw UN-sponsored sanctions against Iraq that led to the deaths of more than 1 million Iraqis, and U.S. warplanes dropped bombs on Iraq almost daily during his time in office. And Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, calling for the U.S. "to seek to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein." Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admits in a recent Foreign Affairs article, "I personally felt [Bush’s new Iraq] war was justified on the basis of Saddam’s decade-long refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions on weapons of mass destruction."
DEBATING THE ELECTIONS
SHARON SMITH:
The Democrats don’t deserve our support
September 19, 2003 | Page 6
SHARON SMITH is a Socialist Worker columnist,
contributor to the book Iraq Under Siege and a member
of the International Socialist Organization.
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AFTER THE 2000 election, Green Party presidential
candidate Ralph Nader was roundly denounced by
Democrats as a "spoiler" who helped George Bush defeat
Al Gore (ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisive
role during the Florida debacle in stealing the
election for Bush). As the 2004 election approaches,
the vast majority of the left--including many who
campaigned for Nader in 2000--has made defeating Bush
(by implication, with a Democrat) its number one
priority.
The Green Party itself is considering a "safe states"
strategy--campaigning for a Green candidate only in
states where Democrats or Republicans hold an
uncontested majority, effectively an endorsement of
the Democrats. As left-wing journalist Norman Solomon
wrote recently, "The Bush team has neared some
elements of fascism," while Z Magazine’s Michael
Albert argued, "However bad his replacement may turn
out, replacing Bush will improve the subsequent mood
of the world and its prospects for survival."
These are widely accepted justifications for rallying
behind the Democrats as "the lesser of two evils." By
this "lesser evil" logic, many progressives now
attracted to Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich because
of their opposition to the Iraq war will ultimately
end up supporting a mainstream Democrat who seeks to
win swing votes from the Republicans. Dean
himself--who boasts, "I was a triangulator before
Clinton was a triangulator"--might well fit the bill.
Out of sheer hatred for Bush, progressives can agree
that the war party in power should be brought down.
But the Democratic Party is a war party in waiting.
"Lesser evil" support for the Democrats has been
repeated by sections of the left every four years
since the Great Depression. But far from broadening
the scope of left-wing politics, it has stunted the
development of a radical social movement in the U.S.
For this reason, it is necessary to view the role of
"lesser evil" politics historically.
The term "fascist" has also been applied to
conservative Republicans Barry Goldwater in 1964,
Richard Nixon in the 1970s, as well as Ronald Reagan
and George Bush Sr. in the 1980s, to express the
urgency of voting Democrat on Election Day. To be
sure, this Bush administration, dominated by
neoconservatives, models itself on Reagan’s.
And there are differences between the Democratic and
Republican Parties on issues such as abortion rights.
But the two parties, each funded and controlled by
corporate donors, agree on fundamental aims, if not on
the strategies to achieve them.
Both are pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist--dedicated
to furthering the interests of the U.S. ruling class
at home and expanding U.S. power globally. Bloody wars
and political repression are neither unique to this
Bush administration, nor to Republicans.
Democrat Harry Truman’s first presidential act was to
order two atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lyndon Johnson, the
Democratic Party’s "peace candidate" in 1964, had by
1965 massively escalated the Vietnam War--a war that
killed 1.3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S.
soldiers.
Nor is Bush’s USA PATRIOT Act the first time that the
party in power has used large-scale repression at
home. Democrat Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act
of 1917, banning protest against U.S. participation in
the First World War, and his administration detained
and deported thousands of immigrants. In 1942,
Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt forcibly
"relocated" the entire Japanese-American population on
the West Coast into concentration camps for the rest
of the Second World War.
The Democratic Party’s reputation as a liberal
alternative to the Republicans is greatly
exaggerated--mainly by its liberal supporters. One
need look no further back than the Clinton
administration.
As a candidate in 1992, Clinton promised to "put
people first," but instead of advancing liberal
principles, Clinton stole the Republican’s agenda on
key issues. The hallmark of Clinton’s presidency was
ending "welfare as we know it" in 1996--dismantling
61-year-old New Deal legislation obliging the
government to provide income support to the poor.
Clinton also helped to pave the way for Bush’s USA
PATRIOT Act when he signed the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act. Also in 1996, Clinton
signed the Defense of Marriage Act, banning gay
marriage, and under his tenure, the U.S. prison
population nearly doubled in size.
There is no reason to assume, as many do, that a Gore
presidency would have avoided war after September 11.
Clinton oversaw UN-sponsored sanctions against Iraq
that led to the deaths of more than 1 million Iraqis,
and U.S. warplanes dropped bombs on Iraq almost daily
during his time in office. And Clinton signed the Iraq
Liberation Act in 1998, calling for the U.S. "to seek
to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein."
Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admits
in a recent Foreign Affairs article, "I personally
felt [Bush’s new Iraq] war was justified on the basis
of Saddam’s decade-long refusal to comply with UN
Security Council resolutions on weapons of mass
destruction."
There is another reason why supporting the Democrats
as a "lesser evil" is a mistake. For nearly a century,
this logic has blocked the possibility for building an
alternative to the left of the Democrats. Every four
years, leftists must betray their principles simply to
keep a Republican out of office.
In 1964, antiwar activists adopted the slogan "Half
the way with LBJ," only to see Johnson escalate the
Vietnam War. In the 1990s, liberals scurried to
provide cover for Clinton’s welfare repeal. As former
Health and Human Services official Peter Edelman
noted, "So many of those who would have shouted from
the rooftops if a Republican president had done this
were boxed in by their desire to see the president
reelected."
Largely because the left and the labor movement have
remained tied to the coattails of the Democratic Party
since the 1930s, the U.S. remains the only advanced
industrial society without a labor or social
democratic party funded by unions instead of big
business. If the left is to move forward, its
collective memory must stretch further back than the
last Republican administration--and it must set its
sights much higher than promoting the current crop of
Democratic Party contenders.
As social activist Howard Zinn argued in the pages of
this newspaper, "[T]he really critical thing isn’t who
is sitting in the White House but who is sitting
in--in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of
government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who
is occupying offices and demonstrating--those are the
things that determine what happens."
The course of the struggle, not the outcome of the
2004 elections, will shape the future of the left--and
experience has shown that endorsing the Democratic
Party pulls the left into its fold, not the other way
around.