[Peace-discuss] What then is to be done?

Thu Nov 4 10:53:02 CST 2004

[Mark Weisbrot is well-known to people around C-U.  His column seems to me
to describe in basic terms what's needed.  There's a procedural question
about whether any of that can be done through a party, the Democrats,
wholly owned by big business.  I doubt it, but that doesn't mean it should
be entirely abandoned.  Anti-war and social justice movements should work
through all the political formations that corporate control allows -- the
two official parties (including the Republicans) and a possible third
party. Unlike Europe, US capitalism has not had to concede a mass
reformist party on the left (like British Labour) -- and of course then
work to undermine it (like British Labour) -- but that may now be possible
in the US, a generation late. I don't think much procedural dogmatism is
in order -- beyond insisting that we have to talk to people who don't
agree with us.  Let a hundred flowers bloom, a thousand schools of thought
contend (as St. Clement of Alexandria said in the 2nd century).  --CGE]

	November 4, 2004
	Democrats Need New Electoral Strategy

George W. Bush has been returned to office, with an increased
Congressional majority for his party. Amazingly, he achieved this after
dragging the country into a disastrous war that had nothing to do with our
national security, and on the basis of lies. And after sacrificing the
lives of more than 1100 Americans and probably 100,000 Iraqis (mostly
innocents).

On the home front, he was the first president in 70 years to preside over
a net loss of jobs. Wages have been falling even as the economy grows. He
rewrote the tax-code to favor the richest Americans, and stuck the rest of
us with a bill in the form of the largest national debt -- as a share of
the economy -- in more than half a century.

This election result cries out for explanation, and unfortunately all the
wrong answers are flooding the media. The pundits tell us that people
don't vote their economic interests, that September 11th changed
everything, that "values" are what really matters. Disillusioned and
depressed Democrats blame the ignorance of the American electorate, an
explanation that resonates abroad.

Ignorance is a problem, although it is a willful ignorance that has little
to do with formal education. A poll last month found 75 percent of Bush
supporters believing that Saddam Hussein gave substantial support to
Al-Qaeda, and 72 percent asserting that Iraq really did have weapons of
mass destruction or major WMD development programs.

But Bush's vote total was less than 27 percent of the electorate, even
with the record turnout. Compared to other democracies, this country
discourages voting. If we held our elections on the weekend and allowed
for same-day registration, a much bigger and more representative
electorate would choose our government. The Republican party as we know it
would have little chance at capturing the presidency or Congress.

Even today, Democrats could win by appealing to voters' economic
interests. Hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters lost their jobs during the
Bush presidency, but what could John Kerry tell them would change if he
were elected? The leadership of his party supported most of the policies
that have -- over the last 30 years -- eliminated decent-paying jobs for
working people and caused a massive redistribution of income from working
and middle-class Americans to the rich.

What if the Democrats put forth a real alternative, including health
coverage for everyone, family leave, affordable college and child care,
for example? This is not pie in the sky but the rights of citizenship in
most European countries that are no richer than we are.

Of course Democrats would have to deliver the goods. But once they began
to do so, Republicans would have a hard time cobbling together
"majorities" on the basis of issues such as gay marriage, gun control, or
coded appeals to racism.

As for terrorism, people in New York and Washington DC -- the sites of the
9/11 attacks and the most likely victims of future terrorism -- voted
overwhelmingly (82 percent in Manhattan and 90 percent in DC) to oust
Bush. Most of the rest of the country is also capable of understanding
that wars of conquest against the Arab and Muslim world will only blow up
in our faces. But the Democrats will have to be much more honest in
explaining these things.

Proof from Wisconsin: Democrat Russ Feingold just won his third term in
the U.S. Senate by a comfortable margin, in a state where Kerry barely
squeaked by. Feingold has a clear and consistent populist economic appeal
to his working constituents, strongly opposed the Iraq war, and was the
only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. There is the future of the
Democratic party -- if they have the guts to try it.

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Mark Weisbrot is co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, in Washington, DC (www.cepr.net).

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