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archived: 28 Mar - 3 Apr, 2004 Back Next April 1, 2004 UPDATE
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS, In this column I present a few thoughts on political issues, both substantive and process, that might be of use to Sen. Kerry. I begin with an abridged version of an open letter that Walter Cronkite wrote to the Senator last month. (c) 2004 Walter Cronkite, the letter was originally published on Friday, March 19, 2004 by King Features Syndicate. (There no indication that it was not intended for wide distribution, without specific permission. In Defense Of Liberalism “Dear Senator Kerry, In the interests of your campaign and your party's desire to unseat George W. Bush, you have some explaining to do. During the primary campaign, your Democratic opponents accused you of flip-flopping on several important issues, such as your vote in favor of the Iraq War resolution. Certainly your sensitivity to nuance, your ability to see shades of gray where George Bush sees only black and white, explains some of your difficulty. Shades of gray don't do well in political campaigns, where primary colors are the rule. And your long and distinguished service in the Senate has no doubt led to genuine changes in some positions. But the denial that you are a liberal is almost impossible to reconcile. When the National Journal said your Senate record makes you one of the most liberal members of the Senate, you called that "a laughable characterization" and "the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life." Wow! Liberals, who make up a substantial portion of the Democratic Party and a significant portion of the independent vote, are entitled to ask, "What gives?" It isn't just the National Journal that has branded you as a liberal. So has the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action. Senator, check your own Web site. . . . . “What are you ashamed of? Are you afflicted with the Dukakis syndrome -- that loss of nerve that has allowed conservatives both to define and to demonize liberalism for the past decade and more? . . . . If 1988 taught us anything, it is that a candidate who lacks the courage of his convictions cannot hope to convince the nation that he should be given its leadership. You cannot let the Bush league define you or the issues. You have to do that yourself. Take my advice and lay it all out, before it's too late. (Signed, Walter Cronkite)” I am delighted to note that Mr. Cronkite and I share the same enthusiasm for getting control of the agenda as a major key to winning this election. In the context of the “liberal as a dirty word” strategy that the Georgites have already begun using, the Senator might use something like the following recipe (one that I originally sent along to the Dean Campaign [remember it?] some time back): "If 'liberal' means . . . then I am a liberal”
And, add (or delete, sniff, sniff) ingredients as desired. This approach serves to get the agenda onto substance, not negative slogans. Doing so always benefits Democrats and hurts Republicans, especially the Georgite variety. Getting 20% of the 50% Steve Gheen’s excellent column of 3/23/04 detailed the current polling numbers, national and by state. They show a very close race, both in the popular vote and the electoral vote, especially in the so-called “battleground” states. If those numbers hold true, we are in for a very tough fight, and Constitutional democracy could very well lose. The key to this election in my view (and that of others to be sure) is the 50% of eligible voters who don’t ordinarily vote in Presidential elections. (The proportions are even worse for Congressional elections. In that “Gingrich landslide” of 1994, the Republicans won the Congress by getting a total of 19% of the eligible voters nationally to the Democrats’ 18%. Some “landslide!”) The polls show that the number one reason for not voting is that eligible non-voters perceive no differences between the candidates that make the effort worth it. If Kerry can get 20% of the 50%, that is if he can raise participation from 50% to 60% and get the bulk of those usually non-voters to vote for him, he will win in a true landslide. The lesson from the data on why eligible non-voters are non-voters make it quite obvious what Kerry must do. Clearly distinguish himself from Bush, by taking what are mainstream American positions (see the list above) that the Georgites try so hard to define as “left” and can be successful, when they re, only because they are so far to the Right. And yes, distinguishing himself that way will also draw that ever-increasing slice of “Anybody but Bush” customarily-Republican voters to him. The Battle Royal Within the Kerry Camp Inside the Kerry Campaign (at least as of this writing on March 29) I see a battle royal being waged behind the scenes between the DLCers and the Kennedyites whose strategy and tactics got him the nomination. The resurgence of Kerry's primary campaign can be traced to the taking over of it by Mary Beth Cahill from Sen. Kennedy's office and the conversion of both its policies and its rhetoric from DLC type to the Dean and Kennedy type If the latter win the battle, Sen. Kerry will almost certainly beat Bush. If the DLCers win, he is indeed meat (which is what they may, in a Nader-type thought process, want so, they think, they can run Hillary in 2008). On Ralph Nader There has been an increasing amount of stuff coming out on Ralph Nader and his psychodynamics. (If you want to see any of it in detail, get in touch with Michael Carmichael here at TPJ [and by the time this column appears he may have already some of the juicier bits].) I still stand by remarks in my third TPJ column that what we need to do is forget about Ralph Nader, who so far has made himself irredeemable, and focus on what we need to do to win over as many past and potential Nader voters as possible. Well, here is Gary Trudeau's take on that one, which appeared in Doonesbury, Newsday, March 28, 2004: Dad: “And so where does an ex-Deaniac go, Alex?” Alex: “An ex-Deaniac soldiers on, Dad.” Dad: “How?” Alex: “By recalling what got her into politics in the first place. [Next box] It’s absolutely critical that a Democrat win this fall! Nothing else matters! [Next box] So I’ve rechanneled all my anger toward that end. . . [next box] I’ll be blogging around the clock, countering every statement, protesting every appearance, staying on the track 24/7.” Dad: “Poor Bush.” Alex. “No, no. Nader.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. On Dumping Saddam One of the Georgite’s principal arguments in support of the Iraq War has been, “well, no WMD but we got rid of that evil dictator, Saddam. It is not original with me to remark that one might ask, “just how far do you think Bush would gotten in the country or the Congress if in the run-up to the 2002 Congressional elections he had said, 'you know, we need to go to war, spend billions of borrowed money and kill thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans, to get rid of the evil Saddam.’” Not original, but, I think, very useful in attacking the Georgite war rationale. In politically sophisticated audiences, one might also point out that his Party happened to be strong supporter of Saddam’s during the 1980s, when it was politically expedient and Iraq’s oil was on the table, to be protected from the Iranians. In such audiences, one might go even further back in history (all the way to the Reagan Years, oh my) to point out that there were many other similar dictators who Republicans have supported to the enth degree down through the years. Remember Jeanne Kirkpatrick and the hair-splitting difference between "totalitarian" and "authoritarian?" On the Clarke RevelationsI am not going to comment on this material in detail here. By the time this column appears either the issue will still be on the table, and thus analyzed endlessly by others, or the Georgite propaganda machine will have succeeded in making it go away. But there was an interesting quote from Bush on 9/11 that appeared in an article by Philip Shenon and Eric Schmitt (New York Times, March 24, 2004): “President Bush joined in the defense of his administration's performance, telling reporters after a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that if ‘my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on Sept. 11, we would have acted.’" For an Administration that never wants to share any details of any discussions/deliberations it has with the Congress, much less the public, isn’t that rather detailed, rather specific? Rather filled with the implication of deniability for an Administration that seems to have so much to hide? Or in the latter statement, stimulated by their well-documented lack of forth-comingness, I am just being ungenerous? Suspending Elections At some point, I think that Sen. Kerry is going to have to confront the danger to the continuation of Constitutional Democracy in the United States as we know it that is presented by the Georgites. It’s a tough one. I don’t have (yet) the political formula that I would suggest to him for doing so. It is a matter that I will be returning to on more than one occasion in future columns. But in case anyone should think that I am just being hysterical about this, considering the following. On a recent radio program, Hannity ( the well-known Far Right radio talker and author, the “Hannity” of “Hannity and Colmes”) said that Spain had "one terrorist event" and then "capitulated," and that U.S. liberals would do the same thing if it happened here. If there were an attack and the liberals did capitulate, Hannity said, the elections would need to be suspended: "In fact, the elections need to be suspended before it happens because this is too serious to play around with." Hannity then said that Ted Koppel (sp.?) is talking about the same thing. If you recall, Gen. Tommy Franks also talked about the possibility of suspending the Constitution. I am not making this up. (This item was supplied to me by a correspondent.) Using the Medical Marijuana Issue Some of our TPJ people believe that the “medical marijuana” issue, straight-up. I am a long-time student of recreational drug policy and the racist “drug war.“ I have spoken and published extensively on the drug problem (of which tobacco and alcohol are overwhelmingly the most important elements) as a public health matter that ought to be dealt with as one. I don’t believe that medical marijuana by itself is a potent political issue, and its use presents many potential traps into which a candidate could fall. However, the medical marijuana issue could be used not by itself but as part of either or both: (a) with other examples (as in the prying into medical records on the late-term abortion matter) Georgite interference in physician decision-making and doctor-patient privileged communications, (b) as yet another example where for the Georgites ideology trumps science, it could have some traction and importance. IN either case, marijuana legalization, the true objective of some of the more outspoken supporters of the legal use of marijuana as a medical therapy, is and should not be on the table. Gore in '04? With Kerry on some days sounding like the Kerry of the last two months of the Primary Season and on some days sounding like the Kerry of the last two months of 2003, some progressive Democrats are getting worried. Let's hope that Kerry finally chooses the identity that got him the nomination and then sticks with it. But let us not forget that while he is the presumptive nominee, he ain't yet THE nominee. Only the Convention can make that decision. And if enough Democrats become uncomfortable with Kerry between now and July, if enough start seeing a DLC Kerry, not a Kerry with that high ADA approval rating, not a Kerry who sounds like some reasonable combination of Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean, a funny thing could happen on the way to making the nomination. Some number (and I don’t know what it is) delegates are not bound, legally, even if they are “his.” Certainly the 700 or so “super-delegates’ (members of Congress, DNC members, etc.) are not. If Kerry backslides enough from the positions and the posture that got the voters in the Democratic primaries to pick him because of his “electability,” the Convention could conceivably turn against him. The stuff of a political novel, to be sure, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. And were that to happen, my answer to the question, to whom would they turn? Why none other than Al Gore, who would come roaring in as “Full Bore Al Gore.” So Plato said it before Burke Did "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke
"The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in
politics is to be ________________
Dr. Steven Jonas
is a TPJ contributing author. He is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at
Stony Brook University (NY) and author of some twenty books. Dr. Jonas is
one of America's most perceptive Democratic political analysts. The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022 is available from Amazon under the name "Johnathan Westminster" (just click on the title). _____________________________________________ MARCH 30, 2004 UPDATE
JUNKIE EDITOR MICHAEL
CARMICHAEL _______________ Carmichael suggests reading this Guardian Unlimited article in conjunction with his comments below, “Rice the off-stage prima donna in 9/11 hearings” _______________
Condoleezza
Rice, the president's hand-picked National Security Advisor, is doing more
than her job title implies. She is now serving as a stone wall against the
rising tide of anger welling up against her incompetence and the
incompetence of her master, George W. Bush. _____________________________________________
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
