Left Out!
I just finished reading Left Out!, a book by frequent Counterpunch contributor Joshua Frank. This book should be required reading for every liberal who naively still clings to any attachment to the Democratic Party as the hope of progressive virtues. (There is an interesting review of the book at this location).
The book's subtitle is "How Liberals Helped Reelect George Bush", and this is a key point. The sins of lesser evilism, unfortunately, have locked liberalism into a fatal embrace with the Democratic Party. Frank documents brilliantly just how unprogressive the Democratic Party is. In the first half of his book, he explodes the myth of Howard Dean supposed progressive credentials. Dean's record on a whole host of issues was terrible, as was John Kerry's. Kerry, of course, was a warmonger who voted for the Iraq war and who never ran an antiwar campaign. Instead, Kerry was calling for more troops in Iraq--sort of like Lyndon Johnson in 1967. This year, after the election, he changed his tune. Now he calls for turning over the war to Iraqi government forces once they've been sufficiently trained by the US--in other words, Vietnamization. Kerry has progressed to Nixon, circa 1970. How pathetic.
Dean himself was ostensively antiwar, and it was his opposition to the war in Iraq that garnered him so much support from liberals who conveniently overlooked his record on the environment, the death penalty, and his support for corporate interests. Dean was virtually identical to the DLC Democrats, and even on the issue of an Iraq war, he was willing to support such a war as long as the UN endorsed it. In other words, his ideas were virtually identical to the centrists in the DLC like Kerry, but, as Frank points out in his book, he was not part of their cadre, so he was dispensed with by a massive attack campaign by Kerry and his corporate patrons.
Ultimately, Kerry's inability to distinguish himself seriously from Bush on a host of issues cost him dearly. Not willing to present a principled alternative to Bush on the war (the singlemost important issue of the campaign), he offered little to distinguish himself on other issues as well. As Frank points out, this problem extends back to Clinton himself, the ultimate triangulator and DLC loyalist who tugged the party rightward, who gave us a disastrous attack on the poor with his welfare reform, a disastrous attack on the environment with his Salvage rider bill that exempted federal forests from environmental regulations, who initiated various acts of military action, and who expanded the death penalty. In every way, Clinton presaged Bush.
Liberals , however, loved Clinton, despite the disastrous policies that violated some of the most important progressive principles. Herein lies the disaster of liberalism. What is considered mainstream "liberalism" is so far to the right now, as it has tagged along with Democrats like Clinton and Kerry who have moved the nation's political agenda rightward, that the Republicans, without any serious opposition to their rightward ambitions, can get away with murder. In American politics, without any countervailing force to the Republicans, the Republicans can simply push the politics rightward with impunity. And this is why liberalism, with its continued attachment to the Democratic Party, is proving to be a monumental failure.
Only by severing ties with the Democratic Party, the graveyard of progressive social movements, can a genuine Left really emerge in the United States.
The book's subtitle is "How Liberals Helped Reelect George Bush", and this is a key point. The sins of lesser evilism, unfortunately, have locked liberalism into a fatal embrace with the Democratic Party. Frank documents brilliantly just how unprogressive the Democratic Party is. In the first half of his book, he explodes the myth of Howard Dean supposed progressive credentials. Dean's record on a whole host of issues was terrible, as was John Kerry's. Kerry, of course, was a warmonger who voted for the Iraq war and who never ran an antiwar campaign. Instead, Kerry was calling for more troops in Iraq--sort of like Lyndon Johnson in 1967. This year, after the election, he changed his tune. Now he calls for turning over the war to Iraqi government forces once they've been sufficiently trained by the US--in other words, Vietnamization. Kerry has progressed to Nixon, circa 1970. How pathetic.
Dean himself was ostensively antiwar, and it was his opposition to the war in Iraq that garnered him so much support from liberals who conveniently overlooked his record on the environment, the death penalty, and his support for corporate interests. Dean was virtually identical to the DLC Democrats, and even on the issue of an Iraq war, he was willing to support such a war as long as the UN endorsed it. In other words, his ideas were virtually identical to the centrists in the DLC like Kerry, but, as Frank points out in his book, he was not part of their cadre, so he was dispensed with by a massive attack campaign by Kerry and his corporate patrons.
Ultimately, Kerry's inability to distinguish himself seriously from Bush on a host of issues cost him dearly. Not willing to present a principled alternative to Bush on the war (the singlemost important issue of the campaign), he offered little to distinguish himself on other issues as well. As Frank points out, this problem extends back to Clinton himself, the ultimate triangulator and DLC loyalist who tugged the party rightward, who gave us a disastrous attack on the poor with his welfare reform, a disastrous attack on the environment with his Salvage rider bill that exempted federal forests from environmental regulations, who initiated various acts of military action, and who expanded the death penalty. In every way, Clinton presaged Bush.
Liberals , however, loved Clinton, despite the disastrous policies that violated some of the most important progressive principles. Herein lies the disaster of liberalism. What is considered mainstream "liberalism" is so far to the right now, as it has tagged along with Democrats like Clinton and Kerry who have moved the nation's political agenda rightward, that the Republicans, without any serious opposition to their rightward ambitions, can get away with murder. In American politics, without any countervailing force to the Republicans, the Republicans can simply push the politics rightward with impunity. And this is why liberalism, with its continued attachment to the Democratic Party, is proving to be a monumental failure.
Only by severing ties with the Democratic Party, the graveyard of progressive social movements, can a genuine Left really emerge in the United States.
Cognitive dissonance is an equal opportunity ailment.
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