Kerry and the Progressive Dilemma

This thing is taken from Tikkun Magazine - A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture & Society, Tikkun.org.

The Progressives' Dilemma in the 2004 Elections
A Roundtable with Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, Ralph Nader, Ann Lewis, Danny Goldberg, and David Cobb

Tikkun is a nonprofit 501(c)3, which means we are prohibited from endorsing candidates or parties, and we never have. We're concerned with building a New Bottom Line in American society of love, generosity, social justice, and peace?-and a progressive middle path for Middle East peace that is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. At the Democratic National Convention in late July, we held an educational event about foreign policy and about the need for a changed direction in U.S. foreign policy that would allow the United States to make a more substantial contribution toward healing Israel/Palestine. By listening to delegates, we became acutely aware that there were some voices in the progressive world who perceived themselves as not being heard or represented at the convention. They represent a faction of liberals and progressives who strongly desire to beat Bush, but who wonder if the Democratic Party's strategy is the right one. We've invited both leading Democrats and Ralph Nader and David Cobb to discuss what is the best role for progressives to play in this election. None of the Republicans we invited responded to our invitation to be part of this roundtable discussion.

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Tikkun: First of all, does anyone recognize that there is a problem for progressives in the way that the Kerry campaign has positioned itself throughout the convention (e.g., in support of the war in Iraq and in support of Ariel Sharon's policies) or is that positioning something that simply should be shrugged off and accepted as necessary to win the election this year? Is there some role that progressives can play inside the various political parties? Or do progressives have to stay outside?

Woolsey: This issue has been the most difficult issue in my history in the House of Representatives?-and I'm in my twelfth year now. The district I represent is one of the best educated, wealthiest, and most progressive districts in the country and they are split down the middle on the issue of how much we should support Israel or whether or not we're being imbalanced in the way we're approaching the conflict. So, I'm going to tell you that I have confidence that John Kerry and John Edwards are going to bring a balance to the discussion that we have not had?-and that it won't be an afterthought, but at the forefront of what they're doing when they're elected to ensure American leadership that it's the only way it can work.

Cobb: The Kerry/Edwards campaign, and Kerry in particular, is not progressive. John Kerry voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for NAFTA, which is decimating the economy of this country and putting us in a race to the bottom, globally; he voted for No Child Left Behind, which is devastating the educational system in this country; he voted for the Patriot Act, which is devastating civil liberties; John Kerry is on the record opposing universal healthcare and is on the record opposing raising the minimum wage to an actual living wage.

Woolsey: So you would prefer to have George Bush as your president? John Kerry will listen to your point of view when he's president instead of who we have in the White House right now and I believe with all my heart that if they're the White House for the next four years we will no longer know the United States of America.

Cobb: Of course. I understand that as bad as I think John Kerry is, George Bush is qualitatively worse.

Woolsey: Well then say it.

Cobb: That wasn't the question that was posed. Of course I'll say it. I'm going to tell the truth. And the truth is also that John Kerry's unwavering support of Israel's current government and the militarization of that region is also part of the problems we face.

The problem we all face is our voting system, which is forcing voters to vote against what they hate rather than for what they really want. And the solution is to change our voting system?-ultimately to proportional representation?-but at the very least to instant runoff voting, a preferential voting system that will empower voters. And I encourage progressive Democrats to join with other progressives in support of instant runoff voting so that progressives don't feel like they have to make the difficult choice that so many are currently faced with because of our voting system.

Nader: Why have the Democrats been losing at the local, state, and national level for the last ten years to the worst of the Republicans and the Republican Party? I put that question to John Kerry and his answer was, almost verbatim, "It's because the Republicans have so much money that they can cloud the issues." That's just not acceptable. The Democrats raise a lot of money, they are an older party, they're all over the country. The answer to my question should have been: "Maybe because we don't have the message, the agenda, the organization, the willingness to go beyond thirty second tv ads into neighborhoods and into communities and have a really powerful registration campaign for the nine million African American voters who remain unregistered, and try to get the eight million Democratic voters who deserted Gore in 2000 and voted for Bush." But if they understand their losses to be attributable primarily to lack of money, then of course they will escalate their efforts to go after the same corporate money and the money of the wealthy that is similarly sought by the Republicans. And to get that money they feel the need to elbow out or marginalize or humiliate progressives, like Dennis Kucinich, who had all of his proposals?-even his phrases?-rejected when he put them before the Democratic Platform Committee. Of course, then Kucinich endorsed John Kerry. He and all his supporters got nothing for all this campaigning and for performing as a loyal progressive Democrat for two years on the primary trail. What does that tell you about the Democratic Party and who controls it?

Lewis: John Kerry has a progressive voting record and agenda. In Congress he fought for clean air and water, he fought to get more police on the street and for a crime bill that took assault weapons off the street. He voted to raise the minimum wage. Kerry is for tax breaks to encourage companies to bring their jobs here into the United States, for raising the minimum wage, and for enforcing the equal pay laws. Those three things would help raise the household income of Americans.

Senator Kerry has a plan to make health care more accessible and affordable?-and yes it's going to cost some money?-but he says he can pay for it by rolling back tax breaks that are given to the wealthiest Americans. He is for energy independence?-which is going to move us in the right direction both domestically and abroad. And, finally, on foreign policy, two principles he made very clear at the convention, as he has throughout his campaign, are that America should only go to war if we have to; and that we should go back to working with other nations to build the respect of nations around the world, and whenever possible, work toward our goals jointly.

That is a progressive agenda that for many, many Americans will make real differences in their lives. And please don't forget that the next president of the United States is likely to choose three or more justices of the Supreme Court. I have confidence that with John Kerry we would have a Supreme Court that would respect civil rights, women's rights, and the Constitution of the United States.

Goldberg: I think that the nature of this conversation is based on a false premise: that it's mutually exclusive to care about who is president of the United States on the one hand and be for a progressive movement that is to the left of the Democratic Party on the other. I don't think those two ideas are mutually exclusive. I think as a threshold issue, changing the voting system to include proportional voting and instant runoffs is very important and one which I believe in deeply. It would eliminate the kind of discussion that has bedeviled progressives in the last few election cycles, but I don't particularly know that failing to make a choice between Kerry and Bush for president is the way to raise that issue.

There are many issues where Ralph Nader and David Cobb and many other progressives need to influence this country more, and I want to support that, but I don't think you support it by helping George Bush to get reelected.

I think one can disagree with many parts of the Democratic Party platform and disagree with many of John Kerry's votes, as I do, and still see clearly and unequivocally that it's better to have him appoint Supreme Court justices, better to have him running our foreign policy, and better to have him as president on every single issue that's important to progressives than George Bush. I don't see how someone can be morally committed to these issues and ignore the consequences of who the next president is going to be. Regardless of the way we would like the world to be, the fact is indisputable that either George Bush or John Kerry is going to be president for the next four years and to me it's a no brainer as a progressive to say I prefer John Kerry?-without exonerating either him or the centrist Democrats from the list of many criticisms that Nader and Cobb would charge them with and with which I agree.

Nader: Twenty-four hours a day the corporate interests are pulling on both parties. That's indisputable?-the lobbies who are placing their executives in high government positions, the PACs, the matrix of corporate occupied territory in Washington, D.C. If you don't have alternative candidates on the progressive side, who is pulling the Democratic Party in the direction of these progressive issues?
The Democrats feel they can get away with anything when it comes to dealing with progressives because they believe that we have nowhere to go but them?-so they don't feel they have to deliver anything to us.
?-Ralph Nader

The answer is, nobody.

If you look at all of the major Democratic groups?-the Sierra Club, the labor groups, minority groups, women's groups?-who are supporting Kerry, they're not really pushing him to take stands in support of their issues. In fact some of those groups are making no demands whatsoever. If he gets elected, he'll have no mandate. These groups will not be able to say to him, "You put our issues before the American public and they endorsed that progressive agenda."

But he is being pulled?-now, during the election, and after he's elected?-by corporations who have achieved more power in the last twenty-five years than any time in history.

Edwards and Kerry have said nothing about reducing the military budget?-it's sacrosanct. This is half of the government's operating expenditures. It's full of redundancy, waste, overrun, corruption. It's full of hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons systems designed for the Soviet Union era of hostility. It's full of supporting troops in Western Europe and East Asia, defending prosperous countries who can defend themselves against nonexistent enemies. It's this military budget and the homeland security that is the basic reason we don't have enough money for public works, for good paying jobs, rebuilding and repairing schools, public clinics, public drinking water systems, public transit, libraries. There used to be a time when a Democratic candidate would take on one or two weapons systems. Now they won't touch it at all. And they won't touch the homeland security budget, which is horribly skewed, not smart, not strategic, very wasteful. On NAFTA and WTO, corporate globalization, Kerry and Bush are on the same page.

On issues of corporate crime, Kerry talks better than Bush, but when I proposed a whole series of corporate-crime crackdowns and abolishing corporate welfare subsidies?-both of which he's reported as being progressive on in the press?-he didn't respond. Then I looked at his website under "crime" ten days ago and he has nothing on crime or on corporate welfare. So in terms of the record, in terms of what he's willing to do, he's pretty similar to Bush on those hundreds of billions of dollors of corporate welfare and trillions of dollars drained or looted from investors, workers, and pension-holders.

On the issue of Iraq, Kerry and Bush are very similar. On the issue of labor law reform, repealing Taft-Hartley, getting rid of all these structural and statutory obstructions for WalMart workers and all the tens of millions of workers who would join or form trade unions, he hasn't uttered a word, nor has Edwards. In fact repeal of Taft-Hartley has been almost verboten in Democratic politics for the last twenty-five to thirty years.

Kerry should be speaking much more clearly on public financing and public elections. He did take the leadership with McCain on fuel efficiency and was defeated 2-1 in the House a couple of years ago, but they did make a valiant effort on that. He's good on the Arctic refuge and some of the forest issues, but on biotech, on chemical/petrochemical industry, on the coal industry, on other industries he has not been as up front as he should have been given his years in the Senate. So, who is pulling the Democratic Party in a progressive direction? It isn't happening that way?-the opposite has been happening.

Lewis: Thank you, Ralph, for pointing out some of the examples of what John Kerry has done. And I just want to add one more point on the issue of corporate crime. He took on the investigation of BCCI, which was an international bank that was deeply engaged in doing the wrong things, and moreover, was directly connected with the Democratic establishment. That was not a small thing and it was, at the time, very courageous. And John Kerry would do far better than Bush on homeland security, e.g., in providing funding to secure our ports and inspect containers that come into our ports. To the question "Who will pull the Democrats in a progressive direction?" Working people are speaking up?-unions. You talk about the issues the unions care about, but these unions have leaders, they are not silent. I think they are genuinely representing their constituencies and doing it well.

Tikkun: Ralph Nader, you ask "Who will pull the Democrats in a more progressive direction?" But some progressives question whether you have helped increase the voices of progressives in the Democratic Party since you ran in 2000. Some of them believe that you had a greater impact before you ran in 2000, and that running for president has decreased, not increased, the impact of progressives in the Democratic party.

Nader: Our citizen groups have been essentially shut out by both parties since the last years of the Carter administration from being able to improve the country as they did in prior years. Even when the Democrats controlled the Congress in 1993?-1994, it was just remarkable how reluctant they were to listen to progressives?-whether it was Sarbanes in the banking area or others in the corporate crime arena?-or how reluctant they were to hold the kind of traditional Democratic Party investigations of corporate irresponsibility that people like Kefauver and Gaylord Nelson conducted in their day.

It's my objective to destroy the two-party duopoly which has redistricted our country into overwhelmingly one-party dominated districts, therefore obliterating any concept of an election, which involves selection. This cannot be denied. The two parties are morally, ethically, and legally responsible for depriving millions of voters?-95 percent of the districts in the House of Representatives, as Ann Lewis knows, are noncompetitive, meaning they're either slam dunk Republican (Tom Delay) or slam dunk Democrat (Pelosi). That is a very serious devolution of the very semblance of the two-party system.

Lewis: But we have a two-party system at the presidential level. You're not denying that. We have a two-party system at the senator level. In fact, on a choice between George Bush, John Kerry, or a third-party candidate, we clearly have a tight election in terms of who will appoint the next attorney general, who will appoint the next Secretary of the Interior, who will make the consumer protection decisions of the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department. Every one of those will be determined by a presidential election where there is a clear difference between the parties.

Nader: Ann, you're so out of touch. Let's analyze the Democratic Party in terms of defects. They couldn't stop Scalia. They couldn't stop Thomas. In fact it was 98-nothing for Scalia. Thomas was 52-48 with eleven Democratic senators switching under the eye of Majority Leader George Mitchell. They couldn't stop the tax cut for the wealthy which they say they opposed in 2001?-$1.4 trillion, when they controlled the Senate. They could have filibustered it in 2003. The Food and Drug Administration under Clinton/Gore?-according to the estimate of Dr. Sidney Wolf, the leading expert on this for thirty years?-was the worst he had seen since he started monitoring it.

Lewis: Worse than it is right now?

Nader: Yes.

Lewis: I think what you said about the judges and about the appointments is a pretty powerful argument for why we need a Democratic president in there to make those nominations.

Cobb: I think it's important to acknowledge that real systemic change in this country has never come from the two establishment parties. Instead, alternative political parties, so-called third parties, have been responsible for genuine systemic change: the abolition of slavery, women getting the right to vote, the creation of the Social Security administration, unemployment insurance, worker's compensation laws, pure food and drug laws, the direct election of senators. The reality is the entire fabric of what all of us would agree would be the bare minimum for a just and compassionate society was literally woven together by alternative parties. And the two establishment parties fought against those reforms when they were initially proposed. There is a fundamentally important and profound role for third parties to play, at a bare minimum, as an incubator of ideas.

Please understand that the Green Party is not going away. We're getting larger, stronger, and more organized with every election cycle. We're electing more people to local office. We're creating and maintaining ballot lines. By every objective and concrete measure we are growing, and to act as if we will simply kowtow because of this election cycle is a profound mistake.

Woolsey: First, with regard to third parties, anytime the Democrats lose because of Green Party candidates I say shame on the Democrats because we ought to be as progressive as the Green Party. Second, you need to be watching Proposition 62 in California. If you're worried about a third party voice, they will be totally disenfranchised if Proposition 62 passes. I think the main problem is how are we going to get middle America?-the people in Kansas and Nebraska and North Dakota who love their flags and love their guns and hate to talk badly about their president?-to see what's happening to their country and their lives if what they hear is how bad everybody is but the Green Party? It's not going to work. We're going to send them right to Bush or they're not going to vote at all.

There wouldn't be a war in Iraq, we wouldn't be drilling in Alaska, our civil liberties wouldn't have been trampled on after 9/11 if Al Gore had been in the White House. We know that, and you know that. I'm telling you, if people hear what you're saying, Mr. Nader, they're going to think we're all awful. And believe me, I'm not. And I know a lot of good Democrats who care an awful lot about this country.

Nader: Well, we're going to give your smart proposal on homeland security a lot more energy than your own party will.

Woolsey. Well thank you. But actually John Kerry speaks of a smarter way of doing things and I believe that a lot of my smart security ideas have to come forward into the world because we're going to self-destruct some day soon if we don't do something smart about it. But in the meantime, we cannot have those guys in the White House for four more years. Not because they're Republicans. Not because they're not Democrats. Not because they're not Greens. But because they are evil, and they're going to destroy the United States of America and they don't care. I just hope that you're not going to help them stay on.

Nader: Apparently not evil enough, Lynn, to adopt a progressive agenda that could win in a landslide for them.

Woolsey: It won't win in middle America.

Nader: It will win in middle America because middle America wants a living wage, they want health insurance for all, they want their cities and towns repaired and good jobs created. All Kerry says about homeland security, as he ignores your very detailed and sound proposal, is that they're not doing enough of what they are aleady doing?-more money, more this, more that. It's a very blunderbust approach to our military and homeland security budget designed to "me too" him with Bush and take these two issues off the debating table.

Tikkun: If your analysis is right, Ralph, then I have two questions for you. One is, why is it that you didn't run in the Democratic Party primaries? If your prediction about the amount of support that exists for this politics is true, might you not have won? Two, why is it that Kucinich, who had many of your same views, and who got the exposure of these nationally televised debates amongst the candidates, picked up so few votes in support?

Nader: First of all, he's fighting an uphill battle with the [Democratic Leadership Council] crowd. Second of all, he didn't raise much money, which immediately rendered him in subclass contention. Obviously he couldn't raise money because he's a critic of major corporations and PACs and trade associations and the whole establishment. The minute you go into the Democratic Primary, you are measured by how much money you raise and that's what gave Howard Dean enormous prominence. And then everything flows from that?-the publicity, the polls, the whole works?-and Kucinich could never really get a foothold. But that doesn't explain why his very sensible proposals to the Democratic platform were stiff-armed, almost autocratically, by the closed-door operation that prevailed.

Lewis: I was a member of the Democratic Platform Committee and time after time what I heard and saw were Kucinich representatives who came up in an open meeting and said "our concerns have been addressed by the managers. Our concerns are incorporated in the following amendment." And in fact they were quite appreciative, they said, of the way the language had been inclusive. So, they were not shut out and they were not strong-armed and it was a very public process and anyone was welcome to come in and watch. I believe it was on CSPAN.

Nader: Ann, no mention of Global Warming in the Democratic Party platform? Just look at Kucinich's seven detailed proposals.

Lewis: I think we do actually talk about global climate change.

Tikkun: At the meeting we held during the Convention several Kucinich delegates came and said openly that they were extremely disgruntled by what Dennis had done, which was to not provide leadership and push for his positions, but instead tell his delegates that they should "vote their own conscience" which, in effect, meant that there would be no unified presentation of the Kucinich perspective at the Convention.

Lynn: It was my impression that it might have been subtle, but the Green Party did carry some weight on the Platform through Dennis.

Cobb: As the Green Party's presidential candidate, I think it's interesting to talk about trying to pull the Democrats, but please know that there are millions of us who have simply given up on the idea of the Democratic Party as the electoral arm of the growing movements for peace, racial justice, real democracy, and environmental protection. I appreciate that those of you in this roundtable who are Democrats are trying to move the Party in a progressive direction. But millions of us who are forging a different kind of politics on our own, rolling up our sleeves to do the work to create a citizens' party that is not dependent upon corporate money and does not have to hide its progressive ideals and instead is actually organizing around a new vision of the world.

Homeland security requires a fundamental change in foreign policy. The reality is that foreign policy in this country is driven by a transnational corporate empire and is basically being paid for by trillions of American tax dollars, the blood of American servicemen and women, and killing innocents abroad. If we had a foreign policy that was actually based on the American values of liberty, justice, and equality then we would not have this problem with homeland security.

Tikkun: David, how do you answer the challenge by many Democrats that in fact we're facing a possible repeat of the 1928?-32 period in Germany in which the Social Democrats and Communists beat each other up and let the Fascists win? That in fact this is not a normal election cycle but a moment in which the forces in power are potentially more evil than they have ever been and would be without any further electoral check? That it's time in this one moment to give up the difference and form a "united front" around a candidate who, even though he is far from the progressive ideal, is nevertheless far, far, far less likely to do any of the significantly evil things that a second Bush administration is likely to do?

Cobb: Well the first thing that I do is tell the truth. I will criticize John Kerry on his record and will also acknowledge that George Bush and the neoconservative cabal that surrounds him in the White House are qualitatively worse. It is important to understand that George W. Bush is a profound problem. He's an unelected occupant of the White House, installed in what can only be called a judicial coup d'etat in this country. So, these are indeed dangerous times. However, we shouldn't kid ourselves. George W. Bush is not the problem. The problem is a social, political, and economic system that is literally destroying this planet. It's creating a racist, sexist, classist world order and the Green Party is poised to solve the long-term problems by building a full progressive agenda. I trust the American people to be inspired to try to stop Bush and I'm very pleased to see that happening. But silencing our progressive ideals in an effort to get Bush out with this "anybody but Bush" mentality does not advance our shared goals.

Tikkun: So are you advocating that people in the states that seem to be clearly either for Bush or for Kerry vote for you but that in states where the race is closer they join a united front against Bush and vote for Kerry?

Cobb: No, I won't advocate that. I know that many of my supporters are advocating that kind of strategic voting?-Norman Solomon, Medea Benjamin?-but it's not my position. Although I do welcome this kind of support and appreciate it, I'm not advocating it because I can't suggest to people to vote for something that they can't believe in.

Tikkun: Is there ever a moment for a united front, Ralph?

Nader: First of all, I think your analogy with Nazi Germany is missing a number of things. First of all, we have a check and balance system.

Lewis: No we don't.

Nader: We have a system where the Senate and the House can block the White House if they want to. It's not a parliamentary system. And a lot of these bad things you've pointed out could have been stopped by the Democrats. The way they fell all over each other except for Russ Feingold to support the Patriot Act. It wasn't even heard in the Senate after a good version was bi-partisanly reported out of the House Judiciary Committee and then replaced by Bush's Patriot Act. The way they anointed George W. Bush as a wartime president with the vote-for-the-war resolution in October, 2002, letting him go around the country beating up on Democrats like Max Cleland without being challenged because, after all, you can't challenge a wartime president. Democrats in their defensive failure bear a very serious responsibility here.

The Democrats have been involved in awful, dirty tricks to try to keep us off the ballot, which I've told Kerry and McAuliffe about and which could lead to a mini-Watergate type scandal for them. Why are they putting so much energy into organizing against me instead of putting their energies into registering nine million unregistered blacks (which Rev. Jackson told me that they are not doing)? Why aren't they going to the working people of this country and talking about daily life issues, like the inadequacy of a minimum wage of $7 for 2007?

Cobb: There may be a real difference between myself and Ralph Nader, though we agree on most issues. I have no belief that one can improve the Democratic Party. I'm working outside to try to build a genuine progressive agenda, recognizing that the establishment parties will continue to serve the establishment elites. I don't think our task is to nudge the Democrats into a more progressive agenda. The reason to create a genuine independent party is to nurture and inspire a movement that is democratic.

Tikkun: Why not have both the Greens and Nader join together and publicly make clear to the country that you would withdraw and back Kerry in this election if the Democrats were to publicly and unequivocally commit to backing three or four key policies that you specified and which were clear to the American public? This would not require that you suspend the efforts to build a genuinely independent political party on the local and state levels, but it would show that you could enter into a united front for the sake of defeating Bush if the Democrats were willing to give something concrete in return. And then ask your party members to decide democratically what those demands should be and then vote two weeks before the election about whether the commitment made publicly by the Democrats was credible enough to suspend your own presidential campaign and agree to vote for Kerry?

Nader: You never concede a political movement in exchange for non-binding rhetoric. Last October we sent twenty-five proposals about the common good to the Democrats. What I wanted from the Democrats was that they recognize that our proposals for the common good are vote-getting issues and that they should be taking them up for their own interests without regard to any deal with us. But instead, because of their orientation to serve the wealthy, they'd prefer to "dial for dollars" and be in the grips of the money race rather than in the grip of the people.

Tikkun: If you and the Greens proposed a set of conditions that were perceived as reasonable and actually in the interests of most Americans and said that if they were adopted you'd drop out of the race and form a "united front" against Bush, that would be seen as an act of incredible statesmanship and you'd earn the respect of millions of people, instead of being dismissed as "spoilers."

Cobb: Well, I can't make a deal of that sort. I don't control the Green voters?-we are a very democratic group who can't be led into deals of that sort?-nor would I try to. In any event, we are not spoiling anything?-we are exercising our democratic rights to participate politically.

Tikkun: Imagine if your demands included a reform of the election system so that it provided either for proportional representation or for a weighted voting system. That would lead many people to think that the Greens were being extremely reasonable, using their potential voting power to push Kerry to endorse and support reforms that in any event the country really needs. And if Kerry didn't do so, he'd face huge pressure from his own constituency.

Cobb: Well, the growth of the Greens has not gotten the Democrats to seek such arrangements. And I know that whether or not Kerry wins, we are going to need a strong independent political movement in this country actively engaged in taking our country back from the corporate fat cats who are seeking to dominate it. We can have this kind of conversation after this election to keep us from being in this kind of position in 2006 and 2008 and beyond, and we can discuss working on electoral reform together.

Tikkun: Right now you have a moment of leverage. Why not use that moment to get some serious concessions from the Democrats in the way of important reforms that would benefit the entire country? Similarly, we ask this same question of Democrats: If they are serious about fearing that the Naderites and Greens are going to take something away from them, then why not negotiate with them and offer them something serious, not in terms of personal rewards or deals for the leaders, but something serious in terms of programs that the Naderites and Greens feel would bring substantial structural reform to some area or other of our political or economic lives? Conversely, you should be offering something real to them....