Re: [Marxism] Progressive Democrats of America

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

> again, i ask seriously, what would constitute an effective prez
> campaign...  mh

The campaign in 2004 that I would have liked to see happen was
something like this:

<blockquote>Friday, April 23, 2004
US Elections 2004

Of course, it is best if Ralph Nader, receiving the Green Party
endorsement and getting on the ballots in all states, wins the
presidential election outright, but short of such a miracle, what
would be beneficial for anti-occupation and other social movements?
Here's a short list:

1. No terrorist attack on the mainland USA (as American voters are
prone to behaving more like Israeli than Spanish voters -- cf. Uri
Avnery, "Bravo, Amigos!", March 20, 2004).

2. Resistance to the occupation widens, intensifies, and becomes
politically sophisticated in Iraq and Palestine.

3. "The Coalition of the Willing" shrinks further, more nations
following the examples of Spain, Honduras, and the Dominican
Republic: "The coalition in Iraq is already fraying. Spain, Honduras
and the Dominican Republic have announced the pullout of 1,700
soldiers beginning in the next few weeks. Norway announced Friday
that it was pulling its 180 troops out after June 30. . . ("U.S.
Faces Tough Choice, Rely on Iraqi Security or Send More Troops,"
April 23, 2004).

4. Vigorous political debate -- about the nature of the Democratic
Party, ends and means of the Green Party and other third parties,
roles of electoral campaigns in building movements and political
parties on the left, disenfranchisement of Black, Latino, and other
working-class voters through the "war on crimes," the relation
between capitalism and imperialism, etc. -- among activists in
particular and the public in general in the USA.

5. The Green Party endorses Nader, with Peter Camejo as vice
presidential candidate, at the Green Party National Convention --
Nader joins the Green Party as a member in exchange for the party's
ballot lines.

6. Nader runs without shortchanging his potential:
Indeed, whatever his intentions, Nader implicitly gave wavering
voters permission to vote for Gore in 2000 with such statements as
the Democrats could take back Green votes by going back to their
progressive roots, and that one positive result of his campaign would
be to create a spillover vote down the ticket to help elect Democrats
to Congress.

In 2000 and now again in 2004, Nader seems to be underselling his own
prospects by giving the Democrats more credit and import than they
deserve. Nader had far more support and sympathy than the final 3%
vote on Election Day in 2000 indicated. A Zogby poll found that 18
percent of the population seriously considered voting for Nader. An
analysis of the National Election Study data by Harvard political
scientist Barry Burden shows that only 9% of the people who thought
Nader was the best candidate actually voted for him. If people had
not voted strategically for the lesser evil, Nader would have had
over 30 million votes instead of 3 million and might have won the
election, especially if he had been allowed in the debates. (Howie
Hawkins, "There Never Were Any 'Good Old Days' In The Democratic
Party," March 1, 2004)
7. Rank-and-file left-wing Democrats' stiff challenge to John Kerry
(as well as other pro-occupation Democrats) on the matters of foreign
policy, fiscal policy, civil liberties, the equal right to marriage,
environmental protection, the "war on drugs," etc., threatening
defection to Nader, dogging Kerry at each of his campaign
appearances, the platform committee meetings, the Democratic Party
National Convention, and all the way to the general election.

8. A high turnout, a hot contest -- anti-occupation candidates
winning big, pro-occupation incumbents losing badly, in the
congressional elections.

9. The lowest possible overall shares of the popular vote for the two
dominant parties' pro-war and anti-working-class presidential
candidates, a bigger share for Nader in 2004 than in 2000 + very
close contests in all the battleground states, producing the closest
electoral college election, clearly as the result of the Nader/Green
campaign, shocking and awing the Democratic and Republican duopolists.

10. The "victor" emerges as a weak president, unable to claim a
mandate to continue the occupation of Iraq and to exacerbate fiscal
austerity -- shell-shocked by the strength of the anti-occupation
voting bloc -- and immediately met by protests around the nation and
the world demanding withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq.

<http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/04/us-elections-2004.html>

But a majority of leftists in the United States, dare I say it, were
too clueless to understand the crucial importance of Points 9-10 in
the above.  German leftists, instead, achieved exactly what I thought
US leftists should aim for (except that they got what we couldn't
even aim for -- 54 Left Party delegates -- on top of that).

Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://montages.blogspot.com>
<http://monthlyreview.org>
<http://mrzine.org>



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