Anybody, anybody?

[Dan Scanlan <dscanlan@xxxxxxx>]

The Anybody-But-Bush Challenge

By Mike Bryan

Dear Progressive Writers and Publications,

Many of you have sold your audience on the validity of the
anybody-but-Bush position. During the primaries you convinced them
that regardless of whichever candidate the Democrats ultimately
nominated for president that person would be the only candidate with
any legitimate chance of beating President Bush in this fall's
election. You told them that the individual candidate's positions on
the issues were irrelevant, that any Democrat has to be better than
four more years of Bush. Because your audience respects your opinions
the vast majority of them are now following your advice and plan to
vote for John Kerry.
At the same time, many of you have actively suppressed voices that
disagree with the anybody-but-Bush position. In response to that
censorship and to all of you who promote the anybody-but-Bush
position, I am issuing you this challenge: if Kerry wins the
election, give him one hundred days, if he has not embarked on a
progressive agenda by the end of that period, admit you were wrong,
rejoin the fight for true progressive changes, and replace any
editors or publishers who insisted on taking the anybody-but-Bush
position - or, drop all pretexts and anything that identifies you
with the words progressive and liberal, explain how it's in your best
interest to prevent any meaningful changes since they might endanger
the marketability of your shtick, confess that your true desire is
money, power, and prestige, and admit that you have become just like
everyone and everything that you once pretended to oppose.

Of course, I could be wrong. If so, I'll write you another open
letter - that will also likely have little chance of publication - to
apologize. If Bush wins, you'll be off the hook because there'll be
no final real world test for your position - although you'll probably
insist that the reason for Kerry's defeat had nothing to do with
Kerry himself and everything to do with the progressive candidates
and voters who did not buy into your anybody-but-Bush position.
Before televising the August 29 protest in New York City C-SPAN
rebroadcast a panel discussion on Freedom of Expression and Civil
Liberties from a week earlier. Tom Hayden, the former anti-Vietnam
War activist, talked about how this year's presidential election
would be a referendum on the war in Iraq. It should be, but it won't
be. You have helped see to that. This fall some 98 percent of
American voters will cast their ballots for the two major party
candidates who both favor the war.

Polls indicate that approximately one-half of all Americans now
believe the war was a mistake. Yet, you are telling these people to
vote for John Kerry instead of voting for candidates who oppose the
war. You have thereby missed a major opportunity to help create real
change: to break the stranglehold the two-party system has on our
democracy by empowering a third-party candidate. Your voices could
have helped rally that massive number of anti-war voters behind Ralph
Nader or another anti-war candidate, such as Bill Van Auken of the
Socialist Equality Party. Instead, you have rallied behind the
Democratic Party in holding progressive voters hostage. You have
terrified them into following the anybody-but-Bush strategy. You have
convinced them that it's the right thing to do. You have successfully
defended the status quo by precluding other options.

But, you must certainly already realize this.

Your actions make the sham of this presidential election even more
obvious. We, the voters, get to "elect" a pre-chosen candidate from
the two big business/big money parties. The winner will then claim
that the votes have validated his policies, his past actions, and his
party's platform. Apparently, based on your policies, your actions,
and your platform, those big business/big money interests are yours
as well. Your blurring of the facts to make people believe there's
actually a substantial difference between Bush and Kerry has been
nothing short of amazing. Both favor the war, the PATRIOT Act, No
Child Left Behind, and increased military spending. The only real
difference appears to be choosing between our democracy's taking the
fast track to oblivion instead of taking a somewhat slower track to
oblivion. In either case, we end up in oblivion - and you're helping
us get there.

I may be in the minority, but I seriously doubt it, in wanting clear
and viable choices in an election. I want a candidate who has
actively been working on real improvements to our democracy, such as
ending the dominance of the two-party system through the enactment of
instant runoff voting and nonpartisan geographic redistricting after
every decennial census. I want a candidate who has actively been
working on repealing the Taft-Hartley Act in order to help re-empower
working class people. I want a candidate who understands that
government should be run as a government, not as a business. I want a
candidate who looks out for the common good by supporting
single-payer universal healthcare, initiatives that realistically
address a future when our energy requirements can no longer be met
with oil, programs that provide social safety nets, increased
protection for our civil, social, and economic rights and equities,
and policies that give priority to the interests of people and the
environment over those of rampant profiteering. I want a candidate
with the insight and leadership to have stood against the Iraq war
from the very beginning. Part of the genius of the anybody-but-Bush
position is in convincing working class and poor people that the
Democratic Party actually represents their interests. You have done
an excellent job of downplaying and hiding the evidence to the
contrary - just as the mainstream media has done an excellent job of
downplaying and hiding the facts that refute President Bush's vast
library of lies. Through your efforts few will ever know that
Democratic presidents have invoked the Taft-Hartley Act against
striking workers some three times as often as have Republican
presidents. You have created an image, now accepted by an alarming
number of people, that a distinct line separates what you would have
us believe were the idyllic years of the Clinton administration and
the nightmare of the Bush administration. You have performed this
feat in spite of the facts that welfare reform, deregulation of the
utilities industries, FCC rule changes that resulted in today's
radically consolidated media, NAFTA, the establishment of an official
policy of regime-change in Iraq, laws allowing the intermingling of
the securities, banking, and insurance industries, and the
deregulatory Freedom to Farm Act that destroyed the viability of most
small farms were passed during the Clinton Administration. You've
obfuscated the facts that under Clinton the continued lax
self-regulation of the securities, banking, accounting, and medical
industries led to the stock market bubble that destroyed many
people's savings and retirements, to the increase in the number of
people without health insurance, and to the decrease in remedies for
consumer abuse. You've even made it appear that the years of
sanctions against Iraq that led to the deaths of some 1.5 million
people and served to prevent the development of Iraqi oilfields by
anyone other than American companies was somehow a good thing that
should have gone on indefinitely.

Instead of working to unite working and poor people around their
common interests, you are working to unite working and poor people
behind the interests of the two big business/big money parties.
Eventually we must stand up for social, economic, and democratic
improvements that will make our nation and our world a better place
for all people - not just for the ruling elite. Your anybody-but-Bush
position prevents such initiatives from occurring - and totally
eliminates the possibility that this election will provide a
referendum on the war. Whether you accept this Anybody-But-Bush
Challenge or not, let's hope that John Kerry is the blatant liar that
you would have us believe he is. Let's hope all his Bush-like
statements are just ploys for getting elected. Let's hope that, if he
is elected, he will then turn an abrupt about-face and initiate a
progressive agenda. Otherwise, you just helped elect our second-worst
nightmare - which, quite frighteningly, may well be exactly the
result you had in mind all along when you helped to further stack the
deck against our democracy with your anybody-but-Bush strategy.

Copyright 2004 by Mike Bryan. All Rights Reserved