"Thus, many
progressives are suggesting that it's time for concerned Americans to
reclaim Thomas Jefferson's Democratic Party. It may, in fact, be our only
short-term hope to avoid a final total fascistic takeover of America and a
third world war." |
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How To
Take Back America
Posted March 26, 2003
thepeoplesvoice.org
by
Thom Hartmann
Marching in the
streets is important work, but wouldn't we have greater success if we also
took control of the United States government?
It's vital to point
out right-wing-slanted reporting in the corporate media, but isn't it also
important to seize enough political power in Washington to enforce
anti-trust laws to break up media monopolies?
And how are
progressives - most standing on the outside of government, looking in - to
deal with oil wars, endemic corporate cronyism, slashed environmental
regulations, corporate-controlled voting machines, the devastation of
America's natural areas, the fouling of our air and waters, and an
administration that daily gives the pharma, HMO, banking, and insurance
industries whatever they want regardless of how many people are harmed?
This lack of political
power is a crisis others have faced before. We should learn from their
experience.
After the crushing
defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, a similar crisis faced a loose coalition
of gun lovers, abortion foes, southern segregationists, Ayn Rand
libertarians, proto-Moonies, and those who feared immigration within and
communism without would destroy the America they loved. Each of these
various groups had tried their own "direct action" tactics, from
demonstrations to pamphleteering to organizing to fielding candidates. None
had succeeded in gaining mainstream recognition or affecting American
political processes. If anything, their efforts instead had led to their
being branded as special interest or fringe groups, which further diminished
their political power.
So the conservatives
decided not to get angry, but to get power.
Led by Joseph Coors
and a handful of other ultra-rich funders, they decided the only way to
seize control of the American political agenda was to infiltrate and take
over one of the two national political parties, using their own think tanks
like the Coors-funded Heritage Foundation to mold public opinion along the
way. Now they regularly get their spokespeople on radio and television talk
shows and newscasts, and write a steady stream of daily op-ed pieces for
national newspapers. They launched an aggressive takeover of Dwight
Eisenhower's "moderate" Republican Party, opening up the "big
tent" to invite in groups that had previously been considered on the
fringe. Archconservative neo-Christians who argue the Bible should replace
the Constitution even funded the startup of a corporation to manufacture
computer-controlled voting machines, which are now installed across the
nation. And Reverend Moon took over The Washington Times newspaper and UPI.
Their efforts, as we
see today, have borne fruit, as Kevin Phillips predicted they would in his
prescient 1969 book "The Emerging Republican Majority," and as
David Brock so well documents in his book "Blinded By The Right."
But the sweet victory
of the neoconservatives in capturing control of the Republican Party, and
thus of American politics, has turned bitter in the mouths of the average
American and humans around the world. Soaring deficits, the evisceration of
Social Security, "voluntary" pollution controls, war for oil,
stacking federal benches with right-wing ideologues, bellicose and
nationalist foreign policy, and the handing over of much of the
infrastructure of governance to multinational corporate campaign donors has
brought a vast devastation to the nation, nearly destroyed the
entrepreneurial American dream, and caused the rest of the world to view us
with shock and horror.
Thus, many
progressives are suggesting that it's time for concerned Americans to
reclaim Thomas Jefferson's Democratic Party. It may, in fact, be our only
short-term hope to avoid a final total fascistic takeover of America and a
third world war.
"But wait!"
say the Greens and Progressives and left-leaning Reform Party members.
"The Democrats have just become weaker versions of the
Republicans!"
True enough, in many
cases. And it isn't working for them, because, as Democrat Harry Truman
said, "When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican,
or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll vote for the Republican
every time." (And, history shows, voters are equally uninterested in
Republicans who act like Democrats.)
Alternative parties
have an important place in American politics, and those in them should
continue to work for their strength and vitality. They're essential as
incubators of ideas and nexus points for activism. Those on the right
learned this lesson well, as many groups that at times in the past had
fielded their own candidates are now still intact but have also become
powerful influencers of the Republican Party. Similarly, being a Green
doesn't mean you can't also be a Democrat.
This is not a popular
truth.
There's a long list of
people who didn't like it - Teddy Roosevelt, H. Ross Perot, John Anderson,
Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader - but nonetheless the American constitution was
written in a way that only allows for two political parties. Whenever a
third party emerges, it's guaranteed to harm the party most closely aligned
to it.
This was the result of
a well-intentioned accident that most Americans fail to understand when
looking at the thriving third, fourth, and fifth parties of democracies such
as Germany, India, or Israel. How do they do it? And why can't we have third
parties here?
The reason is because
in America - unlike most other modern democracies - we have regional
"winner take all" types of elections, rather than proportional
representation where the group with, say, 30 percent of the vote, would end
up with 30 percent of the seats in government. It's a critical flaw built
into our system, so well identified in Robert A. Dahl's brilliant book
"How Democratic Is the American Constitution?"
When the delegates
assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to craft a constitution, republican
democracy had never before been tried anywhere in what was known as
"the civilized world." There were also, at that moment, no
political parties, and "father of the Constitution" James Madison
warned loudly in Federalist #10 against their ever emerging.
In part, Madison
issued his warning because he knew that the system they were creating would,
in the presence of political parties, rapidly become far less democratic. In
the regional winner-take-all type of elections the Framers wrote into the
Constitution, the loser in a two-party race - even if s/he had fully 49.9
percent of the vote - would end up with no voice whatsoever. And the
combined losers in a 3- or more-party race could even be the candidates or
parties whose overall position was most closely embraced by the majority of
the people.
The best solution to
this unfairness, in 1787, was to speak out against the formation of
political parties ("factions"), as Madison did at length and in
several venues. But within a decade of the Constitution's ratification,
Jefferson's split with Adams had led to the emergence of two strong
political parties, and the problems Madison foresaw began and are with us to
this day.
This is particularly
problematic in presidential elections. H. Ross Perot's participation in the
1992 election drew enough votes away from the elder George Bush that Bill
Clinton won without a true majority. Similarly, Ralph Nader's participation
in the 2000 election drew enough votes away from Al Gore that it was easy
for the Supreme Court and Jeb Bush to deflect media notice away from
Florida's illegal vote-rigging in the pre-election purging of the voter
rolls and thus select George W. Bush as President.
Conservative activists
recognized this inherent flaw in the electoral system of the United States
and decided to do something about it, recruiting Ronald Reagan and forming
his infamous "kitchen cabinet." They took over the Republican
Party and then successfully seized control of the government of the United
States of America. As we can see by comparing documents from the 1990s
Project For A New American Century with today's war in Iraq, these
once-marginalized conservative ideologues are the real power behind Bush's
throne.
Liberals weren't so
practically minded. Instead of funding think tanks to influence public
opinion, subsidizing radio and TV talk show hosts nationwide, and working to
take over the Democratic Party, many left to create their own parties while
others gave up on mainstream politics altogether. The remaining Democrats
were caught in the awkward position of having to try to embrace the same
corporate donors as the Republicans, although they weren't anywhere near as
successful as Republicans because they hadn't (and haven't) so fully sold
out to corporate and wealthy interests.
We see the result in
races across the nation, such as my state of Vermont. In the 2002 election
for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, the people who voted for the
Democratic and Progressive candidates constituted a clear majority.
Nonetheless, the Republican candidates became Governor and Lieutenant
Governor with 45 percent and 41 percent of the vote respectively because
each had more votes than his Democratic or Progressive opponents alone.
(Example: Republican Brian Dubie - 41%; Democrat Peter Shumlin - 32%;
Progressive Anthony Pollina - 25%. The Republican "won.")
Similarly, Republicans
have overtly used third-party participation on the left to their advantage.
In a July 12, 2002 story in the Washington Post titled "GOP Figure
Behind Greens Offer, N.M. Official Says," Post writer Thomas B. Edsall
noted that: "The chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico said
yesterday he was approached by a GOP figure who asked him to offer the state
Green Party at least $100,000 to run candidates in two contested
congressional districts in an effort to divide the Democratic vote."
The Republicans well
understand - and carefully use - the fact that in the American electoral
system a third-party candidate will always harm the major-party candidate
with whom s/he is most closely aligned.
The Australians solved
this problem in the last decade by instituting nationwide instant run-off
voting (IRV), a system that is making inroads in communities across the
United States. There are also efforts to reform our electoral system along
the lines of other democratic nations, instituting proportional
representation systems such as first proposed by John Stuart Mill in 1861
and now adopted by virtually every democracy in the world except the US,
Australia, Greece, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
These are good and
important efforts for the long-term future of American democracy. But they
won't happen in time to influence the 2004 elections, and we're facing a
crisis right now. A few Democratic stalwarts survive who may oppose Bush on
the national stage, but while the rest of us fixated on the war, neo-cons
are creeping on cat's paws into the very heart of Jefferson's Party.
Thus, the best
immediate solution to advance the progressive agenda is for progressives to
join and take back the Democratic Party, in the same way conservatives
seized control of the Republican Party.
After writing the
first draft of this article, just as the first 2003 attack of Baghdad began,
I thought about how the Democratic Party could change if most of the
protesters in the streets were to join the Democratic Party and run for
leadership positions in their local town or county. In short order, it could
become a powerful force for progressive principles and democracy in America
and the world, maybe even in time to influence the 2004 election.
So, I called the
Democratic headquarters in my home state of Vermont.
"Sign me
up!" I said to the startled young man who answered the phone.
"What?" he
said, taken aback by my enthusiasm.
"I'm mad as hell
and I'm not going to take it anymore," I said, standing and waving my
arm as I talked on the phone. "We have to stop the right-wingers from
ripping up our constitution, despoiling our earth, and turning America into
a fascist state! Sign me up!"
"Are you a
Democrat?" he said.
"Can I be a
progressive Democrat?"
"Sure!" he
said.
"Then I'm also a
Democrat now!"
He chuckled, and said.
"We're getting a lot of calls like this."
He took my contact
information, and gave me the name of my county's Party leader. I told him to
put me on the list for future fundraising events, to let me know how and
when I could run for local Party leadership, and how I could participate on
a regular basis in the decision-making processes of "my" local
Democratic Party.
An hour after that
call, I received an email characteristic of so many I get these days.
"I've never been
so depressed in my entire life," the correspondent, an attorney and
longtime progressive activist wrote. "Bush is completely ignoring us.
My nation, using the same rationale Germany did in the 1930s, has just gone
to war against a nation that did not attack it, and my president has
declared himself a military dictator. Every time we announce peace marches,
they raise the 'threat level' so they can keep us away from government
buildings or use force to prevent us from marching. I've lost all
hope."
A few minutes later,
another old friend and activist wrote that her "heart was heavy and
tears came easily." A flood of other emails arrived after the
publication of my most recent article on Common Dreams, and all but one
expressed despair, fear, or panic.
So I've started
answering them by saying:
"The nation I
love is confronting a crisis no smaller than those faced by Roosevelt,
Lincoln, and Washington: a crisis that will determine if American democracy
survives to the next generation. So-called 'conservatives' are turning our
government inside out, trying, as they say, 'to drown it in the bathtub,'
killing off regulatory agencies, ripping up the Constitution, cutting
funding to social services, and turning pollution controls over to industry.
Government expenses in the trillions of dollars are being shifted from us,
today, to the shoulders of our children, who will certainly have to repay
the deficits Bush's so-called 'tax cuts' (which are really tax deferrals)
are racking up. War is being waged in our name and without our consent.
"And, most
disconcerting, the leadership of this administration is made up of blatantly
profiteering CEOs, former defense industry lobbyists, and failed hack
politicians so outside the mainstream that one - Ashcroft - even lost an
election in his home state against a dead guy.
"Unlike most
other modern democracies, our American electoral system only allows for two
political parties, at least at the national level. So, given that the rich,
the polluters, the paranoid, and the zealot war-mongers got to the
Republicans first, we have no choice but to take back the Democratic Party,
reinvigorate it, reorient it, and lead it to success in 2004. We may not be
able to stop Bush now, but we sure as hell can throw him out of office next
year at the ballot box."
But what, some have
said in response, about the corporate-controlled media?
That was the same
problem faced by the Christian Right 25 years ago, when the coverage they
could get was of Tammy Faye Bakker scandals. But once they'd taken over the
Republican Party, the press could no longer ignore them, and Pat Robertson
and Jerry Falwell are now regulars on network TV.
Another person
answered my now-form-email by saying, "I want to participate in
producing a detailed plan for the future of America, rather than just
joining a corrupt and tired-out political party."
My response was that
if there were enough of us in the Democratic Party, it could become a
cleaned-up and powerful activist force. It's possible: just look at how the
anti-abortion and gun-nut folks took over the once-moribund Republican
Party.
Another said,
"But what about their rigged computer-controlled voting machines?"
My answer is that only
a political party as large and resourceful as the Democrats could have the
power to re-institute exit polling, and catch scams like the voter-list
purges Jeb Bush used to steal the 2000 and 2002 elections for himself and
his brother.
And the Democratic
Party can only do it if we, in massive numbers, join it, embrace it, and
ultimately gain a powerful and decisive voice in its policy-making and
selection of candidates.
Thom Hartmann is the author of over a dozen books, including
"Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient
Sunlight." www.unequalprotection.com
This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann and is a multiple submission, but
permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so
long as this credit is attached.
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