Posted on 10/18/2004 2:01:57 AM PDT by huac
"Influential figures on the party's left wing are planning a long-term campaign to move the Democrats to the left...the left-wingers are working hard to elect Kerry, even though they regard him as representing the party's cautious center. In the primaries, most of the left preferred Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, whose populist, anti-war candidacy threatened to wrest the nomination from Kerry, to the horror of the party establishment...If Kerry defeats Bush on Nov. 2, the left will probably demand significant roles and influence in the new Kerry administration -- a Cabinet position for Dean, for example, or Kerry's acceptance of the left's position on trade, health care and other issues..."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Influential figures on the party's left wing are planning a long-term campaign to move the Democrats to the left, just as right-wing activists took over the Republican Party and moved it to the right over the past 30 years.
If the left's campaign is successful, it could transform the political landscape of the United States, changing the terms of debate and bringing dramatically different policies on local, national and international issues.
After George McGovern's landslide loss to Richard Nixon in 1972, some centrist Democrats argued that Democrats had become too liberal to win national elections.
The accusation was repeated after Michael Dukakis' lopsided loss to George Bush in 1988. Leading the charge was the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of centrist Democrats who subsequently pushed the party rightward on crime, economics and foreign policy during the presidency of Bill Clinton, himself a council supporter.
Now, leftist Democrats are planning to challenge the centrists' control. The leftists argue that many Democrats, especially the party establishment in Washington, have become too much like Republicans and too afraid to stand up to right-wingers like George W. Bush.
In the short run, the left-wingers are working hard to elect Kerry, even though they regard him as representing the party's cautious center. In the primaries, most of the left preferred Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, whose populist, anti-war candidacy threatened to wrest the nomination from Kerry, to the horror of the party establishment.
The left is uniting behind Kerry out of a widely shared conviction that a second Bush term would be an unmitigated, perhaps irreversible, disaster. "Four more years of George Bush would destroy the country," Dean said in announcing last summer that he would campaign hard for Kerry.
If Kerry defeats Bush on Nov. 2, the left will probably demand significant roles and influence in the new Kerry administration -- a Cabinet position for Dean, for example, or Kerry's acceptance of the left's position on trade, health care and other issues.
To support its demands, the left will argue that Kerry could not have beaten Bush without its help. And it will have a point, on both ideological and organizational grounds.
After all, it was Dean's clear, forceful criticism of the war and other Bush policies that taught Democrats that standing up to the president and the right wing was not only possible but popular with voters. Without Dean's example, it's doubtful Kerry would ever have found his voice against Bush.
And left-leaning activists are mounting an unprecedented grassroots campaign to educate and turn out voters for Kerry.
The nation's largest labor union, the Service Employees International Union, has joined with the Sierra Club, the NAACP, the National Abortion Rights League and other groups to organize "the largest voter mobilization in American history" through the newly minted alliances America Coming Together and America Votes.
Other supporters to Kerry's left include Democracy for America, the organization Dean created after the primaries to channel the energies of his grassroots constituency, and the AFL-CIO, whose get-out-the-vote work was crucial for Al Gore in winning the popular vote in 2000.
And perhaps no one has attracted more attention than MoveOn, the Internet- based group whose television ads and in-your-face opposition to Bush has driven right-wingers crazy, even as its small-donor fund-raising model has challenged Big Money's hold over democracy.
Call them the Beat Bush Brigades. Collectively, these groups boast a combined budget of perhaps $100 million and tens of thousands of staff and volunteers. And as much as they may obey federal laws that prohibit them from coordinating with Kerry, in effect they operate as an unofficial "Kerry for President" campaign.
Whether they succeed in electing Kerry or not, key leaders see the newfound unity among these groups as a first step toward building the kind of political movement any president, whatever his party, must heed.
"It's self-interest that's bringing us together," says Deborah Callahan, the executive director of the League of Conservation Voters, a nonpartisan environmental organization that has endorsed Kerry.
"If we don't cooperate, we'll certainly fail to put a progressive in the White House in 2004. But if we succeed, we can build relations and trust that will continue beyond the election and result in something much larger than ourselves. Look at how the right-wing took power in this country: By following a long-term vision of building a movement of like-minded organizations. We're finally doing the same."
Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's former campaign manager, argues that the Dean campaign has already pushed the Democratic Party -- and thereby the national political debate -- to the left.
Speaking in May to an auditorium of cheering activists from MoveOn and kindred organizations, at a conference titled "What We Stand For," Trippi said, "The Democrats weren't really going to take Bush on in this election."
They only did so, Trippi told the crowd, "because of what you did" -- that is, because they saw how Dean's opposition to the Iraq war and the right- wing agenda gained him a huge surge in poll numbers, grassroots energy and financial support.
"We had to show Kerry and the Democrats how to stand up to Bush in the primaries, and now we have to show them how to win in November," added Trippi. "If we have to, we will carry John Kerry on our shoulders across the goal line. "
With Bush vanquished, the Democrats' internal battles will begin.
"We're going to celebrate with John Kerry the night of Nov. 2. But the morning of Nov. 3, we're going to start organizing to take the party away from him, because we have serious disagreements about what the party should stand for and where this country needs to go," said one activist at the "What We Stand For" conference, Bertha Lewis, co-chair of the Working Families Party in New York state and a leader in the grassroots antipoverty group, ACORN.
"In 2004, we have to elect anyone but Bush," said a veteran labor strategist working to link unions with other progressive groups. "But if we keep working and build on the lessons learned and the partnerships we're forging during this fight against Bush, we can elect somebody we really like four or eight years from now."
All this signals a historic shift in the American left's approach to national politics. In the past, left-wing groups and individuals would moan about a Democratic nominee's perceived deficiencies and defect to a protest candidate, such as Ralph Nader or Jesse Jackson.
By contrast, the Beat Bush Brigades are showing a new patience and maturity. They are working in the short term to elect a Democrat they see as imperfect in order to build their movement's strength over the long term.
Ironically, the left's strategy is consciously modeled on the campaign that right-wing activists mounted to take over the Republican Party, explained Robert Borosage, the director of the Campaign for America's Future, at the "What We Stand For" conference.
Beginning in 1964, said Borosage, after conservative Republican Barry Goldwater's landslide loss to Democrat Lyndon Johnson, key right-wing figures decided to rebuild the conservative movement from the ground up.
They recognized the importance of thinking big, planning long-term and building enduring institutions. Thus they went on to invest in think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and grassroots organizations like the Christian Coalition.
By 1980, the right had gained sufficient influence within Republican circles for its champion, Ronald Reagan, to win first his party's presidential nomination and then the general election.
Soon, the combination of Reagan's charisma and the right's continued activism -- and especially its subsequent creation of a right-wing media infrastructure dominated by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh -- had shifted the entire nation's political center of gravity to the right, in ways that remain obvious today.
The left now hopes to copy the right wing's success.
If Bush wins on Nov. 2, the battle for control of the Democratic Party will probably come quickly. Leftists will argue that Kerry and the centrists forfeit any right to leadership if they cannot defeat the most vulnerable incumbent since Jimmy Carter.
If Bush is defeated, the battle will unfold more gradually. The left will probably cooperate with Kerry on some issues and fight him on others, while it focuses on building the media, research and grassroots institutions that can swing the party in its direction.
In any case, none of this new thinking and activism on the left would have happened if Bush had not pursued such an extreme course as president.
Thus the threat of four more years of Bush may end up calling forth a genuine American left for the first time in a generation -- an ironic accomplishment for this most right-wing of presidents.
Mark Hertsgaard is the author, most recently, of "The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World."
Yes, I know. Pelosi, Feinstein and Boxer rampant is truly a disturbing thought.
George W. Bush is a right winger? Who knew!!!
I wish his domestic policies reflected his right wing label
For all the knee jerk reactionaries out there, before you hit the troll alert button, I like Bush and plan to vote for him, he's just not a right winger.
Yeah, you want to see Right-winger? Read the people up for election in the Constitution party. THOSE are some right wingers, and I agreed with most of what I was reading, except that they want us out of Iraq... that I don't agree with.
We give and give and give to try to get along with these people and their ideals. No more. We're electing Bush this year. Period.
As Zell Miller knows, the dems have no heart and soul to fight for anymore.
My God this piece is slanted so far left that I got dizzy reading it. Obey Federal laws?? Give me a frickin break. These power hungry communists don't give a damn about any law until they are caught. The day-to-day coordination between these groups and the DNC/Kerry campaign is well documented. The laws only apply to the Republicans.
One thing, should Kerry steal this election (shudder), and the left gets their wishes, if we don't have a civil war within the first four years the Democratic Party will no longer exist. America will revolt against their authoritarian agenda so vehemently that no one will win a seat with a (D) behind their name ever again.
We're a two party system and the people in the Constitution party have the right idea (except for Iraq) just not the power.
To me this election transcends politics and party, it's about life and death.
I greatly fear for the security of this country under a Kerry administration.
These whack-jobs have completely destroyed the democratic party.
I grew up as a Boston, Irish-Catholic, Democrat, but I don't recognize the party now.
There is no room for a white, heterosexual, able-bodied man who isn't a union member in the democratic party.
It is now a party of minorities, homosexuals, unions, socialists, marxists, anarchists and trust-fund lefties who operate with an end justifies the means ethic.
I hope the single issue ideologues on the right take note of the harm being done to the dem party.
Big tent or no tent.
Already posted:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1241057/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1240797/posts
bump
"...I greatly fear for the security of this country under a Kerry administration..."
That is what most don't understand. If we don't have security...NOTHING else matters.
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