For a Green Presidential Campaign in 2004
By Howie Hawkins, Syracuse Greens

Presented at Regional Greens Meeting, Freeville, NY, June 28, 2003

Progressives are running scared today. They are scared of Bush and are
demanding that the Greens not run a candidate and back a Democrat, or that
the Greens backhandedly support the Democrat by not campaigning in the swing
states.

To be sure, Bush is scary. Constitutional rights restricted. Unilateral
presidential war powers. War budget hiked. International treaties
abrogated. Tax cuts for the rich. Worker safety and environmental
regulations gutted. Pandering to corporate interests in the midst of a
corporate crime wave. An anti-consumer bankruptcy bill. Invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq, with threats of future invasions or proxy wars for
regime change in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba,
and who knows where else.

But the Democrats are scary, too. The majority of congressional Democrats
have let Bush have his way on every one of these issues.

If the Democratic Party won't resist Bush's policies in Congress, why
should progressives support them for the presidency?

The Democrats didn't even resist Bush when he stole the Florida vote in
2000. We now know that Gore won Florida handily from the recount done by the
media consortium that included the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and
Los Angeles Times. But the Democrats, far more interested in preserving the
system's legitimacy than fighting its racism, refused to make an issue of
how the Republicans cut blacks from the voter rolls through computerized
racial profiling.

The Congressional Black Caucus gave the Democrats a second chance after the
Supreme Court selection of Bush, when it appealed to Senate Democrats to
object to accepting the Florida electors. The objection of just one
Democratic Senator would have forced an investigation of the racial voter
profiling and a recount of the Florida vote. But not one of them -- not
Wellstone, not Kennedy, not Feingold, not Boxer, not Clinton, not Kerry --
not one of the Democratic liberals objected.

And the Greens are supposed to stand down and leave it to the Democrats to
fight Bush?

Yes, a Democrat might beat Bush. But no Democrat is going to beat Bushism.

Just as electing Clinton did not beat Reaganism, but took Reaganism far
beyond what Reagan and Bush Sr. could accomplish, so electing a Democrat
will not defeat Bushism to change the basic foreign and domestic policies of
the US.

What was called Reaganism (to scare us into voting Democratic) was really a
bipartisan consensus around neoconservative militarism and neoliberal
economics. That bipartisan consensus was initiated under Carter, supported
by the majority of Congressional Democrats during the Reagan and Bush Sr.
administrations, carried far beyond what Reagan and Bush Sr. could do by
Clinton, and is now being taken even further by Bush, again with the support
of the majority of Congressional Democrats.

These policies were initiated under Carter, who increased the military
budget beyond Ford's projections and got the US into covert military
operations in Afghanistan with the hope, successful as it turned out, that
it would provoke the Soviets to invade. The US began in 1978 training the
Islamic fundamentalists who we now know as Al Qaida. Bush's military
occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is the Carter Doctrine in practice, which
stated in essence that the US would go to war for oil in the Middle East.

Neoconservative militarism is the post-Vietnam foreign policy of the
corporate rulers as they reasserted their post World War II policy of
dominating the capitalist world. With the fall of the Soviet bloc, Bush Sr.
declared a New World Order in which the US would dominate the whole world
and make it safe for capitalist exploitation. The Clinton administration
continued this policy through NATO expansion and its intervention in the
Balkans without UN authorization, as well as the complex of trade and credit
policies administered by the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and numerous
corporate-managed trade agreements on the model of NAFTA.

Both parties are committed are just as committed to economic policies of
neoliberal austerity. Again, these polices were initiated under Carter, who
slashed social programs to increase the military budget and re- assert US
interventionism with the development of the Rapid Deployment Force, adopted
monetarism as fiscal policy with the appointment of Volker to the Fed, and
began the attack on organized labor by refusing to support the common situs
picketing law he had pledged the AFL-CIO he would support.

Neoliberalism includes cuts in social spending, hikes in regressive taxes,
cuts in progressive taxes, privatization, deregulation, corporate- managed
trade, union busting, and corporate welfare. In a nutshell, it means the
stick of austerity for workers -- on the theory it will makes us work harder
and raise productivity -- and the carrot of welfare for the corporate rich
-- on the theory they will invest and the benefits of increased jobs and tax
revenues will trickle down to the rest of us.

Neoliberal austerity is the post-Keynesian economic policy of the corporate
rulers as they ran into the internal limits to profits and growth under the
Keynesian welfare/warfare state.

The new ruling class consensus is the austerity/warfare state of neoliberal
economics and neoconservative empire.

And that ruling class consensus is the pro-war, pro-corporate bipartisan
consensus.

What is now called Bushism is not radical departure, but a continuation of
this bipartisan consensus, with the majority of Democrats in Congress voting
for Bush's key programs: the tax cuts, war budgets, war powers, and USA
PATRIOT Act.

Worried about Bush's global empire building? Empire building is a
bipartisan geopolitical strategy of using military basing and control of oil
in the Middle East and Central Eurasia to keep Western Europe, Russia,
China, and Japan from challenging US hegemony. This geopolitical strategy is
as prevalent in the pronouncements of Democratic national security advisors
like Zbigniew Brzezinski as in those of their Republican counterparts like
Henry Kissinger. The Bush administration's particular intellectual framework
for empire coming out of the Project for a New American Century is authored
by Democrats as well as Republicans, such as Clinton's CIA Director, James
Woolsey, and Paul Wolfowitz, the former aide to the late Senator Scoop
Jackson (D-WA). The Clinton administration's imperialist motives for
supporting Star Wars were stated quite openly in the Air Force's "Vision for
2020": "dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US
interests and investment."

Indeed, the Democrats' unadulterated support for empire goes back before
Carter, before Kennedy and Johnson's Vietnam War, to another Democratic
administration, that of Truman, with Dean Acheson's Cold War strategy of
building alliances of US satellites to contain the Soviet bloc and make the
"free" world safe for corporate exploitation. With the demise of the USSR's
own empire, the US geopolitical strategy switched, "From Containment to
Enlargement," as Clinton's first National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake,
declared in a 1993 speech of that title, adding in words that sound like
Wolfowitz's that US-led alliances would accomplish this by "Diplomacy where
we can; force where we must."

Worried about Bush's militarism? Remember that the post Vietnam hikes in
military spending were initiated by Carter, taking them above the levels
Ford had projected, and that the post Cold War military spending hikes were
initiated by Clinton, taking them well above Bush Sr.'s projections. Bush
Jr.'s further hikes have been supported by the majority of Congressional
Democrats. The current mantra among the Democratic Party political
consultants and pollsters is that the Democratic presidential candidate must
be as "strong on national security" as Bush to be competitive in the 2004
election.

The Clinton foreign policy team was frustrated by the military's cautious
Powell Doctrine. As Clinton's Secretary of State and then UN Ambassador,
Madeline Albright, angrily told Colin Powell, now Bush's Secretary of State
and then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "What's the point of having
this superb military that you've always been talking about if we can't use
it?"

What about Bush's unilateralism? Wouldn't Democratic imperialism be a
little softer, more "globalist." Not hardly. It was Clinton's Secretary of
State and Brzezinski protege, Madeline Albright, who told the UN Security
Council in 1994 regarding Iraq: "We will act multilaterally when we can,
unilaterally when we must." And thus under Clinton the US bypassed the
Security Council to impose regime change by military force on Iraqi
Kurdistan, Kosovo, and Serbia.

How about Bush's domestic repression? The Clinton/Reno anti- crime and
anti-terrorism bills instituted more than 50 new death penalties, emaciated
habeus corpus, militarized domestic policing, gutted posse comitatus,
legalized FBI and CIA domestic political spying, expanded the drug war, and
subsidized expansion of the prison/industrial complex. The Clintonites sent
in Delta Force to make sure the heads of anti-WTO demonstrators were cracked
in Seattle. The post 9-11 detention of thousands without trial, any kind of
hearing, or access to lawyers was done under the statutory authority of
Clinton's Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act on 1996. The USA
PATRIOT Act just expands this repressive authority further, again with the
votes of the majority of Congressional Democrats.

Well, maybe the Democrats aren't as extreme about as Bush on domestic
economic policy? Here again there is a basic bipartisan consensus. Carter
initiated the neoliberal turn as the bipartisan consensus switched from
military Keynesianism to military neoliberalism. Though neoliberalism is
cloaked in the egalitarian sounding rhetoric of free markets, the reality is
state enforcement of greater inequality: welfare for the corporate rich
(investment incentives in theory) and hardship for workers (to motivate
higher productivity in theory).

Today's corporate scandals are a legacy of Clinton's financial
deregulation, media monopolization a legacy of his deregulatory
telecommunications act, the loss of 2 million jobs a legacy of NAFTA and the
other trade deals Clinton made that are sending US manufacturing and
backroom service jobs to cheap labor markets overseas. Bush's biggest
contribution to the neoliberal agenda has been his tax cuts for the rich,
which the Democrats enabled by declaring it a "victory" to pair down their
size somewhat.

This bipartisan consensus is forged by the corporate ruling class through
its media ownership and financing of publications, broadcasts, think tanks,
and its two political parties, Democratic and Republican. To be sure, there
are tactical differences within this consensus. No doubt the ruling class is
split about Bush. Many of them are worried about the economic irrationality
of the latest tax cuts, the destabilizing consequences of throughout the
Middle East and Europe of the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq,
and Bush's pandering to the domestically destabilizing social agenda of the
Christian fundamentalists. And this faction of the corporate rich will
support a Democratic version of the bipartisan consensus, the Slick
Soft-Right of a Clinton rather than the Crude Hard-Right of a Bush Jr.

But that is their fight, not ours!

Our fight is to get our alternatives into public debate in the 2004
election: -- cooperative security instead of the US as global occupation
force, -- renewable energy instead of oil imperialism, -- economic security
through national health care, guaranteed income above poverty, jobs for all
at living wages, fair trade, and progressive taxes instead of the neoliberal
regime of motivating the poor with hardships to work harder and the rich
with corporate welfare to invest, -- economic production in an ecologically
sustainable balance with nature instead of endless growth through
environmental marauding by the military-industrial complex; -- repealing
repressive laws to restore civil liberties and dismantle the
prison-industrial complex instead of PATRIOT Acts and drug wars, -- a
multi-party system founded on proportional representation and public funding
of public elections instead of a state-sanctioned, corporate-financed
two-party system with two right wings.

Our fight is to get as many votes as we can for the Green Party candidates
for the Presidency, House, and Senate. The more votes we get, the more
seriously our alternatives will be taken by the public and the more we will
be able to further organize and mobilize around them.

One thing is certain. These alternatives will not be heard without a Green
campaign. We will not have the vehicle needed to organize people around real
alternatives. If the Left tails the lesser-evil Democrat again, which has
been the dominant strategy of what passes for a Left in the US since most of
it collapsed into the New Deal coalition in 1936, the whole debate will
shift further to the Right again.

Let us clear up some fantasies about Kucinich. The other candidates are
clearly pro-war, pro-corporate candidates. But Sharpton and Kucinich sound
progressive.

Sharpton, as we in NY know, is playing for patronage. That is what he did
with his senatorial and mayoral campaigns. He wants to be the black
political broker for patronage to the black political class. We know from
his history that he will more likely support a Republican to spite
Democrats who snub him than a Green. We should definitely keep the door
open to his supporters and even to Sharpton himself, but let us not be
naïve about what his objectives are in the Democratic presidential
primaries.

Kucinich sounds like Nader on his policy proposals. But he is not running
for president. He is running to build his national stature and fund base to
get ready to run for US Senate from Ohio. He will pull out no later than
Super Tuesday next March 2 in order to file in Ohio in time to run for
re-election to Congress in 2004.

But Kucinich is not like Nader in that he opposed independent politics and
the Green Party.

"I have no interest in a third party candidacy. None," says Kucinich. "I
want to do it the other way -- bring third party candidates into the
{Democratic] Party and get support in the primaries." -- Ruth Conniff, "The
Peace Candidate," The Progressive, April 2003

[Kucinich] recently told the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "The Democratic Party
created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is to
go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come back
through my candidacy." -- CounterPunch, April 2003

The second quote is particularly important to think about. He does not say
take the Democratic Party away from its corporate rulers. Rather he wants to
bring the wayward Greens into coalition with the Democratic Party's
corporate rulers in a "big tent." The whole point of the Greens as an
INDEPENDENT party is our independence from the corporate rulers. We want to
build a coalition of all of the popular constituencies that are exploited
and oppressed by the corporate rulers. That's a big enough tent to win
elections. But it's a different tent than the one Kucinich wants to build.

Inside the Democratic Party, the Left enters into coalition as subordinate
partners with the very corporate rulers who are violently committed to
maintaining the system the Left presumably wants to transform.

When the Left supports the Democrats, it commits suicide and disappears. The
Left surrenders its voice in the election to the Democrats, who will then
triangulate Right to cut into the Republican vote. The Left surrenders its
very identity as an alternative for a different world by supporting a
(hopefully) lesser evil administration of the status quo.

We cannot rely on the Slick Soft-Right Democrats to fight the Crude
Hard-Right Republicans. The Democrats haven't done it during the first two
and half years of the Bush administration. There is no good reason to start
relying on them now. The best defense against the Hard Right is not
defensive support for a Softer Right, but a strong offensive around a real
campaign for a progressive alternative.

The minute the Greens fail to mount a serious campaign (whether by openly
supporting a Democrat as the lesser evil or doing it backhandedly by staging
a "strategic" campaign of not competing in swing states) is the minute the
public will stop taking the Greens seriously. What little leverage Kucinich
and Sharpton may now have to push the debate to the Left will vanish as the
Democrats are then free to take votes to their Left for granted.

Cynthia McKinney is the future of progressives in the Democratic Party. She
is the poster child for what Democrats do to their progressives. When the
Democratic Leadership Council and the AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs
Commission) targeted her for defeat because she had the temerity to call for
justice for Palestinians, the Democratic leadership ran away from her, from
Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young, and John Lewis in her home town of Atlanta to
Jesse Jackson Sr., Terry McAulliffe, and Bill Clinton nationally. They let a
Republican judge who supported right-wing fundamentalist Alan Keyes in the
2000 Republican primaries re- register as a Democrat and beat McKinney with
Republican votes in Georgia's open primary system.

The spoiler argument against a Green run for president is garbage. The
Democrats spoiled the election by, first of all, offering a phony
alternative to the Republicans. And then the Democrats spoiled their own
election by not fighting for what they had won in Florida. Contrary to the
Nader-Elected-Bush refrain of the Anybody-But-Bush Democrats, Nader probably
helped Gore beat Bush in the popular vote. Analysts as different as
Alexander Cockburn on the Left and Al From, chair of the Democratic
Leadership Council, on the Democratic Right, note that exit polling data
show that Gore did better with Nader in the race than he would have without
Nader. While From uses this data to preposterously counsel Democrats to
ignore their Left and run to the Right, Cockburn's explanation is obviously
more persuasive: Nader's campaign forced Gore to articulate some populist,
anti-corporate themes that brought many disillusioned Democrats back into
the fold. Without Nader in the race, these Democrats would not have voted,
and many of Nader's voters would not have voted either.

A Green campaign in 2004 doesn't have to win the presidency to define the
debate, move it to the Left, and begin to undermine Bushism, which is to
say, the bipartisan policy consensus. Truman made his remarkable comeback to
beat Dewey by stealing Wallace's thunder and campaigning on the Progressive
Party's economic and social agenda. Perot's 19% in 1992 made budget
balancers out of both corporate parties and set the course for federal
budget policies in the 1990s. To define the debate, the Green campaign just
has to be serious about getting every vote it can in every state.

At the least, that kind of campaign makes the Greens a threat to "spoil" the
Democratic side the two-party charade and thus compels attention to our
campaign. Much better would be a double-digit vote percentage, which could
leverage some reforms during the next administration and lay the foundation
for further gains at all levels in future elections.

Nothing would be more dispiriting for progressives than a self- defeating,
defensive campaign for a pro-war, pro-corporate Democrat. And nothing would
be more inspiring than an all-out Green presidential campaign for what we
believe in. That kind of Green campaign could be a rallying point for
progressives and social movements and begin to turn the tide against the
pro-war, pro-corporate bipartisan consensus.

"Thersites" <thersites2467@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ce47d665.0307141127.19cba01e@posting.google.c om...
> For a Green Presidential Campaign in 2004
> By Howie Hawkins, Syracuse Greens
>
> Presented at Regional Greens Meeting, Freeville, NY, June 28, 2003
>
[snip]

> But the Democrats are scary, too. The majority of congressional Democrats
> have let Bush have his way on every one of these issues.

They have.

> If the Democratic Party won't resist Bush's policies in Congress, why
> should progressives support them for the presidency?

Good question. Bret Cahill cares to answer?

> The Democrats didn't even resist Bush when he stole the Florida vote in
> 2000. We now know that Gore won Florida handily from the recount done by
the
> media consortium that included the Wall Street Journal, New York Times,
and
> Los Angeles Times. But the Democrats, far more interested in preserving
the
> system's legitimacy than fighting its racism, refused to make an issue of
> how the Republicans cut blacks from the voter rolls through computerized
> racial profiling.

You can quote Cameron Spitzer on that one.

> The Congressional Black Caucus gave the Democrats a second chance after
the
> Supreme Court selection of Bush, when it appealed to Senate Democrats to
> object to accepting the Florida electors. The objection of just one
> Democratic Senator would have forced an investigation of the racial voter
> profiling and a recount of the Florida vote. But not one of them -- not
> Wellstone, not Kennedy, not Feingold, not Boxer, not Clinton, not Kerry --
> not one of the Democratic liberals objected.

Quite amazing.

> And the Greens are supposed to stand down and leave it to the Democrats to
> fight Bush?

Supposedly.

> Yes, a Democrat might beat Bush. But no Democrat is going to beat Bushism.

Exactly.

[snip]
>
> Kucinich sounds like Nader on his policy proposals. But he is not running
> for president. He is running to build his national stature and fund base
to
> get ready to run for US Senate from Ohio. He will pull out no later than
> Super Tuesday next March 2 in order to file in Ohio in time to run for
> re-election to Congress in 2004.

I'm assuming you're (well, the writer) making this up at this point. If
not, please cite a source.

> But Kucinich is not like Nader in that he opposed independent politics and
> the Green Party.
>
> "I have no interest in a third party candidacy. None," says Kucinich. "I
> want to do it the other way -- bring third party candidates into the
> {Democratic] Party and get support in the primaries." -- Ruth Conniff,
"The
> Peace Candidate," The Progressive, April 2003
>
> [Kucinich] recently told the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "The Democratic Party
> created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is
to
> go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come
back
> through my candidacy." -- CounterPunch, April 2003

Kucinich does forget that Democrats and Greens aren't compatable.
Democrats, in general, need to do some serious moving if they want our
votes.

> The second quote is particularly important to think about. He does not say
> take the Democratic Party away from its corporate rulers. Rather he wants
to
> bring the wayward Greens into coalition with the Democratic Party's
> corporate rulers in a "big tent." The whole point of the Greens as an
> INDEPENDENT party is our independence from the corporate rulers. We want
to
> build a coalition of all of the popular constituencies that are exploited
> and oppressed by the corporate rulers. That's a big enough tent to win
> elections. But it's a different tent than the one Kucinich wants to build.

He didn't explicitly say it, but he's against Corporate America as much as
the next guy.

> Inside the Democratic Party, the Left enters into coalition as subordinate
> partners with the very corporate rulers who are violently committed to
> maintaining the system the Left presumably wants to transform.
>
> When the Left supports the Democrats, it commits suicide and disappears.
The
> Left surrenders its voice in the election to the Democrats, who will then
> triangulate Right to cut into the Republican vote. The Left surrenders its
> very identity as an alternative for a different world by supporting a
> (hopefully) lesser evil administration of the status quo.
>
> We cannot rely on the Slick Soft-Right Democrats to fight the Crude
> Hard-Right Republicans. The Democrats haven't done it during the first two
> and half years of the Bush administration. There is no good reason to
start
> relying on them now. The best defense against the Hard Right is not
> defensive support for a Softer Right, but a strong offensive around a real
> campaign for a progressive alternative.
>
> The minute the Greens fail to mount a serious campaign (whether by openly
> supporting a Democrat as the lesser evil or doing it backhandedly by
staging
> a "strategic" campaign of not competing in swing states) is the minute the
> public will stop taking the Greens seriously. What little leverage
Kucinich
> and Sharpton may now have to push the debate to the Left will vanish as
the
> Democrats are then free to take votes to their Left for granted.
>
> Cynthia McKinney is the future of progressives in the Democratic Party.
She
> is the poster child for what Democrats do to their progressives. When the
> Democratic Leadership Council and the AIPAC (American Israeli Public
Affairs
> Commission) targeted her for defeat because she had the temerity to call
for
> justice for Palestinians, the Democratic leadership ran away from her,
from
> Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young, and John Lewis in her home town of Atlanta
to
> Jesse Jackson Sr., Terry McAulliffe, and Bill Clinton nationally. They let
a
> Republican judge who supported right-wing fundamentalist Alan Keyes in the
> 2000 Republican primaries re- register as a Democrat and beat McKinney
with
> Republican votes in Georgia's open primary system.
>
> The spoiler argument against a Green run for president is garbage. The
> Democrats spoiled the election by, first of all, offering a phony
> alternative to the Republicans. And then the Democrats spoiled their own
> election by not fighting for what they had won in Florida. Contrary to the
> Nader-Elected-Bush refrain of the Anybody-But-Bush Democrats, Nader
probably
> helped Gore beat Bush in the popular vote. Analysts as different as
> Alexander Cockburn on the Left and Al From, chair of the Democratic
> Leadership Council, on the Democratic Right, note that exit polling data
> show that Gore did better with Nader in the race than he would have
without
> Nader. While From uses this data to preposterously counsel Democrats to
> ignore their Left and run to the Right, Cockburn's explanation is
obviously
> more persuasive: Nader's campaign forced Gore to articulate some populist,
> anti-corporate themes that brought many disillusioned Democrats back into
> the fold. Without Nader in the race, these Democrats would not have voted,
> and many of Nader's voters would not have voted either.
>
> A Green campaign in 2004 doesn't have to win the presidency to define the
> debate, move it to the Left, and begin to undermine Bushism, which is to
> say, the bipartisan policy consensus. Truman made his remarkable comeback
to
> beat Dewey by stealing Wallace's thunder and campaigning on the
Progressive
> Party's economic and social agenda. Perot's 19% in 1992 made budget
> balancers out of both corporate parties and set the course for federal
> budget policies in the 1990s. To define the debate, the Green campaign
just
> has to be serious about getting every vote it can in every state.
>
> At the least, that kind of campaign makes the Greens a threat to "spoil"
the
> Democratic side the two-party charade and thus compels attention to our
> campaign. Much better would be a double-digit vote percentage, which could
> leverage some reforms during the next administration and lay the
foundation
> for further gains at all levels in future elections.
>
> Nothing would be more dispiriting for progressives than a self- defeating,
> defensive campaign for a pro-war, pro-corporate Democrat. And nothing
would
> be more inspiring than an all-out Green presidential campaign for what we
> believe in. That kind of Green campaign could be a rallying point for
> progressives and social movements and begin to turn the tide against the
> pro-war, pro-corporate bipartisan consensus.

Now that I think of it, I hope Lieberman gets the nomination. That way the
Greens will most certainly break 5%. I believe we still need to have that
as our goal -- 5%.

Still the American population wants to upgrade their '88 Escort to an '89.
Why not spring for the '03 model?

I want to see, if Bush loses in a close race, the Republicans blame
Libertarians and the Buchanan-Reform Party for losing. That'll be a laugh.

Stiner
--
.. . .That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness.

-- The Declaration of Independence