June
4, 2001
Jeffords's Jump:
The Left
Taught
Him How to Do It
The leftists organizing in Vermont since
the 1970s prepared the ground for James Jeffords's jump, and
he never would have done it without them. In the 1970s and 1980s
Democrats howled with fury when Vermont's Progressive Party said
that no matter what the short-term consequences, the important
political task was to build a radical, third-force movement in
the state.
In 1988 this progressive coalition
backed Bernard Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, in a run
for Vermont's single Congressional seat. Democratic liberals
raised the "wrecker" charge, saying the Sanders intervention
would cost the Democrats votes and put in a Republican. It did.
Then, two years later, Sanders ran again against the incumbent
Republican and won. Creative destruction worked. Without decades
of work by radicals, nourishing the propriety of independent
politics in Vermont, would Jeffords ever have jumped the Republican
ship and handed control of the Senate back to the Democrats?
We don't think so.
A couple of weeks ago someone
sent us an article by Todd Gitlin and Sean Wilentz, published
in an obscure journal called Dissent. Since Gitlin's prime political
function for years has been to fortify respectable opinion about
the impropriety of independent thinking, We knew what to expect,
particularly since he was in harness with Wilentz, a truly hysterical
proprietarian.
Sure enough, it was an attack
on those who voted for Ralph Nader, tumid with a full-inventory
parade of every cliché from the past forty years about
the folly of radical hopes. Want a taste? Numbers aside, there
is a deeper force at work, behind the delusion that the masses
hanker for radical change that Gore would not give them-a purist
approach to politics. This all-or-nothing approach, allergic
to democratic contest and compromise, is rooted equally in American
self-righteousness and traditional left-wing utopianism. It is
as if by venting one's anger, one were free to remake the world
by willing it.
Yup, this pompous cant translates
into the single, finger-wagging admonition, "You should
have voted for Al Gore," the latest variant on Gitlin's
one-note career sermon about voting for Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
(What is it about these Humphrey lovers? Vermonter Marty Jezer,
another sermonizer about main-chance political propriety, recently
lashed out at CBS in his column in the Brattleboro Reformer for
what he denounced as excessively hostile and prejudicial interviewing
of baby-killer Bob Kerrey! The lust to be respectably "fair,"
whether to HHH or Kerrey, leads to some astonishingly ridiculous
postures.)
Jeffords should sign up right
now as a member of the Progressive Party, with whose political
positions he has some things in common. Of course Jeffords, at
least in his latest incarnation, is truly an independent, whereas
Sanders is effectively a Democrat.
Now let's see how much fortitude
the Democrats on the Hill have in contesting Bush and Cheney.
They no longer have the alibi of the Republicans' controlling
the White House and both chambers.
The Bush
Menu
The Nation was a tad unfair
relaying the claim that the Bush White House has ordered its
chef to prepare genetically modified foods on some state occasions.
The source of this claim was a piece by Jennifer Berkshire posted
on Alternet. The Nation earnestly commented that
"the demonstration smells like a paid political announcement
for the agribusiness lobby."
We remember reading Berkshire's
Alternet piece as an excellent little satire, and Jennifer confirms
that this was indeed the case.
Satire is always an uncertain
weapon. CP
|