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CounterPunch
November
8, 2002
The Mid-Term
Elections
Giving Bush a Free Ride Spelled Ruin
by RALPH NADER
The mid-term elections are over. After spending
hundreds of millions of business dollars, the Republicans now
control the Senate and hold on to the House of Representatives.
It is amazing that the Democrats did not do worse. They had decided
months ago on a strange strategy --that they were going to defeat
the Republicans by not criticizing their belligerent leader,
George W. Bush.
In their ads, literature and debates
between Senatorial and Representative candidates, mention of
Mr. Bush by them was to praise not to challenge, or to expose
the hypocrisy, and the damage to American workers and consumers
by this corporation President.
Listening to the debate from around the
country on C-Span radio, I was astonished to see Democratic candidates
in tight races eager to show their support for Bush's 2001 tax
cut for the wealthy, for the give-a-way war resolution authority
on Iraq, and for Bush's federal drive to take over the historical
role of the states in personal injury law by restricting Americans'
right to their full day in court.
And what did Senate Democrat candidates
such as Jean Shaheen in New Hampshire and Senator Max Cleland
of Georgia get for their support of President Bush? Why he roared
into their states on Air Force One and campaigned against them,
as he did against other Democrats who voted  with him on these and other Republican
litmus paper tests.
The morning after election day, reporters
asked Senator majority leader, Tom Daschle why the Democrats
lost? He replied, because the Democrats were "up against
a very popular President." That's a self-fulfilling point.
Asked the same question, Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe
answered: "Because they [the Republicans] outspent us."
But it was Republican House speaker who gave the accurate response:
"Because the Democrats did not have a message."
At a time of rising unemployment, a shaky
economy, and growing Republican deficits, it would seem that
the Democrats had opportunities. Yet while the Republicans were
shamelessly touting ending the estate tax for the 4000 estates
a year that are in the multi-million dollar category, the Democrats
were not highlighting the desperate need for raising the federal
minimum wage (now about a third less in purchasing power than
it was in 1968!) and extending unemployment compensation benefits.
Most Democrats, with the prominent exception
of the late Senator Paul Wellstone, took a dive on making Republican
softness on corporate crime a major issue, coupled with solid
reform proposals to crackdown on corporate scandals that stole
billions from pension funds and 401ks and cost many jobs. (See
Citizenworks.org).
Namby-pamby was the Democratic routine
on the increasing millions of Americans without health care coverage
and on the staggering inefficiency, waste and greed of many giant
HMOs and the drug industry.
Although the Democrats had in their possession
finely tuned economic stimulus plans, they tied their own by
declining to go after a bloated military budget (now half of
the U.S. government's entire non-discretionary budget) and the
tens of billions of dollars in yearly corporate welfare subsidies
and handouts.
Instead, the Democrats' economic agenda
was the raising of big bucks from business interests -- a sure
way to silence championing the peoples' necessities.
When the Democratic Party adopts a look-a-like
strategy vis-a-vis the Republican Party, some of their voters
may prefer the real thing and vote Republican. After all, only
a shift of less than three hundred thousand votes in key states
would have given the Democrats control of both Houses of Congress.
Amidst the din of endlessly repeated
political television ads, it wasn't made very clear that the
Democrats were going after the Republicans on down home consumer
protection issues, such as insurance and food safety and affordable
housing. Environmental positions regarding cleaner air and water
were not prominent either.
Lessons for the future? Don't give your
major political opponents a free ride between and before elections.
Challenge the corporate takeover of elections, including the
sudden surge of political television advertising paid directly
by industries like the big price-gouging drug companies. And
get down to the neighborhood level with visible stands for the
people.
Otherwise the Democrats will become even
better at electing very bad Republicans.
Yesterday's
Features
Bruce Jackson
Don't
Mourn, Bake!
Anthony Gancarski
Jeb
Bush: Left-Liberal?
William Evan
A Diplomatic
Strategy
How Carter and Castro Could Avert War on Iraq
William A. Cook
Blinded
by the Right
Pierre Tristam
Hypocrisy
at Camp Delta
Mayor Walid Hamad
Settlers
and Trash
Matt Siegfried
Questions
of War
Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair
Nosedive:
the Democrats the Day After
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- The Shafts of Death: Bush, Coal Mines, and Death
in the Tunnels;
- Speak Memory!: Carter and the Draft;
- Daniel Pipes' World: Smearing Pro-Arab Academics;
- Ashcroft's Gays: the War on Free Speech;
- Saddam's Amnesty: Could It Happen Here?
- Criminalizing Dissent: a history and preview;
- Iraq 1987: When the Going Was Good;
- Egypt in Turmoil: an Anthropologist's Account;
- Green and Grounded: Profiled at the Gate.
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October 26
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Carol Norris
This Message
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