Weekend
Edition
April 23 / 24, 2005
Backing
Democrats Has Pulled the Anti-War Movement to the Right
Why "Inside-Out"
is a Dead End
By
ELIZABETH SCHULTE
Chicago,
Illinois
FOR
OPPONENTS of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there was a big question
hanging in the air in the wake of the 2004 election. How could
George Bush--the man behind the war that so many people protested--be
re-elected?
Unfortunately,
many on the left have offered answers that are less than useful.
For some, Bush’s re-election showed that a majority of Americans
bought the snake oil that George W. Bush was selling. Now, goes
the most extreme of these arguments, they got what they deserved.
For
others, John Kerry was defeated because he ran a poor campaign.
The people who actually lead the Democratic Party--like Hillary
Clinton and Howard Dean--think Kerry was “too far to the
left.” But at least on the question of the war and occupation,
Kerry was as close to Bush as he could get.
Contrary
to the party establishment’s assessment, a section of the
antiwar left now proposes moving the Democratic Party to the left,
with antiwar forces taking it over and transforming it.
The
strategy is supposed to run on two tracks: inside and outside.
“Outside” means protests and actions that put pressure
on the politicians to take a position against the war. “Inside”
means supporting progressives within the Democratic Party in the
hopes of shaping the terms of the debate.
For
some, outside can also mean supporting non-Democratic Party candidates,
but mainly in the hope that this would pressure the Democrats
to move leftward.
Medea
Benjamin, founder of the antiwar group Code Pink who helped argue
within the Green Party against Ralph Nader in favor of party nominee
David Cobb and his strategy of telling Greens to vote for Kerry
in swing states, seemed to have a change of heart in the December
20, 2004 Nation. “Many of us in the Green Party made a tremendous
compromise by campaigning in swing states for such a miserable
standard-bearer for the progressive movement as John Kerry,”
Benjamin wrote. “Well, I’ve had it. As George Bush
says, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me--you can’t
get fooled again.’”
But
the change of heart wasn’t complete. “Let’s
stop the infighting, though,” she continued. “Dems,
Greens and other progressives must not only respect one another’s
choices, we must start using these different ‘inside-outside’
strategies to our collective advantage. A strategically placed
Green/progressive pull could conceivably prevent a suicidal Democratic
lurch to the right.”
What
Benjamin and others haven’t come to grip with is that the
Democrats aren’t in danger of lurching to the right--they’re
already there. The problem in 2004 wasn’t that the antiwar
forces neglected work with the Democrats. It’s that the
Democratic Party didn’t listen to them.
At
every step of the way, Democratic Party leaders could silence
dissent with a simple threat: If you don’t support Kerry,
then you are to blame if Bush is re-elected. So progressives like
Benjamin did one better than silence--and became loyal attack
dogs of the Democratic Party against the explicitly antiwar campaign
of Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo.
*
* *
THE
REALITY of the inside-outside strategy is that it stops being
“outside” when there’s an election going on.
So in the months surrounding the 2004 election, there were no
national protests against the war--even in the face of widespread
disgust over the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
And
when supporters of Dennis Kucinich--looked to by many activists
as the antiwar candidate among the candidates for the Democratic
presidential nomination--arrived at the Democratic National Convention
(DNC) last summer, they were surprised to find out that the “big
tent” of the Democratic Party was a little too small for
their antiwar views.
Antiwar
signs were immediately confiscated by convention officials--who
Kucinich delegate Charles Underwood called “the Kerry enforcers.”
“I am just very disappointed that there is no ability to
express any hope for peace on the floor of this convention,”
Underwood told Amy Goodman in an interview on the Democracy Now!
program. “We’ve had our signs confiscated...We’ve
had people that tell us to sit down and be quiet. We’ve
got no particular points for peace in the platform. This is becoming
an extremely narrow Democratic tent.”
He
added, “It’s just that we are off message when we
talk about peace. It’s that simple.” And this is how
the Democratic Party treats fellow Democrats. According to a poll
by the Boston Globe, 95 percent of delegates to the convention
opposed the war in Iraq, yet the party adopted a pro-war platform.
* * *
SADLY,
THE lesson of the Democratic Party’s unwelcome mat in Boston
hasn’t been learned very well.
Today,
the Progressive Democrats for America (PDA) are organizing to
bring left-wing and progressive activists into the Democratic
Party, with the hope that it can be transformed from within.
But
during the election, the PDA tried to keep antiwar voices in line.
When Kerry announced during the campaign that he would have voted
for the war in Iraq even knowing that there were no weapons of
mass destruction, PDA board member Joe Libertelli issued a statement
counseling silence from the antiwar movement.
“This
curious statement infuriates progressives and others who opposed
the war, dismays about 80 percent of Democrats who now oppose
the war, and surely encourages some to consider supporting Ralph
Nader or the Greens,” he wrote. “It’s tempting
to issue the usual rallying cry to the effect that, ‘Progressives
need to demand,’ and to urge all who will listen to threaten
to withhold their votes if Kerry doesn't change his tune.
“But
the truth is, merely demanding that John Kerry change his position
will get us almost nowhere. Progressives have been making similar
demands for years. And threatening to support Ralph Nader or the
Greens will only alienate those who, at our founding conference,
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) called ‘future progressives.’”
In
other words, the best way to put forward progressive ideas is
not to raise them. Just who are these “future progressives”
anyway? Is Libertelli referring to the slew of House Democrats
who just voted to give Bush another $81 billion for his occupation
of Iraq.
And
now that the election is over, the strategy continues. For example,
the national antiwar coalition United for Peace and Justice voted
at its recent convention for a focus on lobbying Congress--read
Democrats--to take more antiwar positions.
***
THE TRUTH is that rather than moving Democrats to the left, the
inside-outside strategy moved our movement to the right.
Instead of coming to grips with the failure of the “Anybody
But Bush” strategy last time, pro-Democrat progressives
are focusing blame on the very people who maintained their political
independence and their antiwar, anti-occupation stance.
For
example, in reaction to Peter Camejo’s
recent criticism of the Green Party’s “safe states”
approach and the tide of lesser evilism among progressives, Ted
Glick, the Dickie Morris of the Cobb campaign, leveled a new attack
on ZNet earlier this month. “The last thing we need right
now is the ‘correct line’ approach, individuals or
small groups claiming to have all the answers or quick to jump
on other progressives for their supposed failings,” Glick
wrote.
If
there was ever a time for political clarity in the antiwar movement,
it is now--for clarity won’t be achieved if we wait until
the next election.
The
problem isn’t that the Democrats have gone off course. War
and occupation in Iraq are part of their agenda, too. And unlike
Republicans, part of their job is to co-opt, soften or squelch
the message of the activists and grassroots movement.
We
have to build an antiwar movement that not only recognizes the
Democratic Party’s shortcomings, but understands that it
is part of the problem.
Elizabeth
Schulte writes for the Socialist
Worker.