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Today's
Stories
September 11
/ 12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Swatting
at Flies
September 10,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Disappointment
at Samarrah?
Michael Donnelly
Democrats v. Democracy
Alan Farago
Mosquitoes in a Hurricane
Doug Giebel
Karl Rove's Terror Playbook
Mike Whitney
Bob Graham's Political Tsunami
David Domke
God's
Will, According to the Bush Administration
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
Ed Kinane
Abducted in Baghdad
Peter Bohmer
The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future
Todd May
The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
Jeremy Scahill
The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad
Joshua Frank
Green House Party Gasses
Fran Shor
The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist
Act
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome
to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad
Website of
the Day
Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
September 11 / 12, 2004
Beyond Democrats
and Republicans
Third
Party Blues
By
SHARON SMITH
Since 1856, every U.S. president has
been the candidate of either the Democratic or Republican Party.
Despite their differences, these two parties share a fundamental
stake in promoting the interests of big business and the economic,
political and military dominance of the U.S. over the rest of
the world.
Together, the Democrats and
Republicans control both Houses of Congress and, since the end
of the Second World War, have shared an average of 95 percent
of the popular vote each election year.
Between them, the two ruling
parties closely safeguard their shared control of the political
system, forcing third-party candidates to gather the signatures
of tens of thousands of registered voters to appear on state
ballots, denying funding for third-party campaigns while offering
millions of taxpayer dollars to the Democratic and Republican
candidates, and locking independent candidates out of the presidential
debates.
For this reason, "kick
the bum out" is the most radical form of political expression
on offer to voters in any typical election--only to be replaced
by the "bum" from the other ruling-class party. No
wonder more than half of the adult population stays home on Election
Day.
This two-party duopoly is generally
regarded as an inescapable fact of life, even among some of its
harshest critics, while efforts to build social democratic or
labor parties that exist elsewhere in the industrialized world--even
Canada--are dismissed as doomed to failure.
Some on the left believe that
the U.S.'s unique system of voting, the Electoral College, prevents
the possibility of any genuine reform. The lack of democracy
inherent in the Electoral College system allowed George W. Bush
to gain the White House after losing the popular vote to Al Gore.
"[T]he current system,"
wrote liberal columnist Katha Pollitt in the Nation recently,
"will never change, because the small states would have
to approve a constitutional amendment and why would they do that?--Kansas
matters, and Kansans care about values." Left-wing labor
historian Nelson Lichtenstein argues in his recent book, State
of the Union: A Century of American Labor, that no labor
party has ever developed in the U.S. "because the distinctive
federalism of the U.S. electoral system fatally penalizes those
political/organizational gambits that stray too far beyond the
two-party straightjacket."
On this basis, he concludes,
"[L]abor must function as an independent, and sometimes
as a disloyal, component of the Democratic Party Coalition, at
least until a reassessment of its political options can take
place." This has been the self-defeating motto of the U.S.
left and labor union leadership for more than a century now,
which has ensnared both in the trap of Democratic Party politics
and effectively prevented the formation of a viable third-party
alternative.
LESSER-EVILISM IS a self-fulfilling
prophecy in which the U.S. left has consistently aided and abetted
the Democratic Party in selling its candidates, while sabotaging
efforts to build a genuine alternative. There is nothing unique
about the "Anybody But Bush" (ABB) left in 2004, despite
claims that the Bush administration represents a growing "fascist"
threat that requires the left's single-minded dedication to its
defeat in the coming election.
The "fascist" label
has been pinned on nearly every conservative Republican candidate
since Herbert Hoover in 1932--including Barry Goldwater in 1964,
Richard Nixon in 1968, Ronald Reagan in both 1980 and '84 and
even Bush Sr. in 1992. Last year, Ted Glick, the National Coordinator
of the Independent Progressive Politics Network declared, without
apparent irony, an election year goal of "replacing Bush
with a Democrat (since we're not yet strong or organized enough
to replace him with a Green or an independent)."
But the ABB chorus that has
busied itself denouncing independent candidate Ralph Nader as
a "spoiler" in this election year is just the latest
in a long list of self-described political "independents"
over the last century who have ended up inside the Democratic
Party. Entire movements have collapsed in this manner--from the
Populist Party of the 1890s to the 1960s movements for civil
rights and women's and gay liberation.
But history shows this outcome
was far from necessary. Eugene Debs garnered nearly a million
votes--roughly 6 percent of the total--when he ran on the Socialist
Party ticket in 1912. The same year, the Socialist Party candidate
for president of the American Federation of Labor won a third
of the vote.
The Great Depression of the
1930s marked the greatest era of class struggle in U.S. history,
with a mass radicalization among U.S. workers in which tens of
thousands joined the Communist Party. A 1937 Gallup poll showed
that at least 21 percent of the population supported the formation
of a national farmer-labor party as an alternative to the Democratic
and Republican parties.
This sentiment was even more
pronounced inside the unions that led the sit-down strikes that
shook the country and built the industrial union movement in
the mid-1930s. At the1935 United Auto Workers (UAW) convention,
delegates voted overwhelmingly to "actively support and
give assistance to the formation of a National Farmer Labor Party."
Significantly, UAW delegates
voted down a resolution supporting Roosevelt for president in
the 1936 election. This vote was reversed only after the Congress
of Industrial Organization (CIO) leadership threatened to withdraw
all funding for the UAW to organize the auto industry unless
the convention agreed to support Roosevelt.
Union leaders even created
a pseudo-labor party, the American Labor Party, to help channel
votes toward Roosevelt in 1936 among New York's garment workers
who refused to vote Democrat. The Communist Party itself helped
secure Roosevelt's re-election that year, and by 1938, party
publications abandoned the idea of forming a third political
party in the U.S., arguing for "operating insofar as electoral
activity is concerned, chiefly through the Democratic Party."
*
* *
THE EXPERIENCE of the 1930s
era of class struggle provides the most important lessons of
the disastrous consequences of supporting the Democratic Party.
Perhaps the most disastrous effect of Democratic Party politics
on the U.S. left is that it allows the left's collective memory
to stretch no further back than the last election, so political
lessons such as those from the 1930s have been lost on current
generations.
The left cannot build a third-party
between election years, but must embark on a long-term project
whose success or failure can be measured not simply in terms
of ballots, but on whether the party advances and strengthens
a political alternative based on working-class interests.
Nor should a third-party effort
accept the legitimacy of the Electoral College, for it can only
succeed by ultimately shifting the balance of forces away from
the dominance of the two ruling-class parties. There is nothing
fundamentally different about the U.S. political system that
should make this project impossible.
Nor is there a fatal flaw in
the political character of the U.S. population that makes Americans
too "apathetic" or too "content" to fight
for an alternative, as so many assume. As recently as 1995, a
Gallup poll found that 62 percent of the U.S. public favored
the formation of a third-party alternative. Even in 2004, according
to Gallup, 38 percent of Americans consider themselves "independents"--more
than the 34 percent who regard themselves as Democrats and the
28 percent who say they are Republicans.
Unfortunately, by latching
itself to the coattails of the Democratic Party, the U.S. left
has followed the Democrats rightward as they chase after the
votes of "swing voters." Even many of those on the
left, including the Green Party, whose principled support of
Nader helped make a third-party alternative seem within reach
in 2000, have succumbed to the pressure to support pro-war, neoliberal
John Kerry--simply because he is a Democrat--in 2004.
The ABB left in this election
year just provides more evidence that the Democratic Party is
the graveyard of social movements.
Sharon Smith writes for the Socialist
Worker.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept 4 / 5, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
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