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ABB Goes Bust For
months the Anybody But Bush’s harassed us. They lashed out at Nader, blaming
him for 2000, blaming him for running, blaming him for breathing. Unions
spent tons of money to keep him off the ballot. The intimidation was
effective. People became reluctant to
talk about Nader. The vote for third
parties was slashed to ribbons. The
Green Party was split into factions and demoralized. And what do the ABB’s have to show for it?
They had a candidate who did worse than Gore, a Congress that lurched further
to the Right, and 11 constitutional amendments against gays. During the critical months when the
Americans actually think about politics, the public heard nothing but “I can
kill them better” from John Kerry. He threw away his only chance for winning by
supporting the Iraq occupation. People
recognized his plan for “smarter” way of fighting as a bunch of crap. He was going to get the French and Germans
and Syrians to send their kids to die in Iraq. It was horse manure and people knew
it. In fact he attacked Bush from the
Right on most war issues, taunting him about not being aggressive enough in
Fallujah, raising alarms about Korea, getting Obama to threaten to bomb Iran. A lot of the dishonor goes to CT’s own Rosa
DeLauro, who with her husband pollster and campaign strategist Stanley
Greenberg, were key players in the debacle.
Rosa was in charge of the Democratic Party platform and she made sure
it was bland as vanilla pudding. She
didn’t let Kucinich and the peace Democrats the tiniest role in its
flavoring. Read the platform. The ingredient list of Twinkies is more
interesting. Shall we dub Rosa
Architect of Defeat? Wake up people. The Democratic Party is a
dead end, a sewer, a graveyard. Think of all the millions wasted on Kerry
and the Democrats. What did the unions
spend? $100 million? $200 million? on candidates who never even
told people to join unions, who couldn’t even say the words “working
class”. Think of all the organizing
the unions could have done with that money, or educating for a single-payer
health plan. Democratic Dead Heads Predictably the Democrats are thinking of
ways to move further to flatter the political prejudices of the right. Perish the thought that they might educate
the people to overcome their superstitions and racism instead. They could start by teaching people some
basic science. The most “radical”
major media magazine in the country lately has been National Geographic. Over the last two months it had articles
showing that Global Warming is a big dangerous fact and this month featured a
ringing defense of the theory of evolution. Molly Ivins, the Texas columnist who usually
writes biting columns against Bush produced an absolutely dumb ass piece
about the election this week. She
calls on the Democrats to put Bill Clinton as the head of the party, the
chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Clinton? The man who killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq by
sanctions, who brokered the Oslo fraud, who ended welfare as anybody knows
it, etc. etc. Come to think of it,
it’s a fine idea. It will help speed
the Democrats into oblivion. Michael Moore was plain ridiculous this
election, unfortunately not in a funny way.
He started off telling us to vote for General Clark, made that
humiliating plea to Ralph Nader to give up his campaign, and then slobbered
over a Kerry who didn’t even have the decency to shake Moore’s hand. And after the election Moore still is
saying nonsense. In his article “15
reaons for not slitting your wrists” he wrote. “Finally and
most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed
"The #1 Liberal in the Senate."
Yeah, right. Kerry was dubbed that way by the Republican brown-shirts,
not by any actual liberal. He had
voted for all the anti-humane Clintonian measures of the ‘90’s. Kerry was just a Joe Lieberman in military
drag. On the Greens I usually
like what Counterpunch says on politics, but I don’t go all they way with
their uncritical support of
Nader. He made some dreadful
mistakes. Number one he should have
been a member of the Green Party all along and he should have fought for the
Green nomination. I know a lot of the
Green leaders were ABB’s or cowards and were hostile to him, but he should
have fought them from inside the party.
Instead he started his campaign by announcing that he would not accept
the Green Party nomination. He could
have remedied things with a wise flip-flop in June and a request for the
nomination. Instead he asked only for
an endorsement and he didn’t even go to the Green Party convention. That’s pretty insulting. A lot of Greens went for Cobb just because
he said he was a proud Green. So
Nader ran as an independent. I voted
for him, but I wonder what is happening with all the lists of those who
supported and funded him. Will Nader’s
contact lists be used to build something or will they just disintegrate? Peter
Camejo, Nader’s VP said that after the campaign he was going to lead an
effort to bring the Greens back to their roots. Sounds to me like a fine idea. Nader should be part of it, from the inside
as a Green Party member. And why not
let Nader run for a post that he might actually win, to Congress or for
governor? Anyway let’s
be furious with the Democrats, the Nation magazine, and the liberal
unintelligentia and send them to the recycle bin of history. |
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