[Dialogue] Fwd: This is a must read for Progressives

[KroegerD at aol.com]

____________________________________
 From: Dick email
To: KroegerD
Sent: 3/14/2008 1:05:27 P.M. Central  Daylight Time
Subj: This is a must read for Progressives


A Not-So-Simple Twist of Fate: Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our  Long-Awaited 
Third Party?  
 
 
 
by David Michael Green 
 
Oh boy. Where have I seen this movie before? 
I think it was four years, surprisingly enough. Hey, what a coincidence!  Wasn
’t there a presidential election going on back then, too? 
Remember how Howard Dean came out of near total obscurity, how he started  
walloping the presumptive front-runner, John “Fearless” Kerry, by taking bold  
positions (at least in the context of American politics) against the war, and  
against George W. Bush? Remember how Kerry changed his tune to ape Dean’s  
message, and how nervous Democratic voters played it safe and came home to the  
guy with the experience and the name brand? Remember what an outstandingly  
effective candidate he then turned out to be? Remember the “real deal”? (Oh,  
and what a deal it was. I think experienced card players refer to that hand as  
a ‘jack-shit straight, seven high’, if I’m not mistaken.) 
Is this ringing any bells for anyone? 
Only Democrats could lose the White House in 2008. It’s hard to imagine a  
more perfect storm favoring their decisive, landslide victory. This should be  
1932 redux, and then some. There’s a reviled incumbent from the opposite  
party, already past his expiration date four years ago when he stole a second  
election. There’s a new nominee from that same party joined to him at the hip  on 
the most important issues, and stupid enough to be seen as such publicly.  
There’s the economy heading into a recession after years of lethargy for the  
middle class. An extremely unpopular war based on lies. A massive national  debt. 
A housing crisis. An environmental crisis. Gas at well over three bucks  a 
gallon. Oil over $100 a barrel. The dollar at record lows and plummeting.  
Pension stocks falling and cities falling apart - when they’re not literally  
drowning. Scandals everywhere in the Republican Party. Three-fourths of the  
country believing America to be on the wrong track. And more. Put it all  together 
and it’s an amazing scenario! It’s like some poli-sci professor  somewhere was 
tinkering around with a real-life statistical model, setting all  the 
variables at max to see how big a blow-out is theoretically possible.  “Hey, I wonder 
what happens if…?” 
It’s a perfect, perfect storm. And then along came Hillary. Look, I  
certainly don’t object to her running if she wants to. But I do object to how  she’s 
running, and I think Democratic voters are as dumb as a bag of hammers  
sitting out in the rain to pull the handle for her. In this year of the great  
political tsunami, Republicans have managed to - inadvertently, it would seem  - 
choose their best hope to hold on to the presidency, even if they can’t  quite 
stand their own choice. Hillary would be the Democrats’ worst hope. 
She would go into the general election with all sorts of pre-existing  
baggage and negatives. She would get smashed to pieces by McCain on the very  voter 
selection criteria she herself has articulated for use against Obama:  
experience and national security. McCain could virtually take her 3:00 a.m.  ad, pull 
her out and drop himself in, and use it against her. And he will. Her  
candidacy is already ugly to contemplate, and she hasn’t even released her tax  
filings yet. Aren’t Democrats just brilliant? Hey, maybe she can get Kerry to  be 
her running mate! Perhaps Bob Shrum is free these days, and can finally  push 
himself into double digits on his personal best lifetime count of  
presidential races lost (with zero wins), by managing the campaign. 
But it’s not just Democrats going with the Clintons that alarms me, it’s  
how they might win it. It is almost a mathematical certainty that neither  
candidate can win the nomination by means of gathering pledged delegates in  the 
months ahead. Under the proportional allocation system Democratic  primaries and 
caucuses tend to use, a candidate has to do exceedingly well in  the popular 
vote to realize a significant shift in delegates. It would appear  that Clinton
’s got some favorable states ahead, and that Obama has as many or  perhaps 
more, unless momentum has really shifted now, after Tuesday. I tend to  doubt 
that is the case, unless Obama goes all Massachusetts at this point,  like Kerry 
and Dukakis, and stands by helplessly watching the steamroller as  it 
relentlessly approaches. In which case, fine, anyhow - get the clown off  the stage, 
he’s not ready for prime-time. As a tired American progressive,  worn down by 
disappointment across more decades of losing politics than I care  to count, I 
can abide many things. But one of them is not another wimpy  Democratic 
presidential nominee who gets out-slugged by the latest Karl Rove  and manages yet 
again to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. 
Anyhow, let’s say we end the primary season about where we are now, with  
Obama about 100 delegates up, and having won more votes and more states than  
Clinton, but with neither candidate over the magic nomination-clinching line.  It 
would be fairly outrageous for the Clintons to seize the brass ring at that  
point, but they will not care in the slightest what the ramifications of their 
 actions might be for the party or the country. The Clintons will do anything 
-  and I mean anything - to get the presidency. This is a sickness that 
infects  the hearts and minds of some people much more than others. Because of 
their  own needs, most prominently a very deep-seated personal insecurity, they  
simply need the validation of being president, and they go after it like a  
heat-seeking missile headed toward a power plant. 
You don’t want to get in their way, man. Road kill is no mere metaphor when  
someone’s intensely-held life aspiration is on the line and their moral  
bearings got tossed overboard sometime back in their twenties. You don’t get  that 
sense of desperate pathological need from, say, Jimmy Carter or George  
McGovern, while individuals like George H. W. Bush or Richard Nixon fairly  reeked 
of it. In the case of Bush the Elder, clearly the whole point of being  
president was to be president. He didn’t seem to have any ideas of what to do  with 
the office once he got there. In the case of his son, the whole point was  to 
do it better than Dad, and so he had lots of completely insane ideas of  what 
he wanted to do once he got there, particularly in areas like taxes and  Iraq, 
where Poppy had screwed up on the way to losing a second term  (amateur!). 
The Clintons are very much cut from the same cloth as Old Man Bush.  Actually 
doing something in office is incidental to the main project, which is  the 
psychological satisfaction (and reassurance) that comes from all the  attention, 
glory and power attached to the White House. Compared to that  overwhelming 
goal, they no more care about national health care than does Sean  Hannity. If 
they can win by going single-payer, so be it. If they could win by  war, the 
death penalty and welfare slashing instead, they would. Indeed, they  have. The 
point is that the Clintons will do anything to secure the  presidency, even 
if that includes wrecking that part of the Democratic Party  they didn’t 
already wreck during the 1990s, and/or tossing a few body blows in  the direction of 
American democracy. The definitive model here is the 2000  election, and the 
campaign I’m referring to wasn’t Al Gore’s, ladies and  gentlemen. More like 
the other one in that race. Anyone with any doubt about  what they’re capable 
of needs to adjust the satellite dish on their igloo, and  fast. (If she does 
leave the race, it’s only because she absolutely cannot see  any mathematical 
possibility of winning whatsoever, and she wants to preserve  some shred of 
her reputation because - and only because - she’ll be getting  ready for 2012. 
Even if there’s Democratic incumbent in the White House. Maybe  especially if 
there is.) 
Far more likely is that Clinton remains in the race, keeps it competitive  by 
staying within range delegate-wise, and marches all the way to Denver  
fighting for the nomination. Then she plays some card, or combination of  cards, in 
order to effectively steal it from Obama, despite his having won  more states, 
more votes and more pledged delegates. Perhaps she does it using  
superdelegates. Perhaps she manages to get Florida and Michigan counted.  Perhaps she 
sues to invalidate her loss in the Texas caucuses. Perhaps John  Edwards (with 
anywhere from 12 to 61 delegates pledged to him, depending on  whose count you 
believe) wants very badly to be Vice President or Secretary of  State. Perhaps 
Bill cuts some sort of deal in a smoke-filled room somewhere.  Maybe it goes 
to the Supreme Court for resolution (you know, those nice people  in black 
robes who gave you the George W. Bush presidency), and they decide in  her favor. 
Most likely she employs a combination of all these gambits, and  collectively 
they could possibly give her enough delegates for a narrow  technical (and 
very Pyrrhic) victory. 
If any of these scenarios play out, Obama should leave the Democratic Party  
and run as a third-party candidate. Simple as that. 
It would be the morally proper thing to do, and it just might even be  
successful, especially in the longer term. 
If this seems an improbable quest, remember that Obama’s support is quite  
passionate - he’s not just your standard-issue marginal political preference  
for, say, Joe Biden over Chris Dodd. Nor would this be some personal (and  
absurd) vanity project, like Ross Perot’s. His supporters would be outraged at  the 
stealing of the nomination from its rightful owner, and they’re a  motivated 
bunch. Black voters would feel particularly slighted, and would be  likely to 
follow Obama elsewhere. That alone would be enough to finish off the  already 
badly-damaged Clinton candidacy in the general election. Given this  moral 
high ground, too, I don’t think Obama would be perceived as the Ralph  Nader who 
gave the election to McCain. Perhaps, because of access  restrictions, he 
wouldn’t even be able to get on the ballot in many places,  except as a write-in. 
In the end, I don’t think it much matters. If he can’t win in 2008, the  
country will be ripe for the taking after four years of John McSame. And Obama  
has shown us nothing this last year if not excellence in organizing skills.  
There’s plenty of time by 2012 to give birth to a real progressive party that  
has been aching to calve off from the Democrats for three decades now. If the  
Clintons and the Liebermans of this world want to hang tight with their DLC  
party of Diet Pepsi Wall Street, let them. If they feel a burning compulsion  
to become the Whigs of the 21st century, I for one won’t stand in the way. 
The idea of a third party alternative has long been a dream of progressives  
in America. It has also too often been a fantasy and a distracting albatross.  
Particularly since the Bill Clinton era of centrist sell-out - but really  
going back to the Reagan period of Democratic cowardice, the McGovern campaign  
of entrenched Party power acting shamelessly toward their nominee, and  
certainly the Johnson debacle in Vietnam - progressives have been looking to  ditch 
the shell of the former New Deal now doing business as the corroded (and  
corrosive) Democratic Party. 
Unfortunately - really, very unfortunately - it’s an almost impossible  trick 
to pull off given the structure of the American political system, and I  
_have joined_ 
(http://www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/Forget_Third_Parties_-_It_Ain't_Gonna_Happen.html)  lots of other smarter people counseling against  
the effort, suggesting an attempt at hijacking the Democratic Party instead.  
Not for nothing was the last new major party born in America 150 years ago.  It’
s not an accident that for about three-fourths of the country’s history  it’
s been Republicans or Democrats. Period. 
Oddly enough, however, this is probably the year when the country could  come 
closest in a long time to seeing the birth of a genuine third party.  
Theoretically, at least - if the right sequence of events transpired. It’s  probably 
a long-shot, and not my personal preference for the short-term, but  it is 
feasible; it’s probably the only way to imagine overcoming the  considerable 
institutional barriers to creating a third party in America, and  doing so would 
be just the shot of adrenalin this decrepit old political  system needs. 
Moreover, there are - believe it or not - still some folks out  there who don’t yet 
get the damage done by conservatism in America. Another  four years of the 
same may be just the tonic to finally seal that deal  forever. 
So, let me see here. We’d have a destroyed Republican Party, a destroyed  
Democratic Party, and a new progressive, “Fired-Up!” party rising out of their  
ashes. We could do a lot worse than that. And we could thank Hillary Clinton  
for it all, if it happens. 
Sometimes a silver-lining can turn into a whole pot of gold.
David  Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra 
University in New  York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles 
(_dmg at regressiveantidote.net_ (mailto:dmg at regressiveantidote.net) ), but 
regrets that time  constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work 
can be found  at his website, _www.regressiveantidote.net_ 
(http://www.regressiveantidote.net/) . 
 
    *   











 
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