‘Accountability Now’: Bloggers And Progressive Groups Plan To Challenge Elected Dems
Some of the most prominent names in progressive politics launched a major new organization on Thursday dedicated to pinpointing and aiding primary challenges against incumbent Democrats who are viewed as acting against their constituents’ interests.
Accountability Now PAC will officially be based in Washington D.C., though its influence is designed to be felt in congressional districts across the country. The group will adopt an aggressive approach to pushing the Democratic Party in a progressive direction; it will actively target, raise funds, poll and campaign for primary challengers to members who are either ethically or politically out-of-touch with their voters. The goal, officials with the organization say, is to start with 25 potential races and dwindle it down to eight or 10; ultimately spending hundreds of thousands on elections that usually wouldn’t be touched.
“Most of the time, regardless of your record in Washington, an incumbent does not have to worry about being challenged in a primary,” explained Jeff Hauser, an online Democratic operative who will serve as the group’s executive director. “This only increases the power of the Washington echo chamber and the influence of lobbyists. We are trying to change that… We think there are potentially talented challengers out there who think the process of mounting a primary challenge is simply too daunting. When you bring to bear the resources of national organizations and the influence of the netroots, you can help these potential candidates.”
It is a concept bound — indeed, designed — to ruffle the feathers of powerful figures in Washington, in part because the names behind it are now institutions themselves. With $500,000 currently in the bank, Accountability Now will be aided, in varying forms, by groups such as MoveOn, SEIU, Color of Change, Democracy for America, 21st Century Democrats and BlogPAC. FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher and Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald will serve in advisory roles, while Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos will conduct polling, with analytical help from 538.com’s Nate Silver.
“This will be very much interactive and localized,” said Hamsher. “We are already going out to local state blogs to help us identify well-qualified candidates in their communities. Once those people are identified we will be able to bring the strength of our resources to help them mount primary challenges.”
In a conversation with the Huffington Post, Hauser, Hamsher and Greenwald said that the process by which targeted incumbents were chosen would not constitute an ideological litmus test. The goal, they noted, was simply to follow the numbers: figure out which Members were casting votes that were out of tune, philosophically speaking, with their constituent’s public opinion readings. And then bear the most basic form of political pressure: encourage a primary challenger to run and help him or her campaign. Fundraising will be done by galvanizing online support for specific races — a practice now natural to Accountability Now’s principals.
The overarching premise would be to break down the power of incumbency. But the side effects would be equally lucrative: putting members on notice that their votes have consequences and offering a support structure to aspiring progressives.
“We want to normalize the idea that Democratic incumbents can be challenged…and to the extent that we can legitimize that you can then open up the conversation, causing even the good incumbents in Washington to endorse primary challengers as a means to make the political class more responsive,” said Greenwald. “We want to destroy the taboo against challenging politicians from within their own party.”
And yet, not everyone is bound to be on board, least of all official Washington. Protecting incumbency is, as Accountability Now’s founders are acutely aware, one of D.C.’s foremost operating principles (in 2008, only 23 incumbents lost their House races and only four of those losses came in the primary). And there is a reason for it. Political power comes in the form of numbers and unity. As such, keeping the majority intact often takes precedent over ideological purity. Rep. Donna Edwards’ victory over ethically challenged Al Wynn in 2008 — a template for what Accountability Now seeks to do in 2010 — was one of the few cases that went against the grain.
But in private, some Democrats expressed worry about pushing for progressive change from the outside rather than from within. Would running an election opponent be the best measure of political persuasion? What if, hypothetically, a primary challenger won the nomination only to lose in the general?
These are concerns that Accountability Now does not take lightly. They insist that they will “take district realities into account,” which means that Democrats who represent moderate districts will be forgiven for their moderate votes. But beyond that, they argue, it is the candidate’s responsibility, not theirs, to ensure reelection.
“No incumbent worth their salt should lose in a primary — their advantages are considerable, and so to be vulnerable indicates a considerable focus on K Street, not Main Street,” said Hauser. “A primary is the height of democracy, a two-year job performance review — what is wrong with having to listen to constituents as well as D.C. lobbyists and groupthink.”
Kennedy Out. Gillibrand In.
"I'm not a Democrat. I'm a Blue Dog."
Politico and other media sources are reporting that governor David Paterson has chosen Kristen Gillibrand to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat.
Gillibrand is a Blue Dog Democrat, which is the name moderate Democrats gave themselves so people stopped confusing them with Republicans. Gillibrand is a pro-gun, fiscally conservative “Democrat.” Blue Dog Democrats are the people who cower at the word “liberal,” and fail to acknowledge that the only gains we — as a country — have made regarding civil rights were because of those dreaded, damn liberals.
I have previously criticized the nomination of Caroline Kennedy because she was clearly a legacy selection. Let’s pretend her name was Caroline Smith, or Caroline Martinez, and she boasted of zero legislative experience, and could only incoherently mutter something about her daddy when asked why she wanted to fill one of two coveted Senate seats. No one would have considered such an applicant. Hence, why I hated the idea of Caroline Kennedy in the Senate. I’ve heard just enough about Camelot, thanks very much.
But Gillibrand is part of the same politically incestual community. During the Clinton years, she serves as Special Counsel to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Andrew Cuomo, another nominee for Clinton’s seat. She too hosts lavish fundraising parties (out of state, an accusation she ironically used against one of her former political opponents, John Sweeney). Kennedy, no doubt, was seriously considered for the Senate role specifically for her fundraising abilities (the name Kennedy brings in a hefty chunk of change,) so it’s to be expected that cash cows are always at the forefront of these kinds of nominations.
I was really hoping Paterson would go for a fresh political name like Nydia Velasquez, who has served in the House for 15 years, and was the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in Congress. She has dealt primarily with small businesses, and is largely unknown in the political community, but I think that’s a good thing. Kennedy is very well known, has less experience than Velasquez, and I was supposed to take her seriously as a candidate, so why not Nydia? Oh, right, she’s not a legacy, or a Blue Dog.
At least Caroline was unapologetically liberal, a privilege only afforded to Kennedys, it seems. If you have a yacht, you get to look your fellow Democrats square in the eyes and say, “I believe in equal rights and not torturing foreigners. Fuck you.” But if you’re a middle-rank Democrat, you have to pathetically triangulate and apologize until you don’t even look like a Democrat anymore, and -BAM!- you wake up and your name is Kristen Gillibrand and you’re in the Senate.
Gross.
Yes We Can ________
It’s a new day and a new slogan for Obama supporters. Overnight, the infamous “Yes We Can” transformed into “Yes We Did.” Voters proclaimed it from their Facebook statuses, their Twitter updates, and I even saw the affirmation branded across the chest of a baby’s jumper.
A strange thing happens when you ask an Obama supporter what the subject of their slogan entails. What did they do? Most reply that the “Did” means collectively supporting and electing the first African-American president. Anyone with a beating heart knows this is indeed a momentous occasion, and it’s very moving to see relatives of MLK celebrating the evolution in American society.
But by that definition of the “Did,” the journey is over. Yes We Did Elect A Black President. For some, the slogan means Yes We Did Elect Someone Better Than Bush. True, but by that definition, John McCain would have been better than George Bush, and I like to give Obama supports more credit than assuming they would vote for the lesser of two evils.
Other Obama supporters claim a massive overhaul of the executive agenda is their “Did.” And early signs are encouraging with the Obama camp claiming they’re ready to reverse the Bush administration’s stacks of ill-conceived executive orders. However, there is no collective citizen mandate rumbling from the people to help guide Obama’s fledgling White House.
If the people aren’t asking anything of Obama, then he owes them nothing in return. That’s like you right now being pissed at me for not having mailed you twenty dollars. You didn’t ask me for money, so why should I have sent you anything? (I’m not giving you money.)
Yes We Did What? Elect Barack Obama on good faith alone? It appears Obamanites think their journey is over, and that good people are at the helm, and all will be well.
But Obama is indebted to Wall Street for about $9.5 million. That amount of cash transforms into favors once your guy gets elected. Obama will be hesitant to strongly regulate the billions of bailout dollars if the people he’s dealing out the cash to are his donation buddies. On day one, Wall Street will thrust a litany of demands before president Obama, but the American people will not be represented in the Oval Office. Yes We Did Leave Our President with the Wolves.
Others claim the “Did” is a movement toward universal health care. It’s totally illogical to assume Obama will defy his insurance company friends and his past rhetoric, and suddenly adopt single-payer health care. Thousands of physicians have already gone on record to say that Obama’s idea for a hybrid of private health insurance plans and government subsidies will not work, and in fact has already failed in Oregon, Minnesota, Washington and several other states, including Massachusetts, whose second go-round at incremental reform is already failing.
It’s not enough to know in the warmest places of your little hearts that Obama really is a good man, and he wants to end Americans’ suffering. The American people have to swiftly demand single-payer health care, or the insurance companies will greet Obama at the White House and quickly neuter any plans for universal health care coverage.
Yes We Did Elect a Good Man. President-elect Obama does seem like a decent guy, and a good family man, but the government system doesn’t care if he’s a good man. It’s impossible for Obama to keep his fingers on the pulse of the nation when he’s living in a severed limb like Washington. It will take an engaged citizenry living in the real, breathing world to help him fight every step of the way.
Now is the time to outline a plan for the Big Four, four ultra-important demands that need to be addressed within the first 100 days. I would suggest something like: universal health care, strong regulation of the bailout cash, ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan (enough of this Afghanistan is the “good war” silliness,) and serious movements toward building a green economy and ending our dependency on foreign oil.
Google the issue nearest and dearest to your heart, find a local group that shares your agenda, and get together. Your strength is in numbers. If you’re not really the go-out-and-change-the-world type, just add your name as a contribution, or open your wallet to an already established Progressive group like November5.org.
It’s not enough to simply watch over president Obama, either. As director Eugene Jarecki explains, the three branches of government are like the stand-off in a Quentin Tarantino film with each body aiming a gun at someone else. It’s not enough to change one part. We have to change them all. Obamanites must also monitor the behavior of their Congressional representatives and put pressure on them to implement the Big Four.
If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is. But that’s the point. Democracy is a constant battle to suppress the evil motives of corrupt politicians. Or, in the words of our beloved Dubya: “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
He will be missed.
Add your voice to the Yes We Are forces. Yes We Are Living Wage Warriors. Yes We Are Congress Watchdogs. Stay alert, engaged, and don’t be afraid to offer Obama some tough love. He can take it. He’s already asking for help with his Change.gov website, so get working.
This is an exciting time. Unlike the bullheaded asshole playing Snood in the White House for the past eight years, Barack Obama is an intelligent, reasonable, open politician that we have the chance of influencing if we are at the negotiation table alongside Big Business. But we have to demand our seat the table. No one is going to come hand it to us.
So I would suggest the Yes We Did camp change their slogan to Yes We Will Be, or Yes We Are, but they can’t quit yet.
All Hope is Local: Quit Whining and Run for Office
Real change in America won’t arrive on November 4 in a compact package, complete with a shiny, new president and congressional Democratic majority. Real change will begin November 5, and positive change will only occur if Progressives demand representation from their leadership, and begin to shape politics first locally, and then spread outward to create national reform.
A fish rots from the head down, and so the American government has been rotting for decades, and we are finally seeing the effects on Wall Street and Main Street. The Progressives miscalculate and misallocate resources when they solely hunt for the presidency. It’s also important to snatch congressional seats and local offices in order to push the country left.
Many disheartened citizens feel they don’t have the right stuff to run for office. This assumption negates the wisdom found in Margaret Mead’s famous words: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Of course citizens can control the destiny of their government. After all, they fund the damn thing. They are government’s bosses. It’s about time they climbed in the saddle, took the reigns, and steered the country in a more desirable direction.
But real change will start at a local level and build upward. Only a serious, huge Progressive movement will support the occasional Progressive candidate that obtains a position of great power. Otherwise, it’s just dye drops in the ocean.
An example of this small fish-big pond syndrome is most clearly illustrated in what Ralph Nader would call a little Dennis Kucinich “window-dressing.” The Ohio Congressman is certainly one of the most progressive members of Congress, but he has been unable to create big, sweeping reforms due to being vastly outnumbered by his centrist Democratic colleagues. Think: a field mouse crossing a four-lane highway. Kucinich never stood a chance, but he should be applauded for being one of the last principled idealists left in the government.
It will take an army of Kuciniches to create any real change in the country, but where will these politicians come from? To put it simply: they will come from the people.
Beginning at a local level, Progressives can overtake their government piece-by-piece, beginning with city council positions, then extending to mayoral duties and then finally to governorships, congressional seats, and eventually, yes, the presidency. But first, a Progressive president will need a Progressive Congress in order to get bills passed.
Call it the big fish-small pond strategy. A good example of this approach working is Matt Gonzalez’s 2003 campaign for the office of mayor in San Francisco. Matt Gonzalez is currently running as Ralph Nader’s vice-presidential nominee for the Independent Party. But back in 2003, Gonzalez was largely unknown on the national stage even though he was one of the first Green Party candidates to be elected to office in the Bay Area.
From the start, his main competitor, Gavin Newsom, outmuscled him financially. Newsom spent over $4 million during the race, while Gonzalez spent around $800,000. With little money and resources, Gonzalez stood on street corners and introduced himself to San Francisco’s residents. He attended living room Q&A sessions, and he and his staff went door-to-door and gradually began to take votes from Newsom.
Gonzalez received a major bump in the polls when he enthusiastically embraced the idea of gay marriage, an issue hugely important to San Francisco constituents. In a panic, Newsom matched Gonzalez’s enthusiasm, though Newsom had been considerably hesitant to discuss the issue of gay marriage before Gonzalez’s statements. Gonzalez’s presence in the 2003 mayoral race is credited with Newsom’s current stance on gay marriage, a microcosm of what could theoretically happen if more Progressives were permitted in national debates.
It’s unfortunate that a Democratic mayoral candidate in San Francisco, Mecca to liberals and gays, can’t even speak out in favor of equal rights for citizens. However, it’s important to recognize how a progressive candidate running for a local office influenced real policy change. Unlike Kucinich window-dressing, Gonzalez was able to push a Democratic candidate left, and Newsom adopted progressive stances on gay marriage because of his run.
On a ballot with nine candidates, Gonzalez came in second with 19.6 percent of the total vote. Newsom earned 41.9 percent. Since no one secured a majority, there was then a run-off election, which received national and international media coverage. San Francisco has wisely adopted the extremely democratic run-off system that permits third party candidates to competitively campaign. This is also the same system that would have secured the state of Florida for Al Gore in the 2000 election. It gets rid of the stupid policy of awarding a candidate with all of the votes if they haven’t secured a majority. See: George W. Bush.
Though Newsom eventually won the race, Gonzalez had emerged as a serious contender, and as the face of a new Progressive movement in California.
Running as a Progressive is not for the fainthearted. Democrats’ favorite pastime, ranking higher than even making weak attempts to thwart Republicans, is keeping Progressives out of the election process. Progressives are told to wait four more years to run nationally (as Nader was told in 2000, 2004, and now in 2008,) and they are also told to delay running locally as Gonzalez was heavily pressured to do by California Democrats. If it’s not the most critical election ever, ever, then it’s just bad timing. It’s too sunny to run. It’s too rainy. It’s the wrong month. Venus is in retrograde.
You get the idea. Democrats can’t have Progressives running because they might have to – the horror – adopt some Progressive ideas.
When I recently interviewed Matt Gonzalez, he explained: “I think a healthy challenge by a truly Progressive candidate that shows the strength of the Progressive community makes it clear to the other candidate that he’s going to have to face this again four years later unless he realigns his own politics for this new emerging power.”
But back to that whole apathetic/scared thing infecting the Progressive movement. Bitching liberals are often overheard lamenting that there aren’t enough hours in the day, dollars in the bank, or ounces of courage in voters to get Progressives elected to local seats. Gonzalez disagrees.
“Running for office is important, and you don’t really need more than to be right on the issues, and to be able to articulate what it is you believe. You don’t need a certain background. You don’t need to be a lawyer. You don’t need to have some professional degree. If you engage people honestly, and you’re willing to do the leg work, people will respond to that. I’ve run for office, and I’ve stood on street corners, while people walked by me and didn’t want to talk to me, and did not think I was a credible candidate. And then four years later, I was nearly elected mayor of San Francisco, so I know what it takes. It just takes commitment, and a small group of people that will really try to address the issues.”
It’s too much to hope that the Democrats in Congress will correct their behavior on their own. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have had ample time to show their true intentions, which thus far appear to be rolling around helplessly on their backs and crying. Gonzalez sees the Democrats as unable or unwilling to assertively block the Republicans from steamrolling over themselves and the Constitution:
“Harry Reid has admitted that in the last two years, there have been more Republican filibusters in the Senate than in the history of the United States. Reid lets the Republicans phone-in to say they’re going to filibuster. In other words, he doesn’t even require them to come to the floor of the Senate and physically have to filibuster. How can these guys call themselves a political party and allow the party in the minority to run over them like this? It’s pathetic.”
Hope cannot be left in the hands of politicians. It needs to be cared for and cultivated by engaged citizens, who are willing to dip into the political pool. It will take dedication and some time, but Progressives should focus on winning local races and creating a serious, grassroots movement that will grow upward and branch into the dominant levels of government.
Quotes are excerpts from Gonzalez’s interview with Drunken Politics.
The Least Worst Trap: Talking with Ralph Nader
On Sunday, the War on Terror spilled into Syria, and the only people more surprised than the Syrians are Americans. See, the war has already spilled into Pakistan. It’s unclear where the United States will be heading next, but I hear Kazakhstan is hunkered down and braced for an attack at any moment. Sure, they’re a member of NATO and the UN, and have nothing to do with any of this, but their funny-sounding name and population of foreigners is working against their innocence. All it will take to gain popular support for an air assault is the presence of American ignorance regarding Kazakhstan’s people, policies, and culture. Bad news Kazakhstan: we have no idea who you are. Head for the hills!
Even as the war expands, the definition of victory remains opaque. Though the Bush administration has no long-term vision of what a stable Middle East looks like (Bush has said something about an Iraqi ‘Mickey D’s being a ‘sweet idea’)several senior American officials simply expressed hope that the unwise war policies of preemption and perpetual, borderless war would “be embraced by the next president as well.” And these policies will be embraced unless the American people demand something different from their leaders.
At home, people are losing their jobs and their homes, while their tax dollars go to bailing out corporate crooks who base their livelihoods on speculative lending, shady mortgages, and outsourcing American jobs overseas. The policies of corporate socialism (where tax dollars go to bailing out huge corporations) will also continue unless the American people stand up and say no more.
In desperate times, the American people have a history of embracing the least worst politician, but it’s time they demand more from the next president of the United States. It’s time to transcend pretty rhetoric and empty promises. The new president must aggressively embrace a Progressive agenda or it will be impossible to reverse the damage committed over the past few decades.
Ralph Nader, Independent Party presidential candidate, has been pleading with the American people to demand more from their leaders. Unsurprisingly, the corporately sponsored Commission on Presidential Debates did not permit Nader into the debates, even though a majority of the American people supported opening the debates to other party candidates.
Regardless of how one feels about his presence in the 2008 election, Ralph Nader is undeniably the leader of the last real Progressive wave in this country. It was because of his uncompromising vision that Congress passed the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Just during the 5-year period between 2002 and 2006, seat belts have saved over 75,000 lives (PDF). His list of Progressive accomplishments includes the Clean Air and Water Acts, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, and the Freedom of Information Act.
Ralph Nader and his army of conscientious citizens were the last organized, serious movement that demanded accountability from Washington.
The so-called Progressives today are allowing Barack Obama to compromise on everything from FISA to the anti-war movement. But even as he votes for telecom immunity and talks about Afghanistan as the good war, Obama has never lied about being a Progressive. In fact, he seems rather confused that any of his followers think he’ll be anything but a centrist in the White House. Progressive groups that score Obama with a 50% approval rating seem confused by this as well.
The Progressives have pinned their hopes and dreams to a man they have asked nothing of, and they’re going to be sorely disappointed when he, in turn, does nothing for them.
When I interviewed Ralph Nader, he explained what will happen if Barack Obama is elected president:
You take the 20 leading groups supporting him in the liberal-progressive pantheon: labor, anti-poverty, civil rights, women’s rights, gay-lesbian rights, environment, consumer – you name it – not one of them is putting any demands on him. Unconditional voting for the least worst of the two parties means that your vote has no political leverage whatsoever. It allows Obama to take it for granted, and not give the anti-war people anything because he knows he has the anti-war vote. Then they go to the right wing and slice off a few votes there by going more corporate and flip-flopping on offshore drilling. This is the same merry-go-round every four years. The liberal intelligentsia is doomed unless they solve this problem of unconditional voting for the least worst candidate.
Closed debates and apathetic, naïve voters will result in a continuation of Bush’s policies, and Americans will be told to wait another four years for single payer health care, a living wage, the end of the Iraq war, cutting the bloated military budget, ending the death penalty, ending the wasteful War on Drugs, investing in solar power, and the end of nuclear power.
When neither party is talking about any of the above issues, the American people are screwed because they’re at the mercy of a winner-take-all system. Nader explains:
The people are in a two party prison. There can be something like a Green Party in Germany because if you win 5% of the vote you get 5% of the parliament. Here, you’ve got to win 51% or a plurality, which is why people don’t support small starts to make them build into larger movements because they think: well, they’re only 4 or 5% in the polls and I don’t want to waste my vote. It’s time to break out of the prison.
A 4-5% Progressive voice won’t be enough to create real change. And Americans are ready for real change. They don’t want to triangulate and compromise. Compromise results in, as Nader puts it, “a macho competition” between Democrats and Republicans, who disagree on if abortion is a matter of killing babies, but agree on bombing foreign babies every chance they get. The 2008 US military cash-burning extravaganza is currently hovering around the $623 billion mark. That’s more than the rest of the world’s military budgets, combined.
It’s time Progressives stop playing defense and start setting the agenda. They can do that by putting real pressure on Barack Obama if he is elected president. They must organize and demand a stop to the wars, and not settle for, as Obama is suggesting, the continued presence of U.S. bases and private mercenaries. They also must demand publicly funded elections, and an open system that allows the American myth that anyone can run for president to become reality.
Currently, the Military-Industrial Complex, which feeds on war and suffering, controls America. Progressives claim to be the blockade between greedy politicians and federal tax dollars, and yet they are continuing to let Obama get away with catering to the middle.
They make this unforgivable compromise because they’re certain Obama is a radical Progressive simply spouting some centrist rhetoric until he can get into the White House. And then it’s free health care and peace for everybody!
I’m paraphrasing what a California lawyer told me at the Nader-Gonzalez Wall Street bailout rally a few weeks ago. Michelle, the lawyer, and a minority Obama supporter (she came to the rally because she was curious,) said she was absolutely 100% certain that Barack Obama was a Progressive, and he is only saying he’s pro-death penalty and for the bailout because he needs to get elected.
I asked her what evidence she had of this claim. She had none. She just felt it in her heart.
Progressives need to stop acting on what they feel in their hearts and look at what is happening to their leadership. If they don’t collectively demand real, sweeping reform from the next president, then the president will bow to the only real pressure he feels – the pressure from corporations and war hawks.
For more information on Ralph Nader, visit: Votenader.org.
Ralph Nader: Stop Voting for the Least Worst
Transcript taken from Ralph Nader’s interview with Drunken Politics
More info is here: Votenader.org
On Corporate debates
Every major poll since 2000 has registered that a majority of the American people want Ralph Nader on the debates.
[In order for a third party candidate to get into the debates] five major polling companies have to poll 15% or higher that people want Nader/Gonzalez on the ticket. But the Commission on Presidential Debates won’t release the names of the polling organizations. And they won’t name the media conglomerates that owns the polling organizations. So if the media isn’t covering third party candidates, they obviously don’t poll well.
So we called Gallup, and asked if they are one of the five. They are. But Gallup said they don’t poll Nader/Gonzalez. This is classic deception. The whole thing is a commercial corporate rigged system designed to keep us off the debates. The game is corporate fascism.
Only a multi-billionaire like Michael Bloomberg could buy his way onto the debates by purchasing air time. It’s like what FDR said to Congress in 1938 “When government is controlled by private economic power, that’s fascism.”
So we know what the diagnosis is. The question is: what is the prescription?
In 2012, starting in early January, major national and local citizen groups in a massive coalition should get on a letterhead, lay out the entire schedule of 25 debates from Boston to San Diego, Miami to Seattle, for all the presidential candidates who have enough theoretical electoratal college states to win the election. That way, the dynamic shifts from the two parties, who control the agenda and have the photo opportunities, and sweep through certain states and ignore most of the states because they’re slam-dunk Republican or slam-drunk Democrat, and shift the entire power to shape the agenda into citizen groups, who then become participators, and not spectators.
On the Progressive Platform
What’s going on here is the concentration of too much wealth and power in the hands of the few. And they make decisions for the many. So it’s not surprising that the Nader/Gonzalez campaign and the agenda, which is supported by the majority of the American people: Single payer health, living wage getting out of iraq, cutting the bloated military budget, solar power first, no to nucleur power, is opposed by the minority of power brokers. That’s why we’re exluded from the debates.
It’s not our agenda, it’s your agenda.
The people are in a two party prison. The system is rigged, electoral college, winner take all. There can be something like a Green party in Germany because if you win 5% of the vote you get 5% of the parliament. Here, you’ve got to win 51% or a plurality, which is why people don’t support small starts to make them build into larger movements because they think: well, they’re only 4 or 5% in the polls and I don’t want to waste my vote. It’s time to break out of the prison.
Unfortunately, the only person who could do that is a mega-billionaire with liberal tendencies, who will blow the two parties into a three-way race. That’s coming. Mayor Bloomberg could have done that this year.
On Afghanistan Being Portrayed as the “Good War”
Afghanistan will be Obama’s Vietnam. He’ll sink in that quagmire. Just putting more soldiers in there controlling a high-tech attack on a low-tech resistance will kill a lot of civilians. And it already has and it’ll be more: wedding parties blown up, villagers blown up, children blown up, and that enflames and vastly expands the resistance in those rugged mountains. Nobody conquers those people. The British Empire tried twice and failed, the SU poured everything it had and failed, and the US will fail.
The finance Administrator for Karzai and head of the Afghan national university said you don’t do it that way. You do it through negotiation with tribal chieftons, by public works, by creating jobs, by getting these tribes that have a stake in passifying the area, but Obama, who’s father was an African from Kenya, he should know better, says to pour the soldiers in so he can show he’s more macho than McCain.
It was a macho battle in the third debate. Obama matched him in supporting the militaristic repression and exploitation and colonization of Palestine and its people, in being beligerant toward Iran, and in being beligerant toward Russia. This man is going to be the biggest disappointment ever. He’s a brilliant tactician and he’s pulled something off that nobody could have predicted, but he is going to be the biggest disappointment for Liberals and Progressives that they have ever seen. This is the biggest political con job in the last century, the Barack Obama victory. There’s no mandate. He just floated in. He had an easy act to follow. The Wall Street collapse opened the gap with McCain, who isn’t the greatest campaigner, and who wanted to be a clone of Bush, a disastourous tactical mistake for a so-called Maverick.
You take the 20 leading groups supporting him in the liberal-progressive pantheon: labor, anti-poverty, civil rights, women’s rights, gay-lesbian rights, environment, consumer – you name it – not one of them is putting any demands on him.
Unconditional voting for the least worst of the two parties means that your vote has no political leverage whatsoever. It allows Obama to take it for granted, and not give the anti-war people anything because He knows he has the anti-war vote. Just like Kerry turned his back on the anti-war movement. Then they go to the right wing and slice off a few votes there by going more corporate and flip-flop on offshore drilling. The same merry-go-around every 4 years.
The liberal intelligensia is doomed unless they solve this problem of unconditional voting for the least worst candidate.
On the Death Penalty/War on Drugs/ Cynthia McKinney
I’ve been against the death penalty since I was a student at Harvard Law school in the 1950s when I saw what kind of defense accused people of impoverished means got when they were prosecuted. They got the most incompetent lawyers, that meant a lot of innocent people got executed just for lack of effective defense. Some of these laywers are so bad they fall asleep in the middle of proceedings.
The death penalty doesn’t deter crime. And it’s much more expensive to proceed on a capital case toward execution than it is life imprisonment without parole. It’s always the poor and minorities who have the huge proportion of people that are executed. Finally, there’s a moral issue. Even Bill Clinton executed a retarded prisoner. Other western states don’t have the death penalty.
We’re for a national amnesty for all non-violent drug offenders. Let them out of jail and use the empty cells and fill them with convicted, corporate crooks. That will also improve prison conditions because powerful convicts just won’t stand for the food.
We don’t send nicotine addicts to jail, and cigarettes take 400,000 lives a year, 40 times what hard drugs do. And we don’t send alcoholics to jail. Why do we send drug addicts to jail? We’re not talking about kingpins. This isn’t a criminial issue. This is a health issue.
800,000 young people in this country are arrested every year in this country for possession mostly of small amounts of marijuana. This is madness, not to mention the billions of dollars this costs taxpayers.
On if Nader’s Raiders Would Be Possible Today
It would possible to form it, but the doors (in Washington) have slammed shut. That’s why I’m running for office. I’m trying to mobilize civic energy. Most of those citizen groups, and many of them I’ve started, just don’t like to admit that they are working harder and harder for virtually nothing. It’s corporate occupied territory. There isn’t one department agency, including departtment of labor that isn’t controlled by corporate influence inside and out. Look at the Treasury, Goldman Sachs veterans going to Washington to bail out their buddies, department of defense, deptartment of agriculture, interior, and so on. Either we organize new institutions, political institutions, or shut down and go watch the whales in Monterey.
The liberals and progressives just don’t want to face reality. It’s over, and it’s over with the Democrats, too.
The Democrats just thumb their noses at the groups that say you can’t pass the $700 billion bailout like this with a little Barney Frank and Chris Dodd window dressing. You’ve got to have reregulation now. This is when Washington had Wall Street over a barrel. You give authority to shareholders to control their out-of-control bosses, you make the speculators pay for their own bailouts with a 1/10 of 1% of a derivatives’ transaction sales tax. People pay 6-8% sales tax on necessities in stores as we’re speaking and there’s no sales tax on billions of dollars traded every day. It’s $500 trillion traded this year, so 1/10 of 1% would produce $500 billion. We need a speculation tax. But they’re too cowardly to even do that.
So they gave a blank check and said: ‘oh, we’ll look at it next year.’ These people are cowards. Aside from Kucinich and one or two other people, they’re cowards.
Allison Kilkenny: Unreported 
leave a comment