-Caveat Lector- A call for Democratic party reform By Carla Binion No other subjects in our current political life deserve as much thorough scrutiny as (1) the stealing of presidential election 2000, and (2) the need for reforming the Democratic party. The theft of the election was a covert political coup. Rather than examine what this coup reveals about the condition of democracy and our political system today, most TV talking heads and mainstream politicians are in a big hurry to change the subject. It was only six weeks ago that the Supreme Court stopped the vote count. However, the subject-changers want to rush to bury the incident. Their efforts resemble book burning, in that they seek to obliterate the event from the American memory. Writer Robert Anton Wilson once said the book burning mentality and the suppression of critical examination gave him "a mildly Orwellian suspicion that [he] was not living in a totally free or rational world." TV talking heads and certain politicians use Orwellian Newspeak when they insist that stealing an election is winning an election. Television news organizations are in a hurry to forget historic events that challenge the status quo, including an event as recent as the Supreme Court ruling. Media critic, author and educator Neil Postman says, "history is not only a world but a living world." TV news, however, is a present-centered medium, says Postman, speeding from one news story to the next without digesting any story. In "The American Crisis, Number III," Thomas Paine said, "In the progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go." Paine continued, "By comparing what is past with what is present, we frequently hit on the true character of both, and become wise with very little trouble....A considerable space of time may lapse between, and unless we continue our observations from the one to the other, the harmony of them will pass away unnoticed." Political analyst Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He has said, "A run-of-the-mill political scandal can safely be exposed without affecting anyone other than the culprits and their immediate circle. A covert political coup, however...challenges the legitimacy of the political order; it deliberately exploits weaknesses in the political immune system and risks infecting the entire organism of state and society." (Gary Sick, "October Surprise," I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1991.) The talking heads now scramble to restore the mask of legitimacy to the political order. Some critics of the Supreme Court's December 12 decision might say to the Newspeakers, "not so fast." For example, in The Nation, 2/5/01, author and prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi points out the criminal nature of the Supreme Court's decision to hand the presidential election to George W. Bush. Bugliosi says: "The stark reality, and I say this with every fiber of my being, is that the institution Americans trust the most to protect its freedoms and principles committed one of the biggest and most serious crimes this nation has ever seen -- pure and simple, the theft of the presidency. And by definition, the perpetrators of this crime have to be denominated criminals." Bugliosi laments the fact that most critics of the Supreme Court's behavior have not shown outrage but mere disappointment. He adds, "If what these Justices did was not 'morally reprehensible' and a 'wrong against society,' what would be? In terms, then, of natural law and justice -- the protoplasm of all eventual laws on the books -- these five Justices are criminals in every true sense of the word, and in a fair and just world belong behind prison bars as much as any American white-collar criminal who ever lived." Why have so many of the Court's critics responded tepidly? Bugliosi says, "Since the notion of five Supreme Court Justices being criminals is so alien to our sensibilities and previously held beliefs, and since, for the most part, people see and hear, as Thoreau said, what they expect to see and hear, most readers will find my characterization of these Justices to be intellectually incongruous. But make no mistake about it, I think my background in the criminal law is sufficient to inform you that Scalia, Thomas et al. are criminals in the very truest sense of the word." Vincent Bugliosi is not the only prominent attorney voicing outrage. Over 500 law professors around the country signed a petition giving similar analyses of the five Supreme Court Justices; and, as Bugliosi mentions, even judicial conservatives such as Terrance Sandalow, former dean of the University of Michigan law school, have criticized the Court. Sandalow, who supported the nomination to the Court of rightwing icon Robert Bork and opposed Roe v. Wade, said the Court's staying the vote count was "incomprehensible" and "an unmistakably partisan decision without any foundation in law." What can be done about this travesty? On MSNBC's Hardball last week, Chris Matthews and his guests agreed that people unwilling to forget the stealing of the election and embrace the Bush Cabinet nominees are not "political moderates," inferring they are a fringe element. There you go! Just proclaim over 500 law professors, including the conservative Sandalow, as "not moderate, but extreme," and you don't have to be bothered with troublesome critical examination at all. One Hardball guest, journalist Elizabeth Shogren said that a moderate would be willing to accept all that happened and go along with the Bush nominations. That definition equates being moderate with being a doormat, supposedly blessedly free of those annoying questions and doubts raised by Bugliosi and others. Again, according to Orwellian Newspeak, moderates are extremists, and extremists are conservatives. When TV commentators claim progressives and reformers are not "moderate," by what yardstick do they measure? A moderate would not roll over for the theft of a presidential election. The stealing of an election is an extremist act, and a moderate would oppose such extreme behavior. A moderate or conservative would want to conserve democracy and protect our traditional way of life and democratic values, including the vote. A political moderate would also oppose John Ashcroft's extremist views, and Gale Norton's extreme anti-regulatory views and her support of extremist, excessive exploitation of the environment. A moderate or conservative would want to conserve environmental resources and use moderation when it comes to mining, logging and opening the land to oil exploration. A political moderate would want to preserve American jobs, or at the least move jobs out of the country at a slow pace. Why have some TV news talk show hosts escalated the rhetoric about moderation? The fact that the theft of the election, as Vince Bugliosi said is "so alien to our sensibilities and previously held beliefs," and the fact that "people see and hear...what they expect to see and hear," means that Orwellian spin is more important than usual for the TV talking heads and other keepers of our civic myths. Media critic Michael Parenti has said that the mainstream media "invent reality" by telling Americans which news events to think about and which to ignore. Thus, we are told to forget the theft of the presidency and rally behind the beneficiary of the theft. If our TV news media functioned as it should, as one of the institutions mediating on behalf of democracy and the people at large, commentators from a wide range of political persuasions would scrutinize and thoughtfully discuss the views of Vince Bugliosi and the over 500 law professors who protested the Supreme Court's decision. TV journalists would invite as guests Bugliosi or some of the law professors to discuss subjects related to the election, such as our deteriorating democracy, the credibility of the judicial system and voter disenfranchisement. If the mainstream media functioned on behalf of the majority of Americans, left-of-center political analysts such as Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal or historian Howard Zinn, would be invited to weigh in with their views on the 500 law professors' contentions, to counter-balance the dominant rightwing spin. The expanded discussions might generate workable solutions. However, the rush to change the subject will never generate positive reform. The Republican party benefits from the media's changing the subject for obvious reasons. Less obvious are reasons why certain Democratic party members want to sweep the election theft under the rug and embrace the Bush agenda. Progressive publications are encouraging Democrats to resist extreme aspects of Bush's proposals and support the party's base, including minorities, environmentalists, women's groups and Labor. An editorial in The Nation, 2/5/01, said, "We hope and expect that if Democrats prove to be weak-kneed and undependable, the people will organize to keep the pressure on." Unfortunately, most Democratic Senators have been weak-kneed regarding the Bush election-theft and the Bush Cabinet nominees. According to The American Prospect (1/29/01, Joshua Green, "A House Divided) some Democrats might also cave to Bush's right-of-center plans for school vouchers, tax cuts for the rich, prescription drugs, Medicare and Social Security. Why did Senate Democrats become so timid they would roll over and refuse to stand with some brave House Democrats in objecting to Florida's stolen electoral votes? Why are some Democrats willing to give Bush and other Republicans so much slack that they become complicit in the Bush agenda? In "Why I Am A Democrat," Ted Sorensen, author, attorney and former speech writer for John F. Kennedy, says "Democrats masquerading as a kinder, gentler version of Republicans lack credibility." Sorensen writes, "Having served Kennedy when he was senator and President, I know that criticism of presidential compromises that bridge the divide between the parties on a particular piece of legislation comes more easily to legislators and candidates who would rather fight than enact. But it is also true that a party loses the election, loses its way, indeed, loses its very reason for being if it becomes merely a pale imitation of its opposition." The middle class and poor, Sorensen notes, "constitute the great bulk of our citizenry....If their health, education, and family life suffer from...economic strains, then every rich American's risk increases." Sorensen says he is a Democrat, because the Democratic party traditionally: (1) Serves the public interest over private interests; (2) Guarantees Civil Rights and civil liberties more effectively than the Republican party; (3) Does more than the Republican party to improve health care access and working conditions for the poor and middle class; (4) Wants to salvage Social Security, Medicare and various other social programs; (5) Wants to strengthen family values by strengthening the family's economic opportunity. Democrats also believe, says Sorensen, that "Government must give priority to the needs of ordinary citizens, workers, consumers, students, children, the elderly and the ill, the vulnerable and the underdog, and not to the needs of those already sufficiently powerful and affluent to afford their own lobbyists." He encourages the Democratic party to once again become the Party of Conscience and says he regrets the "vacuum of moral courage" among some Democrats. Sorensen says in recent years many Democratic officeholders "have seemed more interested in political contributions than political courage, in holding on by going along with whatever course was easy or popular." He adds, "These Democrats...learned to play special-interest politics almost as well as the Republicans...to back away from the party's traditional concern for those most subject to deprivation or discrimination, and to join with the Republicans in delaying the reform of campaign finance and lobbying laws." What could be a better example of Sorensen's criticism than today's Senate Democrats backing away from joining the Congressional Black Caucus members in objecting to Florida's stolen votes? What could better prove that many Democratic senators have lost their courage and connection to the party's traditional values than their support of, or tepid opposition to, the extremist Bush Cabinet nominees? In order to understand what needs changing within the Democratic party, first we should distinguish between traditional Democrats, as described by Sorensen, and so-called new Democrats, as created by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The right-leaning DLC took over the Democratic party after Walter Mondale's 1984 defeat by Ronald Reagan. Journalist Bill Greider (Who Will Tell The People, 1992) says, "The DLC's main objective...was an attack on the Democratic party's core constituencies -- labor, schoolteachers, women's rights groups, peace and disarmament activists, the racial minorities and supporters of affirmative action." In other words, the DLC leadership is against many of the very people and policies that once made the Democratic party great according to Sorensen's assessment. The people defining "moderate" and "mainstream" for the Democratic party, says Greider, are the DLC's corporate donors -- Dow Chemical, Prudential Bache, Martin Marietta, the American Petroleum Institute, ARCO, and many others. Greider refers to a Washington Post report saying that at the DLC's 1990 conference in New Orleans, the audience was not pleased when some speakers promoted tax cuts for the working class, "since the majority of the [DLC] conference was composed of corporate lobbyists, many of whom were not even Democrats." That's right -- the DLC is strongly influenced by corporate lobbyists, many of whom are not Democrats. DLC leaders, says Greider, often belittle certain labor, minority, civil liberties, environmental and women's organizations as "activists" or "interest groups," even though those groups are the Democratic party's most loyal voters. John Nichols (editorial page Editor of The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin) writes about the DLC in The Progressive, October 2000. Nichols reports that former-Representative William Gray (D-Pa), once a DLC governing board member, said the DLC's agenda on affirmative action and other African-American concerns "sounds like David Duke." Is it any wonder many DLC-influenced new Democrats did not stand with disenfranchised African-American voters, did not strongly oppose the stealing of the election, and did not firmly oppose extremist Bush Cabinet nominees? The new Democrat is a sci-fi horror story clone-gone-awry version of the traditional Democrat. Al Gore has been a loyal supporter of the DLC. His running mate, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, is current president of the DLC. According to John Nichols, Lieberman told a Wall Street Journal reporter that Gore's attacks on corporations were just "rhetorical fourishes." Bill Greider has suggested that an obstacle to reforming the Democratic party is that "no one who now shares power in the party structure, however marginally, will be in favor of it." Real change, says Greider, would have to originate with grassroots groups willing to attack the status quo. Even some Democrats who started as conscientious progressives have turned into, for practical purposes, conservative insiders. In Mother Jones, February 2001, Steve Perry discusses Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. Wellstone started his career by denouncing the racist views of Jesse Helms and commiting himself to a government-financed single-payer health care system and campaign finance reform. Ten years after taking office, Wellstone "had not emerged as the left's national spokesman for reforms in health care, campaign finance, or anything else," says Perry. Instead, he "fashioned himself into a formidable inside player." Though Wellstone once denounced Helms, he has been generally deferential toward Ashcroft. Perry says "it is the culture of Capitol Hill as a whole that conspires to change the Paul Wellstones of the world....You can't play the game if you don't know the rules, and learning the game is in itself a job that commands one's full attention and commitment." "Once so committed," writes Perry, "the newcomer is helpless to resist the D.C. establishment's almost mystical powers, foremost among them the capacity to define what's 'politically realistic' and to suppress all else." Perry says Wellstone started trading votes and compromising early on and suggests he should have instead "done what he set out to do, which was to concentrate on mobilizing and building ties between left-liberal citizens and activists across the country," even though it would have antagonized his colleagues. Should we expect our Democratic senators to stand up against an obvious Republican coup or oppose extremist Bush policies and Cabinet nominees? Ted Sorensen was right to call on Democrats to again become the Party of Conscience, but how can that happen when the DLC is beholden to Dow Chemical, et al., and exhibits contempt for average citizens? If progressive-thinking Americans are to make needed changes, we have to understand exactly what is wrong with the institutions that should be supporting rather than undermining democracy, including both major political parties and the mainstream news media. Among our first efforts should be to (1) Put pressure on traditional Democrats in Congress to reclaim the party leadership from the DLC, or (2) If the DLC stays at the helm, then create a separate, strong Progressive party and encourage all traditional Democrats, labor, environmental, Civil Rights, civil liberties and women's organizations to join. Ted Sorensen says, "I am one of countless Democrats who look back with pride on the accomplishments of FDR's New Deal, Truman's Fair Deal, JFK's New Frontier, and Johnson's Great Society." The DLC and many new Democrats have moved away from FDR, Truman, JFK and Johnson's policies and instead primarily serve corporate interests and go along with Republican plans to limit government regulation of industry and the market. Sorensen continues, "The market's 'invisible hand,' as posited by Adam Smith, makes wheels turn and steamships steam, but sometimes that hand is a clenched fist that knocks many people down and some people out. Governments are needed to tame these excesses, to temper their consequences, and to protect investors, consumers, workers, and others from such market distortions as monopoly, manipulation, discrimination, and exploitation." Markets by definition, writes Sorensen, "are founded on self-absorption and self-interest (usually spelled G-R-E-E-D.)....Public policy, in contrast, must involve considerations of conscience, community and responsibility to others." If the theft of a presidential election and the new Democrats' yielding to the Bush agenda is not enough to wake up traditional Democrats, what would be? Either moving the new Democrats back toward their traditional roots, or creating a viable Progressive party, would be the only moderate, thoughtful responses possible to the stealing of election 2000 and the complicity of the DLC-brand of Democrats. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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