8.16.048
Just 78 Days Left: On the Enemies of Dissent
By Mark Grueter
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Last Wednesday, Jim Hightower – “America’s #1 populist” – was in Manhattan for a fundraiser on behalf of Democratic congressional candidate Frank Barbaro. I was interested in talking with Hightower about his support for John Kerry over Ralph Nader in the upcoming presidential election. In 1996 and 2000, Hightower was one of the most articulate opponents of the accepted wisdom that Nader ‘takes votes away’ from the Democrats. I told him I was disappointed he had abandoned his principled/anti-establishment past and wondered if he now bought into the ruse that voting for Nader equals providing aid to the enemy. “No. I’m not one of those,” he replied.
He also said he would allow Nader into the debates (knowing full well that’s not going to happen). On one level I can respect Hightower’s position. He is supporting Kerry/Edwards as an improvement from Gore/Liebermann (and also a tacit recognition that there is a difference, however incremental, between Republicans and Democrats) while refusing to participate in the thuggish and self-defeating efforts to derail the Nader campaign. In fact, Hightower, to my knowledge, has in no way discouraged Nader’s candidacy. “Al Gore lost because of Al Gore,” said Hightower. If Kerry loses, he’ll have nobody to blame but himself
Yet the Democratic Party continues its campaign to undemocratically thwart Nader’s run. The bullying and purging of dissent I witnessed at the Democratic Convention is standard procedure for Democrats. The anti-Nader movement within the Democratic Party goes far beyond sermonizing, editorial censorship and verbal intimidation. Party operatives and other ‘activists’ across the country, led by DLC head Terry McAullife, are aggressively working on the ground to subvert Nader’s ballot access petition drives. That there are no principled Democrats/Kerry supporters expressing outrage over this at the least suggests that there are no principled Democrats/Kerry supporters. They want to win and that’s all that matters; a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. Those of us who don’t vote or vote for third parties are always bullied and persecuted by the sanctimonious, usually the “liberals” among us – the sort of people who more and more seem to concern themselves with “freedom of choice” only when it involves aborting pregnancies.
Liberals should have learned from history that it is dangerous and just plain wrong to suggest that criticism and dissent should be suppressed in the name of solidarity and victory, yet these tactics continue as Kerry turns a blind eye. It is the desire to control the flow of information and thought that leads to tyranny and that is precisely what Democrats and Republicans try to do in every aspect of the political realm: control the nature and outcome of elections.
The privately-run Commission on Presidential Debates, an outfit that has, since 1988, decided who will participate in presidential debates and under what conditions, is trumped as “nonpartisan” when in fact it is actually bipartisan or partisan because it is made up of all Republicans and Democrats, no independents. In an obvious attempt to exclude independent candidates while pretending to be open to them, the commission stipulates that third parties cannot participate in the debates unless their poll numbers average 15 percent. Aside from the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with a private organization controlling our public debates, everybody knows insurgent, underfunded, third-party candidates cannot put up those kind of numbers without national exposure, and so the whole thing is a catch-22 for third party candidates; a scam. The simple fact is that Democrats and Republicans don’t want Nader in the debates because they are afraid of him and his influence and they don’t want to lose control of "their" election. (It is somewhat encouraging to see the news that the CPD “may have violated federal election laws” in 2000 when they refused to allow third party candidates into the debate halls to watch the event. The CPD, however, arrogantly assures us that this suit won’t amount to anything).
The recent Democratic Convention was another completely staged and controlled event. But now it seems the event no longer has a purpose, because this year it didn’t do anything, according to the polls, to help the party politically. Combine this fact with the reality that no authentic procedural business is conducted at the convention and one begins to wonder why they even bother. Originally and for most of our history, conventions existed in order to decide who would run as the party’s candidate for president and vice-president as well as to haggle over the language of the party’s platform. It was a forum where real decisions were made and real debates were had. Over the last two decades, culminating in the 2004 Democratic convention, party leaders have purged all of the elements that at least ostensibly made the convention real. Instead they’ve turned it into a twisted and notoriously meaningless infomercial. One expects no less from the Republicans.
So now the only intent of the political convention is to advertise and to create a “bounce” in the polls. But seeing as how the post-convention Gallup poll for the Democratic Convention in Boston showed an unprecedented reverse bounce, with Kerry dropping about five points, what use does the event actually have, other than to waste millions of dollars and tarnish the party’s image? When conventions were not orchestrated as mere commercials they gave a big bounce to the Democrats, and one savors the irony. The sham we witnessed in Boston gave the Democrats exactly what they deserved, as Americans revealed themselves to be not nearly as stupid as one would think by the way Democrats treat them. Ratings showed that practically nobody watched the convention. Most of those who did were turned off by the rather obviously contrived show. Unless the Democrats plan on re-making their conventions as actual forums for discussion and decision-making, they are, as the polls show, better off just not having them at all. Likewise, if the Republicans do not get a “bounce” in the polls after their upcoming performance, we can say the same.
Some may protest the notion that the Democratic Convention was devoid of substance. I personally didn’t see any, and for all of the warm and fuzzy talk about Bill Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s or John Edwards’s speeches, I’d like for anyone to name one insightful or original or poetic or memorable line. The only notable thing the rising star Obama said was a weird and evil reference to an “awesome God” which should intrigue his new opponent for the Senate seat in Illinois: right-wing, hell-breathing, bible thumper Alan Keyes. The debates between these two blubbering preachers should at least make for interesting television. Just when many of us would like to see a more democratic America, Mr. Keyes comes out in favor of scrapping the 17th amendment to the Constitution, a bill that turned elections of US Senators over from state legislatures to the citizenry. Well, at least he knew that’s how it was prior to 1913, which is probably more than one can say of most politicians. And at least he’s willing to state unpopular views as a matter of principle. At the Democratic Convention, everyone spoke using unspecific, inoffensive language, but instead of attracting mainstream voters it had the reverse effect.
If one truly believes in dissent, the time to stand up for it is precisely the moment when it is least popular. That many of the non-conformists of 2000 who argued that the electoral system was broken turned out to be conformists after all is no reason to follow them along. Confronting the left/liberal consensus against Nader (many of whom within that consensus openly agree that Ralph is the best candidate in the race) is therefore the only radical position to take. One can and should do this without necessarily voting for Nader. Conformity, unity and consensus are always bad signs even during times when they appear to side with common sense: it is the collective willingness to conform that allows us to believe in seemingly good yet ultimately crackpot ideas, such as recycling. Recycling (with the exception of aluminum cans) is an industry that in point of fact hurts the environment, while “wasting” billions of dollars annually. The plain, scientific research on this exists for anyone who cares to look it up.
Every
four years, voters are persuaded to cast ballots for one of the two parties
because it is believed that now is more important than ever - certainly
no time to be fooling about with alternative parties and ideas (Choose
your own exaggerated, hysterical, apocalyptic vision of what will happen
if the wrong party wins). But what if public polling was done away with
on the grounds of unduly influencing the result of elections? What if
everyone simply voted their conscience instead of trying to pick a winner?
Moreover, if one truly believes in a multi-party democracy and political
pluralism, how is it possible to establish such a system by continuing
to support the two ruling parties, the two parties who have shown that
they will stop at nothing to prevent the growth of competing parties?
Click here for Grueter's previous column.
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Mark Grueter is a writer living in New York City. He can be contacted here.
© 2004 Me Three