Enough Is Enough: A Post-Election Political Divorce
Press Action
Thursday, September 30, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand09302004/
By Mark Hand
Let’s make a deal with the segment of the Anybody But Bush movement that loathes John Kerry’s public policy positions but still urges those of us who live in so-called swing states to vote for him on Nov. 2. If those of us who have never completely understood the Left’s reflexive attraction to the Democratic Party vow to give the party’s repugnant nominee for president our vote this election season, will the lefty ABBers promise that Election 2004 will be the last time they endorse a Democratic nominee and pledge to begin working on Nov. 3 toward building a separate political party with the goal of eventually giving the Republicrats a run for their money?
I’m willing to vote for JFK II in four-and-a-half weeks if Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Norman Solomon and other notable lefty ABBers admit the unhealthiness of maintaining any form of a relationship with the Democratic Party—a political party that has done nothing in the past 35 years to earn their trust and has a long history of cracking down on the rights and freedom of leftist movements in the United States—and agree to put their energy behind building a real left-libertarian political party.
If only these prominent lefty ABBers had been using their influence through the years to build an anti-imperial, anti-authoritarian, pro-freedom, pro-life-sustaining political party, there’s a good chance such a political party would have some traction today and the Democratic and Republican parties wouldn’t be so closely aligned and wouldn’t have a stranglehold on our elections. Imagine how strong a non-sectarian political party would be today if Chomsky, Zinn and others had spent just a fraction of their time over the past 35 years working to build it. Instead, these lefty all-stars are retreating once again to the Democratic Party because of the perceived dire times we live in today under a Republican administration, as if the same argument could not have been made in 1948, 1964, 1968 and other presidential election years when the U.S. government also was committing great atrocities around the world and here at home.
There’s still time to outgrow our political duopoly before it has committed irreparable harm to us and the rest of the world. And there’s no better time than now to start building that alternative party or working to strengthen an existing one, be it Green or a more inclusive Libertarian, especially if we hope to see in our lifetimes the rewards that would come from such hard political work. But first, we must end this abusive affair with the Democratic Party that heats up every four years.
So, come Nov. 3, which lefty ABBer will permanently sever his or her relationship with the Democratic Party and pledge to begin building a political party that more closely matches his or her political beliefs? Earlier this election season, I made the generous offer to vote for the Democratic nominee for president if he pledged to budge only slightly on two issues: the U.S. occupation of Iraq and electoral fairness here in the United States. My attempt at compromise was unsuccessful.
Once again, I come forward with a compromise offer. And this one is directed at a group of people whose prized history of political activism and writing suggests they will accept my proposed deal. If in the next few weeks some prominent lefty ABBers concede enough is enough and pledge to stop supporting Democratic presidential candidates in the post-11/2 world and to begin building a left-libertarian political party, then I will cast my vote for their preferred presidential candidate on election day.
Mark Hand is editor of Press Action.