[Mb-civic] COMMENTARY Democrats Richly Deserve Nader LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-cockburn22jul22.story

COMMENTARY

Democrats Richly Deserve Nader
 By Alexander Cockburn
 Alexander Cockburn writes for the Nation and other publications.

 July 22, 2004

 Always partial to monopolies, the Democrats think they should hold the
exclusive concession on any electoral challenge to George W. Bush and the
Republicans. The Ralph Nader campaign prompts them to hysterical tirades.
Republicans are more relaxed about such things. Ross Perot and his Reform
Party actually cost George H.W. Bush his reelection in 1992, yet Perot never
drew a tenth of the abuse that Nader does now.

 Of course, the Democrats richly deserve the challenge. Through the Clinton
years the Democratic Party remained "united" in fealty to corporate
corruption and class viciousness, so inevitably and appropriately the
Nader-centered independent challenge was born, modestly in 1996, strongly in
2000 and now in 2004. The rationale for his challenges has been as sound as
that of Henry Wallace was half a century earlier. I quote from "The Third
Party," a pamphlet by Adam Lapin published in 1948 in support of Wallace and
his Progressive Party. "The Democratic administration carries the ball for
Wall Street's foreign policy. And the Republican Party carries the ball for
Wall Street's domestic policyŠ. Of course the roles are sometimes
interchangeable. It was President Truman who broke the 1946 railroad strike,
asked for legislation to conscript strikers and initiated the heavy fines
against the miners' union."

 There you have it: The laws ‹ including the Taft-Hartley Act, supported by
106 Democrats in the House ‹ that led to the destruction of organized labor
were passed by bipartisan vote, something you will never learn from the
AFL-CIO or from a thousand hoarse throats at Democratic rallies when the
candidate is whoring for the labor vote. During President Clinton's years in
office, union membership as a percentage of the workforce dropped because he
did nothing to try to change laws or to intervene in disputes.

 Clinton presided over passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement,
insulting labor further with the farce of side agreements on labor rights
that would never be enforced. By 1996 nearly half of all private employers
were running aggressive anti-union drives, with familiar threats to
relocate; less than 20% of private-sector workers trying to win a union
contract got one.



 And what does John Kerry propose to help workers? Raising the minimum wage
to $7 an hour by 2007, which would bring a full-time worker up to two-thirds
of the poverty level.

 Let us suppose that a Democratic candidate arrives in the White House, at
least rhetorically committed to reform, as happened with Jimmy Carter in
1977 and Clinton in 1993. Both had Democratic majorities in Congress.
Battered from their first weeks over unorthodox nominees and for any
deviation from Wall Street's agenda in their first budgets, both had
effectively lost any innovative purchase on the system by the end of their
first six months, and there was no pressure from the left to hold them to
their pledges. By the end of April 1993, Clinton had sold out the Haitian
refugees, put Israel's lobbyists in charge of Mideast policy, bolstered the
arms industry with a budget in which projected spending for 1993-94 was
higher in constant dollars than average spending in the Cold War, put Wall
Street in charge of national economic strategy, sold out on grazing and
mineral rights on public lands and plunged into the "managed care" disaster.

 One useful way of estimating how little separates the parties, and
particularly their presidential nominees, is to tote up some of the issues
on which there is tacit agreement, either as a matter of principle or with
an expedient nod and wink that these are not matters suitable to be
discussed in any public forum: the role of the Federal Reserve; trade
policy; economic redistribution; the role and budget of the CIA and other
intelligence agencies; nuclear disarmament; allocation of military
procurement; reduction of the military budget; the roles and policies of the
World Bank, International Monetary Fund and kindred multilateral agencies;
the war on drugs; corporate welfare; energy policy; the destruction of small
farmers and ranchers; Israel.

 In the face of this conspiracy of silence, the more independent challenges
the better. Nader is doing his duty.









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