WE
WON'T WASTE YOUR TIME with
a long screed on the reasons
for our endorsement. If
you're reading these lines,
you either landed here
by accident or you are
a sophisticated observer
of our political realities.
In the latter case you
would expect that a site
populated by left-leaning
activists would only consider
Kerry or Nader as a possible
ticket, but never Bush.
And in that you'd be perfectly
correct.
But we endorse Kerry
with enormous reservations.
His campaign is one of
the most ineptly run
efforts in recent memory.
Vacillation, equivocations,
tardy responses and generally
less than smart handling--not
to mention very transparent
opportunism and pandering
to the right on many issues
(about which more below)--mark
this campaign as one characterized
by missed opportunities
and self-inflicted injuries.
It's
almost shocking that
with a target as large as a stranded
whale, and with Bush's obvious
failures in plain view, in
late October, with hardly two
weeks to the election, Kerry
is still not able to break
out ahead of Bush but remains
embarrassingly mired in sagging
polls and controversy surrounding
his clumsy and unnecessary remarks
about Dick Cheney's daughter.
(It's painful to watch loyal
Democratic partisans as they
try to put a brave face on what
was, by any fair assessment,
a serious
faux pas on Kerry's
part.)
The
really frustrating thing about
Kerry is that--rhetoric aside--he
obviously continues to march
under the bankrupt script concocted
by the top Democratic party tiers
of playing to the center and
right in the hopes of stealing
the wind from the Republican
agenda--the infamous "GOP lite" formula--while
shamelessly betraying their own
base on the many urgent and basic
issues confronting the masses.
Granted
that it isn't easy or politically
wise to speak clearly and
honestly to a population so profoundly
crippled by rightwing mythologies
and backward notions, including
the widespread religiosity
and self-righteousness that still
afflict the American polity.
In that sense, a man like Bush,
riding on the most undeveloped,
traditionalist sectors of the
population, and one capitalizing
on the numerous confusions
and fabrications that continue
to appear unchallenged in
the mainstream media, can sail
ahead without having to strain
his brain unduly to strike the "right chord." Leaving
aside the inevitable priming,
Bush has the luxury of being
able to be himself, as his obvious
deficits have already been largely
discounted by the electorate.
Not
so with Kerry, who, emerging
from a bruising primary season,
could at any time easily
hurt himself by speaking out
of turn. What's more, as things
stand in our society, a candidate
that needs nuanced explanations
for his positions is a lame duck
in a political culture built
on soundbites and knownothingism.
In sum, while Bush has been able
to coast, Kerry has faced a topical
minefield.
All of this we acknowledge as
true and weigh in Kerry's favor
as an attenuating circumstance.
Heading
toward self-destruction
But,
even in a close election where
some expediency may be in order,
attention must be paid to
core principles, principles that
we have seen much too often breached
or applied only haltingly and
with stunning miscalculation.
Kerry, if he had been strong
and clear from the very beginning
about his allegiance to a progressive
agenda, ideally following his
gut feelings about social justice,
peace, and an environmentally
sane planet, would be riding
a comfortable, solid lead by
now.
As
in almost any country with enormous
disparities in income, the majority
in the US is objectively on
the left, for
the majority of the American
people continues to experience
in their daily lives a huge
number of problems, threats,
and frustrations chiefly issuing
from a governance that, while
claiming to be democratic, is,
at bottom, oligarchic
and thoroughly anti-democratic.
How else do we explain the fact
that the
people need special
lobbies to defend their agenda? What are
Congress and the President for?
Kerry's
gyrations are hard to explain.
Tactically, he
probably made the biggest mistake
in this election by allowing
his persona to be defined
by his foe. In this,
there is corroboration coming
from an unexpected quarter, an
ad executive who sees the whole
thing in terms of a "branding
failure." In a political culture
in which spin, focus groups,
marketing techniques, dirty tricks,
and public relations are almost
everything and substance and
principle little or nothing,
it scarcely suprises us that
the problem should be framed
as one of misguided "advertising."
So, consider for a moment Abe
Novick's impassioned plea against
the "political hacks" in
charge of shaping today's campaigns,
and Kerry's in particular. Even
allowing for the fact that it
apparently comes from a true
believer in the alchemy of Madison
Avenue, it's worth a read:
"Imagine
this: It's Wednesday, November
3rd and John Kerry just
lost the election. Since
he ain't going to Disneyworld,
what should he be thinking?
What went wrong?
One
big word jumps to mind:
branding. Brands stand
for something and Kerry
never gave a clear, consistent
message. He was, from the
outset, the anti-brand.
He was not Bush. The chant
from Democrats even supported
this argument by declaring, "Anyone
but Bush!" he was
never the challenger brand,
offering up something better.
Imagine
if Pepsi's tagline was "Anything
but Coke"? Or BMW
claimed, "We're not
Mercedes." It doesn't
happen that way for good
reason. Rather, when you
think of BMW, you think
performance. With Pepsi
you think youth. Clear.
Simple.
When
you think Bush, you think "tough
on terror." And terror
was the issue in this election.
Had Kerry realized it early
on and made the case that
he can fight it smarter,
better, and safer than
Bush by hammering away
for a good solid year,
it would have been a different
race and a different outcome.
I
get annoyed when I hear
how politicians can't be
branded. I'm told they're
not Pepsi or BMW and that
branding can't work the
same way for a person as
it would for some silly
consumer product. Bunk![...]
The problem with Kerry
was he was never properly
launched. He was never
introduced in a way that
voters would say. "Oh
yeah, Kerry. He's [fill
in the blank]." instead,
he let his opposition define
him.
Unless
and until the parties,
politicians and, in particular,
the Democrats understand
the power of branding,
they will lose elections.
Until they depart from
what are used-car ads,
as opposed to the great
work agencies consistently
do for the likes of car
brands--Saturn, Volkswagen
and BMW--they will be lost
in the woods unable to
see the forest." *
Novick
is right, of course, but I'm
afraid the woes of the Democratic
Party and the Kerry candidacy
run far deeper than using a wrong-headed
advertising approach. At the
end of the day, the flaw is strategic
and, perhaps more serious, ethical.
For while it may be true that
elections in hotly contested
races are won by catering to
the marginal voter--the infamous "undecided"--there
is no justification to stray
so far from the base as to start
denying the very principles that
fuel it. This, as mentioned earlier,
has been a long-embraced tactic
of the Democratic Leadership
Council. Democratic apparatchiks like
Joe Lieberman, Al Gore, and even
the hallowed Clintons, who, for
all the hatred and fury they
caught from the Right would hardly
qualify in the international
political arena as anything
more than a pair of moderate
centrists, have long played and
continue to play opportunistic
politics. These people are so
deeply ensconced in the pockets
of the corporate status
quo that
even when the American people
back an initiative 3 to 1, they
falter. Such was the case with
the short-lived proposal to secure
universal health care under the
stewardship of Hillary Clinton.
There are many other examples.
So
this lack of "product differentiation" is
now coming home to roost to actually
hurt the Dems and possibly lose
them an epochal election. Who
could blame the public for this?
Kerry's position on the war is
for all intents and purposes
congruent with Bush's--we gotta
win, stay the course, bla, bla,
and all the rest we have heard
before. Heck, it's Bush's policy but
better administrated. Is
an immoral policy more virtuous
if better administrated? Is an
unjustified war suddenly justifiable
because of a switch in management?
Kerry, of all people, should
know better.
The
flight from principles
by the Democratic Party--never
too heavily encumbered by such
things--was witnessed throughout
that long and shameful season
preparatory to the Iraq war during
which the Dems literally folded
as an effective opposition. Compounding
this cowardice, the Party went
on to stage a jingoistic coronation
in Boston (what else are we to
call this tightly-scripted extravaganzas?)
during which Kerry, once more,
opportunistically tilted against his
honorable record as a Vietnam
War critic, thereby helping to
whitewash the criminality of
that intervention. Only Al Sharpton
had the intelligence and true
leadership DNA to speak off script.
He was a breath of fresh air.
Of
course, the spin doctors had
figured that Bush was outstripping
Kerry on the "patriotic" index,
the "tough hombre" talk, and
that he needed a strong dose
of flagwaving to prove his having
some gonads to confront the
"terrorist threat." But
again, need we go so far? Has anyone paid
close attention to the Kerry
ticket's utterances on Israel,
Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and
Venezuela? Simply appalling,
especially for a duo that promises
more maturity in the use of
American power. But, friends,
patriotic or idiotic, will we
ever see the day when liberals
stand up firm against the baiting
of the Right? (Don't hold your
breath.)
Incidentally,
those who grow apoplectic at
the mention of Ralph Nader's
name should direct their fury
elsewhere. Scapegoating Ralph
or any other small-party candidate
is an exercise in futility, besides
being eminently unfair. The Democratic
Party has been selling out for
many decades, in broad
daylight. For generations it
has happily played the "good-cop
face" of a single party
representing only one class interest.
Liberals, who apparently never
learn from history, are suddenly
appalled at the horrors inherent
in rightwing rule. Where were
they as the right kept on accumulating
more and more cultural and political
power?
Trouble
on all sides--and perhaps catharsis
at last
Whatever
the outcome on Nov. 2, the Democratic
Party, as we know it, is in big
trouble. If it loses, there is
a high probability that the fissure
between the opportunist right-wing
leaning top tier and the left-leaning
base will--like tectonic plates
under enormous tension--snap
and cause a huge convulsion likely
to split the party into two irreconcilable
factions.
If
it wins, trouble will not manifest
itself so rapidly, due to the "honeymoon
effect," and
the celebratory afterglow issuing
from the Republican defeat, but
the contradiction will surely
re-emerge in time. The reason
for this is actually quite simple:
no party wedded lock, stock and
barrel to the current brand of
American capitalism and the obsolete
myths underwriting it (see our
article, whitewashing
the face of capitalism) can
hope to escape for long the mounting
social turmoil caused by the
sheer intractability of the unfolding
global crisis. They can buy some
time with stopgap measures, but
they can never really snuff out
the underlying dynamic. For that,
we'd need an entirely new paradigm,
and plenty of real leadership,
something that--exception being
made for a pitifully small band
of honorable men such as Dennis
Kucinich--we clearly won't find
in the present Democratic Party.
Consider job
loss, about which there is much
equivocation.
Over
the middle and long-run, the
shrinking of the job base is
likely to continue unabated here
and abroad since it is inexorably
embedded in the dynamic of replacing
human labor with machines. (See
our companion
article on this
topic.) Upticks may register
here and there--economic activity
is inherently uneven--but when
we look at the whole field, over
a period of years, it's obvious
that, unless we stop technological
progress altogether, fewer and
fewer workers will be needed
in any sector of the economy.
This will hold true in both the
developed and underdeveloped
world.
Machine
labor should not be feared because
higher productivity in and of
itself promises liberation from
toil. The problem
is that under the current set
of property rules, the lion's
share of the additional income
goes to the owning and managerial
classes, while the vast majority
are forced to make do with sharply
reduced incomes or no incomes
at all. Thus, all the talk about "outsourcing," with
its controversial and faintly
chauvinist overtones, is a mere
distraction on the road to the
real crisis, which is structural.
No amount of retraining or education
will cure it.
The
election may have been lost more
than 20 years ago
The
wits said that Napoleon lost
Waterloo in the fields of Eton.
We say the Democrats, to explain
a defeat in November, will have
to take a hard look at the past
20 years. For it is at least
that long that is required
to start telling the truth to
the American people, educating
them about the real causes for
the intractability of the problems
they face, the ostensible madness
and confusion they see around
the world, and to start forming
a broad movement capable of sustaining
and implementing a new vision.
Until that essential work is
done, the Democrats or any party
purporting to offer real
solutions--a new economy capable
of meeting people's needs here
and abroad, and the determination
to stop the pillage of our planet
and fellow creatures--will be
either a witting fraud or a prisoner
of the narrow status quo
enforced by the Right.
It isn't too hard to see how
these limits have crippled the
Democratic Party's ability to
fire up the masses.
The
straitjacket can be broken, all
right, but it takes dedicated,
courageous work. In 2004 the
Democrats are asking for our
vote without having done any
of this essential work. Their
rhetoric and formulas are shopworn;
their "solutions" woefully inadequate
to deal with the deepening crisis,
their top personnel corrupt beyond
repair. Their accidental triumph,
should it happen, may give the
world a mild, short-lived respite
from the deepening chaos and
plunder induced by the Bush administration.
Effective
politics, however, demands
an adjustment to real world conditions,
with all its imperfections. In
that sense, no doubt, there are
areas such as the Supreme
Court, the treatment of the environment, the judiciary,
the injection of religiosity
at the highest levels of governance,
and the triumph of a
new politics of popular imbecility,
of deliberate "dumbing-down", where the dictinction between
the parties may actually amount
to something. Hence our reluctant
endorsement. But for a real and
lasting solution, our citzenry
must leave behind the Pied Piper
of American politics, and look
way past the Democratic Party
in its current incarnation.
D.P.
Greanville
For
the editorial board
* Quoted from letter
to Advertising
Age, October 2004.
