Dave Silver sets things straight on the handful of Democrats who questioned the Ohio election process:

“Without exception all of those representatives that made an electoral challenge, including John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Stephanie Tubbs Jones and yes Senator Boxer were quick to remind folks that they are not contesting the election outcome, that they accept the validity of the “recount” in Ohio but are unhappy about the glitches that took place on election day; Provisional ballots, long waiting lines, flawed machines and no paper trail. Legitimate objections for a not too fair election where every vote counts.

The call was for “election reform” and to get rid of the bad procedure, but never questioning the validity of the 2004 results.”

And Sen. Barack Obama, supported by people who largely don’t know what he does in office, will continue to coast into a job he’ll have to work to get to rid of. Sen. Obama didn’t even join this meager and illogical questioning of the Ohio election process.

Clearly the Democrats are not serving the values the progressive Left claim to stand for. My question is why so few progressives question the Democrats. You know just as well as I do that in 3 years the drums of conformancy and forgetfulness will be sounded and we will be encouraged to push aside what happened just in that time. When will voting for the least-worst bite the voters enough so that they’ll start supporting candidates who support their values?

2005-01-18 Update: Lance Selfa of the Socialist Worker has an interesting article in Counterpunch on the Democratic Party’s performance—largely standing with the Republicans on the Ohio vote or choosing not to be there to vote at all.

Torture and voting are two serious issues the Democrats have fallen down on. Dick Meyer lists other serious issues the Democrats have “rolled over” on as well as summarizing why Gonzales is raising such interest (also, listen to the Friday, January 7, 2005 Democracy Now! for more including clips of Gonzales’ Senate confirmation hearing, and read Gonzales’ Wikipedia entry). Gonzales has said that the Geneva accords are “quaint” and he gave evasive virtual non-answers to the Senate last week when responding to serious allegations of supporting torture.

The Democrats are in the minority, but they have an opportunity to send a signal vote here.

Senator Barack Obama, coronated after largely having no competition who stuck around long enough to give him any problems, had his first major failure in the Senate not even a week into his new job.

If you recall, the only senator to challenge the 2004 Ohio presidential election results was Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). This sends a clear message that the vast majority of the Democratic Party doesn’t care about voting rights, even if they have the perfect opportunity to send a signal vote—they may not win, but they had the chance to tell the public that they care deeply about the alleged transgressions and want to see an investigation.

Obama has gotten a lot of favorable press from leftists and progressives because of his speech given at the Democratic Party convention to nominate Sen. John Kerry. Perhaps these same people would be willing to spend some time examining his unfolding record.

Katrina vanden Heuvel talks with Michael Moore and we learn that Moore thinks it’s okay to have a smooth spokesperson. Moore never gets around to examining what the would-be Democratic Party front is saying—what policies are being sold here—it’s all about image. So, to try to make his friends look better, Moore holds the bar low (an insulting prospect if one thinks about it from the perspective of the voter—how intelligent do these people think voters are if they mainly talk about who should make the pitch?):

Or Obama? What got me thinking about Obama was at one of my holiday gatherings, a relative who’s never said the words civil rights, if you know what I mean, suddenly said ‘I liked the story Obama told.’

Maybe if Obama told the part of the story where he votes to bomb Iran, Moore’s cousin wouldn’t have been so complimentary because bomb runs aren’t cheap and people like it when their families get to live.

What was Kerry’s story? (Several people shout from various tables–“I’m better than a Bush, I’m not an asshole.’) Yea, that was about it. So we got 57 million votes on a tagline–and not a very good one. Amazing we did as well as we did. We shouldn’t feel defeated. Bush doesn’t have a mandate. Seventy million people didn’t even vote and they’re the poor and the working class and we should spend the next four years giving them reason to vote next time. […]

Kerry’s story was just like Bush’s where it counted: two Bonesmen who very much like the authority to supersede or not bother consulting with Congress in order to start war, and neither of them have any real connection to poverty or a compelling vision of health care for the US because they’re both so busy taking corporate campaign cash. It’s not that hard to see why so many registered voters chose to divorce themselves from the process instead of sending Bush or Kerry the message that their policies were worth a damn.

This election was Kerry’s to lose and he did a fine job of it. After an early concession, he still couldn’t find the time to do the right thing and challenge the election results in a key state. Reminds one of how Lieberman treated the Congressional Black Caucus letter (which questioned the Florida vote) after the 2000 election.

Think back to Roosevelt. He had the Capras, Sturges, Steinbecks and they moved millions, the nation, with their art. That brought popular support to a radical agenda. Don’t need to make polemical documentaries.

The point of the documentary was to get Bush out of power and that didn’t happen in large part because the man Moore backed was too weak to stand up for his own ostensible run for office (yet another reason why I remain convinced that the Democrats are there to “good cop” the country into corporate hands).

There’s nothing wrong with running someone who is our Arnold. It doesn’t need to be a professional actor. Let’s start looking for our Arnold, and stop listening to pundits who say Americans hate Hollywood.

No, what the Democrats need is a set of policies that will resonate with the public and convince them that you’re not a bunch of go-along-to-get-along doormats. Here’s a start:

• Drop the corporate campaign funding. Since you’re so convinced your messages resonate with the people (how many times has Moore said what he stands for are majoritarian values?) then get your money from the people and show up the Republicans.
• Drop the TV debate lock-out strategy. This is a huge issue because it’s impossible to take Democrats seriously when we know the “debates” are really staged PR events. Take competition seriously and squarely by allowing competitive parties and independent campaigns to get on the debates (drop the ridiculously high entry level criteria, purposefully set high so there is plausible deniability). But the Democrats are too much in cahoots with the Republicans to let any other party or independant campaign put real issues on the table and make Democrats talk about things without scripts or previewed questions read by audience members from cue cards.
• Stand for nothing less than universal single-payer health care. Your country deserves no less. Do you realize that European countries gave themselves universal health care coming out of a world war? But no, the country that can apparently afford to waste billions in a war based on lies (which Moore implicitly buys into by supporting Kerry and voting for Kerry even though New York is a “safe” state), can’t deliver that to ourselves.
• Stop treating your most progressive candidates like crap. Dennis Kucinich was dismissed out of hand by Michael Moore in his talks (broadcast by Democracy Now!, I’ll see if I can dig up links from archive.org). In fact, in one of the talks Moore admitted he had no problem with Kucinich. Then he went on to endorse an apparently less-than-competant General and Kerry. Hardly anyone stood up for Kucinich when Kucinich got a third of the time Howard Dean got at the CNN so-called “debate” between 9 (nine) Democrats (so don’t tell me there would be too many candidates to have a real debate involving more than Democrats and Republicans). Sure, Kucinich ultimately realized where his bread is buttered and folded stumping for Kerry and swallowing a weak official Democratic Party message on the war. But for a while there during the primary, he was speaking truth to power with a sensible health care plan, and the Democratic Party wasn’t too keen on talking with him.

You’ve already got the lock-out TV strategy going (where you keep all the other competition out), people already know the name “Democrat” and some will vote straight-ticket Democrat regardless of your record. Ah, perhaps that is why this plan will never take hold, no matter how many times you lose.

Maybe I should just feel lucky that people like Ralph Nader still run campaigns, even losing campaigns, against the national Democratic Party by raising all the issues the Democrats won’t. He’s showing the Democrats up and showing the US what a real progressive acts like. He was right, you know, no Democrat would have considered changing anything if they had won. Losers revisit strategy and message, winners figure they can’t afford to change.

During the Q&A session after Moore’s speech, he had these pearls of wisdom to offer:

Q: Who’s our Arnold?
MM: Well, ask Caroline Kennedy. And who wouldn’t vote for Tom Hanks? We need someone who’s beloved and trusted by American people. May seem facetious but it’s true.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Hanks would either not run for office at all (a wise choice since he has no material political background of any kind elective or not, something for which he will be appropriately skewered if he runs for US President; at least Nader had done more things for this country than any US President in living memory), or that he would run as a Republican because he’s richer than Croesus so he’s more amenable to a tax plan that lets him keep most of the money he has (oh, wait, that wouldn’t really differentiate the parties enough, would it?).

Forgive me. He could run as a Democrat. And lose.

Moore last endorsed General Wesley Clark who entered the Democratic Party primary race late, failed to dazzle at debates, and never really gained much steam with the public ultimately losing to pro-war/pro-NAFTA/pro-war resolution/anti-gay marriage Kerry. Perhaps Moore is not the person to ask for good advice on who the Democrats should run. Or do we need to remind ourselves of when Moore said Oprah should run for President?

I still think Democrats won’t vote for a woman, regardless of how well-qualified she may be (and I’m not saying Caroline Kennedy or the much-buzzed favorite Hillary Clinton would be well-qualified, I’d have to learn more about their records before I can offer that opinion).

Q: What about Hillary? John Edwards?
MM: Well, she’s a star. Edwards is not a star. And nothing wrong with discussing Obama. Sure, they’re people who say ‘well, he can’t win.’ I’m not so sure. Americans are not so closeminded. Give Americans some credit for rising above their own personal prejudice and bigotry. Democrats become weak-kneed so easily. Be proud of who you are—have the courage of your convictions. Why are we still listening to 200 members of the DLC. They’re Republicans posing as Democrats.

Edwards is not a “star” (whatever that means) because he lost. Are the Democrats so easily disenchanted while they try in vain to rerun the 2000 election? Shall we look forward to another stiff-as-a-board candidate for US President from the Democrats (and, yes, I believe lazy-minded perceptions like that carry weight with an audience that largely doesn’t know anyone’s record and has little intellectual curiosity to learn voting records)?

There is something wrong with discussing Obama for US President, even from the know-nothing perspective offered by Moore: Obama has done so little of national import he’s an unknown quantity to most Democrats. Now that the second Bush II administration is a lock, we’ll get to see how Obama handles himself when war with Iran comes around, something he told the Chicago Tribune he could see himself voting for.

Q: What’s the one-liner for Dems?
MM: Hmmm. Maybe, ‘We’re Going to Kick some Ass.’

Warmongering is not attractive in a candidate or in someone stumping for a party. How sad to see that Moore can’t even fall much in line with his former criticisms of the Democrats (which we only get a faint whiff of in this talk and Q&A).

Q: Tomorrow, the vote will be certified. You had that extraordinary scene in Fahrenheit from 2001 showing members of the House being gaveled down, out of order, with not a single Senator rising in support. What do you expect tomorrow?
MM: I’m hoping that one Senator will join with John Conyers–just to investigate the vote so we stop this from ever happening again and send a strong message to some of these hack Secretaries of State.

One Senator is too low to convince any thinking person that the Democrats care about voting rights. One Senator is going to send the same message as was sent in 2000—don’t bother challenging anything, we’re just here to follow in the direction the Republicans want to lead because we’re really after the same audience they are: corporations.

A passage I read about how the “Democrats [are] Split Again Over [the] Party’s Agenda” brought to mind a question. First, the passage:

“During the 1990s, many liberals felt that Clinton abandoned class-conscious themes by supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement and a balanced federal budget. Conversely, in 2000, centrists charged that Al Gore fissured Clinton’s winning coalition by reverting to a populist message that they believe drove away affluent social moderates.”

Exactly what “populist message” did Gore pitch during his campaign for president? Even Michael Moore, who now spends so much time trying to convince his fans to vote Democrat, listed many ways in which Gore and Bush were arguing the same points from the same perspective. Back then, Moore thought the Democratic Party could not be fixed from the inside and Moore was more critical of the Democratic Party. But the two candidates were shockingly similar and both candidate’s views were clearly not populist.

Later, on another issue allegedly of interest to Democrats—voting rights—I read something that jogs the memory:

“In a measure of the dispute’s political delicacy, proponents are considered unlikely to find a senator who will co-sign the objection, which is required to force Congress to act on the challenge.”

The reminder is confirmed in the last line of the AP piece:

“In January 2001, some House Democrats challenged Florida’s electoral votes but no senators joined in the effort, dooming it.”

If you saw Fahrenheit 9/11 (or if you can watch it for about 10 minutes) you saw the most powerful scene in the whole movie—the scene where Congressional Black Caucus members are gavelled off the podium by “populist” Al Gore (then President of the Senate as well as Vice President of the United States) because no senator would sign the CBC’s letter challenging the Florida election results from 2000.

The Democrats really are a decadent party. But if the Republicans are smart, they’ll realize that they had better keep the Democrats around because the Democrats understand the value of colluding with the Republicans to keep competitors away, and because the Republicans should understand the value of a “competitor” which they can control (Democrats eagerly adopt the Republican issues and framing of those issues). So, when do progressives realize that the Democrats aren’t progressive and that progressive voters need to stand up for their values?

[Update: As of 2:24p Central time on January 6, 2004, during the Gonzalez confirmation hearings, C-SPAN reported that the US Senate had rejected the 2004 election challenge. While Gonzalez was stumbling to find the words to Dick Durbin’s question on whether the US military can use torture under any circumstances, the election deal had been sealed. The Senate vote was 74-1 against—only Sen. Boxer (D-CA) voted to support the challenge. So, please, come on and tell me why I can trust the Democrats to support my voting rights when they won’t support a challenge that would have ended no differently if they had all voted to support the challenge. It’s easy to be a saint in paradise, but Democratic Party responsibility has been laid down by the corporate funders who want Bush in office.]

The Madison Capital Times has named Barack Obama man of the year for 2004 despite that Obama has said he could favor bombing Iran (and the Chicago Tribune reports similarly). I think it would have been wiser to wait to see what Obama does while in the US Senate, at the least; placing a higher value on championing bombing people into democracy should be chastised too.

The Madison Capital Times has an interesting quote on why he recently won in Illinois:

“Obama beat more prominent Democrats for his party’s Senate nomination because he was more courageous politically – opposing the war in Iraq, criticizing the Patriot Act and promising to battle corporate special interests.”

I disagree. I think Obama won because Illinois’ most densely populated counties are gerrymandered to support the Democratic party, and because Obama had no real opponent. Initially Obama faced an opponent whose divorce secrets were leaked–taking Jeri Ryan to sex clubs around the world–then Obama had no opponent for a while. Later, Obama faced Alan Keyes who had little time to prepare a campaign and (more importantly) had poor positions and appropriately wasn’t taken too seriously.

It’s not hard to win when one faces such disorganized opposition. This is not worthy of celebration because it is a coronation.

Bad news first:

• “NOW” with Bill Moyers is no longer. NOW will be hosted by NPR’s David Brancaccio. NOW had been sliding ever since Brancaccio came on board (I first noticed the goofy animations with sound effects and the occasional “What NOW?” segment after he came on; this segment always struck me as odd because I think it’s part of doing a good piece to point out to someone what they can do to avoid the bad things being described in the piece, don’t wait until a few segments later). My guess is that you can expect fewer in-depth reports on a range of subjects NPR is more comfortable bringing us (or not bringing us): virtually nothing on media consolidation (a staple of the former NOW show under Moyers) because that might raise the spectre of low-power FM which NPR worked to defeat when they felt it posed competition for their listener base; the rising cost of health care will be covered but without any mention about practical solutions including universal single-payer health care (if this manages to somehow leak out, I’m sure it won’t receive any serious analysis); interviews with right-wing or “centrist” “newsmakers” who want to inform us how social security should co-exist with investment plans (because co-existance makes eventual takeover easier to swallow).
• NOW will shrink to 30 minutes. This means less time for in-depth coverage of…anything, really. But this also means 30 minutes for PBS to fill with something else, something pro-corporate like another half hour of Tucker Carlson or that new talk show with Paul Gigot, who gets enough coverage from his articles in the Wall Street Journal and his time on PBS’ NewsHour (referred to more accurately as the LiarHour by Paul Mueth, co-host of News from Neptune). In case you haven’t seen Gigot’s PBS show, it’s a lot like “Washington Week in Review” with Gwen Ifill in that they both have on some journalist friends from the corporate (and during times of war, possibly embedded) press. They all cover what the White House tells them to and in the way the White House tells them to so they can continue to be called “journalists”.

If NOW were a community media production, I’d cut them a lot of slack. I know how community media runs on no money for the show (or whatever the hosts can afford to put in), and no staff–two big factors that determine how much of a show there will be. I host a community radio show called Digital Citizen every other week. I rarely have substitute hosts and I spend considerable time researching things to talk about on the show, recording phone interviews, editing other pieces, and I have no staff to speak of.

But PBS is nobody’s community TV station, it’s a bona-fide corporate-funded outlet for news and entertainment. Take a look at some of the heavy hitters funding the LiarHour alone: ADM (corporate criminal: pricefixing), SBC (telecommunications corporation), CIT (commercial finance corporation), and Grant Thornton (an accountancy firm).

Time will tell, of course, and I will happily watch NOW beyond my assessment period if I’m wrong. But NPR is untrustworthy and fails to cover items of genuine interest to my Digital Citizen audience which I could easily defend as worth anyone’s time.

Neither they nor NOW covered the Microsoft anti-trust case and its settlement (the largest anti-trust case in US history with a settlement widely viewed as insubstantial). There was no debate or discussion about what Microsoft did wrong from the perspective of one of their biggest competitors: The free software movement. The free software movement, now 20 years old, has provided the only real competition to proprietary software (including virtually all of Microsoft’s software). Occasionally we get to hear from the open source movement (offering their watered-down version of the debate which never includes software freedom but instead banks on elements monopolists can compete with handily like price, features, and technical correctness).

If your PBS outlet is like mine, you have the opportunity to see a lot of business shows (Business week, Wall Street Week with Fortune, Nightly Business Report, and various business segments on other PBS shows).

But there’s no coverage of this issue or technological-ethical issues to speak of on PBS, NPR, or NOW. Even during the media reform concern, there was no room for discussing free software from the perspective of not choosing between masters (Apple or Microsoft? Word or WordPerfect? Netscape or Internet Explorer? Eudora or Outlook? Which media mega-corp should run your TV and radio? Should we think beyond dividing up media the way we do–TV and radio are one in the digital age, right?). The Eldred v Ashcroft case got NOW’s attention, and Eben Moglen was briefly in one segment of that piece. But that was the closest NOW ever came to discussing the issues of intellectual freedom.

I promised you some good news, so I had better get to it. Check out these quotes:

“[I]f Kerry were half as radical a departure from the Bush agenda as the Republicans claimed, the case for voting for him would be a lot stronger.

But Kerry isn’t any of the things that the Republicans denounced him for being. He hasn’t rejected the Bush Doctrine of waging “pre-emptive” wars–in fact, he boasts that he will use more U.S. soldiers to win the “war on terror.” He isn’t about to “cut and run” from the U.S. occupation of Iraq–actually, he promises to carry out the occupation for oil and empire more effectively. He’s not for raising taxes to pay for “big government” spending programs–he’s for more tax relief for U.S. corporations (sure, in the disguise of a program to reward businesses that keep jobs in the U.S., but we’ve heard that one before, and should know by now that the trickle-down effect didn’t work, whether it was promoted by Ronald Reagan or the NAFTA-loving Clinton administration).”

This comes from the Socialist Worker on why voting for the lesser evil is harmful to long-term progress. Well worth reading, and please note the publication date as I am late to the table on their article, not they. Also, read Counterpunch. All cards on the table: I’ve contributed an article to Counterpunch.

Nothing I’m about to say hinges on your personal views on abortion or mine. This issue is about watching what the Democrats are up to.

Re-evaluating the position in both houses of Congress and the loss of another Presidential run has them mulling over which of their values to dump.

No matter whether you call it “Eye[ing a] Softer Image” or “Rethinking” abortion, the outcome is the same: Democrats, widely considered (among those who only think of two American political parties) as the pro-choice party, are now considering dumping their pro-choice stance in order to open the door for their former abortion opponents.

Go all the way, Democrats: run some high office candidates who are not pro-choice. This should help your would-be supporters get to know themselves better by making them choose which they value more: pro-Democrat or pro-choice.

If this comes to pass, ask your pro-choice friends who vote Democrat what they’ll do. Then ask them again in 3 years. Then compare their answers. When they change (and they almost certainly will change their tune because it’s easy to stand up for values you don’t have to defend, it’s another thing to decide which values to defend when some are in conflict), ask them why they changed.

My bet is that the person you ask will pick “voting pro-choice” now, and “voting for the Democrat to oust the Republican” later on.

Issues like abortion get a lot of coverage in elections. The Democrats courting non-pro-choice voters is one of those things that effectively reframes a national election in a way a bunch of outsiders (third-party/independent supporters, and the majority of non-voters) are denied the power to do.

In three years, even if both the Republican and Democrat are not pro-choice, a third-party or independent will run, support the pro-choice line, and still be precluded from participating in the national debates.

The only way this could get more interesting is if the Republican were pro-choice and the Democrat not.

You don’t hear this often from people you can point to as reputable sources of information—journalist Harvey Wasserman discussing the ongoing controversy surrounding the presidential vote in Ohio said: (emphasis added)

“Based on the exit polls, we have had statisticians look at the validity of the exit polls in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. We have had one statistician tell us that the odds on the exit polls being wrong in the three states, which they were, — either the exit polls are wrong or the ballot count was wrong — the odds against it are 150 million to one. There’s no way that George W. Bush won this election.“

That’s right—someone from outside the apparently ignorable “blogosphere” is saying this on Democracy Now!.

But is it significant? I’d say so, but not for the reason you might think.

If you’ve read this blog for long, you know that I find this interesting not so much for determining who is US President (that was settled by the two parties allowed to be heard on the matter, not by voters, and you’re not going to get vastly different policy from one of these candidates over the other). I find this interesting as a taste of what is not to come from those who call themselves “progressives”.

In two and a half years, do you think anyone will remember this? Do you think progressives will recall this and arrive at the reasonable conclusion that the Democrats are untrustworthy, that they can lose elections all on their own and be counted on to not do the work to defend voting rights?

Or will we get a list of lame reasons why the Democrats of 2008 (remember, even progressives don’t care about midterm elections where you have more voting power) are significantly different and this time for sure they’ll defend everyone’s voting rights by living up to what John Edwards told the country a few hours before he conceded the election to Bush:

“John Kerry and I made a promise to the American people that in this election every vote would count and every vote will count.”

Looking at Jacqueline Marcus’ summary of Eminem’s lyrics I have to wonder who wrote the headline and whether that applies to all those who voted for war, or just legislators. After all, if the US sends in all the Bush and Kerry voters maybe we’ll be able to stay there ten more years or fulfill the US’ dream of permanent Iraqi bases.