[from the London Tribune]

 

 

 

Letter from Woodstock,

 

                                                    Independence Day 2003     

Woodstock,

                                                                                                            June 30^th, 2003.

 

            Our 227^th Independence Day celebration is nearly upon us, and in the Catskills country roads are dotted with signs in Red, White and Blue that read, “Support Our Troops! Vote Bush Out Now.” Across New England - from the Berkshires to Vermont’s Green Mountains - this patriotic anniversary has echoed with a stirring “call to arms” against the Empire. And the Empire in question is our own.

On June 25th, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, the self-declared candidate of the “democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” spoke before the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington and declared that: ” In recent months, I have found a nation deeply troubled about the direction of U.S. national security policy today… There is a dawning realization across the land that despite winning a military battle in Iraq, the United States may be losing a larger war. Americans are astounded that increasing numbers of people in Europe, Asia and in our own hemisphere cite America as a threat to peace. [But]America is not Rome. We do not dream of empire. We dream of liberty for all….”  In these sentiments, Dean is not alone.

But given all the heated talk of late about Empire; one can only wonder how an American empire would describe itself to Americans? On this Independence Day should we celebrate the “Constitution of the American Empire?” Should we now elect Bush as our “Lord Protector”?  I think not. As we are discovering on the streets of Baghdad, “Americans do not do Empire well.” The imperial dream is alien to our republican traditions, and the issue of what it means to be “a citizen of the empire” will be central to our next presidential election.

            At the beginning of June, 1600 progressive activists from the Labour Unions, Environmental and Women’s NGO’s, the peace movement and Congressional staff met in Washington to plan how to “take back America” from the radical right. They heard Bill Moyers of the Pubic Broadcasting System denounce “a resurgent conservatism’s crusade to resurrect social Darwinism as a moral philosophy, multinational corporations as a governing class, and the theology of markets as a transcendental belief system,” and heard him ask, “What will it take to get back in the fight?”  Their answer was to constitute a steering committee to coordinate the electoral activities of the major NGO”s and the peace movement around a single goal – defeating Bush’s conservative revolution by uniting the social movements behind the Democratic standard bearer. This means a refusal to support another independent presidential campaign by Ralph Nader that might split the Left. And even the Green leaders are leaning towards supporting the nomination campaign of Representative Denis Kucinich, the Peace Democrat, and making a pledge not to contest the Democratic nominee in any “swing” states that are not solidly in either the Democratic or Republican camps. But the identity of the standard bearer remains open.

            Last week MoveOn.org  (the largest of the “virtual organizations” of the progressive left with some 1.4 million members), held an “on-line primary” with over 300,000 participants to designate its members’ favourite candidate from amongst the nine democratic presidential hopefuls. None of the nine won the 50% score needed to gain formal designation by MoveOn, but Governor Howard Dean came damned close. With some 140,00 votes, Dean won almost 44% of the on-line poll; followed by Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio with 24%, and trailed by all the others. Dean and Kucinich stood out because of their uncompromising opposition to the Iraq invasion and their criticism of the Congressional Democrats for their “abdicating” to the Bush Administration’s war policy. Of the two Dean however is the protest candidate who has emerged as the progressive spokesman with a distinctly “Bobo” twist that promises well for his ability to win the other primary that counts – “the money primary.”

MoveOn.org’s first ever, on-line poll was larger than the election turnout in many states and captured the attention of the national media from CBS to Reuters. It both announced the beginning of the presidential campaign season and highlighted the importance of the Internet as a medium of political communication that will play a decisive role. The Internet is an arena where the Democrats have built in advantages. In the last presidential election, the Democrats’ greatest demographic strength was found amongst advanced degree holders and their electoral support was concentrated in the knowledge sector of the US economy.

This was especially true in those counties that Judis and Teixeira have called “the ideopolis” where information “start-up companies” are bunched in close proximity around Research Universities – places like Silicon Valley and the Duke Research Triangle in North Carolina. These upper middle class areas and big cities like New York and Los Angeles are where Dean’s support is concentrated – a fact that may explain how his campaign raised a war chest of 7 million dollars by June 30th largely by appeals over the Internet.  It looks increasingly as though Howard Dean may be the standard bearer that the progressive left seeks – even if he presents himself as a “fiscal conservative.”