Letter
from
Labour
Tribune,
Thanksgiving’s Bitter Harvest…
John
Mason, Woodstock,
November 30th, 2002
One bitter November morning after Thanksgiving, Woodstockers woke up to
an early snowfall - the harbinger of a long winter. Alongside the leftover turkey, I contemplated
The New York Times looking over the political map created by the
mid-term elections in a cold fury. The elections left New York and the
Northeast as a “blue” Democratic island separated from the Left Coast (i.e.
California and Oregon) by the broad “red” swaths of Bush’s America stretching
across the Southland and the West. Our energetic President had made some
170-campaign appearances in the last weeks of the campaign and worked a fund
raising miracle for his Party’s media machine. His efforts and Karl Rove’s
electoral game plan, were rewarded with the control of all branches of
government after a narrow Republican victory in the Senate (51/49) and a
handful of Republican gains in the House elections. This translates; I’m told, into an
historic ”win” for George Bush.
Electoral victory at home was followed in short order by the
capitulation of the Senate Democrats over the Homeland Security Bill and that
of the UN Security Council over Bush’s demands for an inspection regime that
will open the road to Baghdad. Fox News - the favored network of the Contra
Regime now back in power - tells us these “wins” have erased all doubts
about the legitimacy of this president - now hailed by them as the strongest
since Ronald Reagan. I don’t know about this last bit, but certainly the
election opened the door for the return of Reaganites like John
Poindexter and Elliot Abrams.
The margin of the Democratic defeat was only 25,000
votes, but there was little reason for democrats of either the big “D” or
little “d” varieties to celebrate. This was an season marked by all sorts of
losses - not the least of which was the death of Paul Wellstone, the Senator
from Minnesota, whose plane went down in a snowstorm with the loss of all on
board. His tragic disappearance meant silencing a champion of working people in
a body largely populated by millionaire oligarchs as well as the loss of
Minnesota’s senate seat. His death was
followed shortly by that of Jim Chapin, the Vice President of World Hunger Year
and political analyst for UPI - one of the best political minds on the
Left - who died of a heart attack at sixty.
We’re losing the Sixties generation that had dreamed of a democratic
Reconstruction of America but who never came to power - unlike their
contemporaries in Europe. Even though the Clintonistas still appear in the West
Wing imaginary White House, most of the rest of us only figure as “boomer”
targets for the attack machine on Fox News that celebrates the “dominant
paradigm” of market populism and the new chastity. The politics of “competitive delegtimation”
of the Clinton era continues, but - given a feckless democratic leadership and
the absence of a strong progressive press- it’s being waged successfully by
only one side. But far more is at stake
here than the reputation of a generation.
As a patron at The Bear observed to me last week, the change in
the Senate leadership meant that we could kiss good-bye to Amtrak, our poor
excuse for a national rail service. Fat chance, he said, that voters in Texas
will pay for commuter trains that serve the Californian and Eastern urban
corridors. This is only a taste of the pain to come as the burden of social
services is shifted from the national taxpayers to the state governments now
facing deficits that will demand draconian cuts in education and welfare
programs. More importantly, The Homeland Security Bill contains
provisions that will not only “de-unionize” many federal workers but weaken
“civil service” protections in ways that will open up a “spoils system” in
awarding federal contracts. This will favor those private firms that contribute
to the Republican candidates. By such
means Karl Rove hopes to move an America now split 50/50 towards a 60/40 split
in favor of the Republicans.
Republican victories this autumn
can be explained by three electoral trends. First the completion of the
Republican realignment of the South that began with the 1964 election. Second,
the successful mobilization of white republican voters who turned out in
numbers that lifted the voter participation nationwide to almost 40% - a record
for recent mid-term elections. And third
a fall off in the turnout of minority voters that resulted urban democratic
losses to rural and “exurban” republicans… Much of these demographics falls
into the category of “old news” and do not offer much hope of the movement of
new groups into the Republican coalition. Indeed -far from being united around
the President’s “wartime” leadership - the country is just as divided along
regional lines as it was during the 2000 election. This split- as John Judis and Ruy Teixeira
point out in their latest book The Emerging Democratic Majority -
leaves most of post-industrial economy and knowledge sector solidly Democratic
hands, while Republican strength remains concentrated on the whole in the most
traditional regions and economic sectors of the country. The new divisions of American politics favor
a return to a center-left majority more in tune with the world outside. All we
need is a democratic leadership capable of recognizing the opportunity and
exploiting it.
