15.09.2004

See no evil, hear no evil

Phil Hamilton has a look at the various official - and the slightly more interesting - unofficial website supporting John Kerry

The contest between George W Bush and John Kerry is a non-choice between the Tweedle Dum of reactionary unilateralism and the Tweedle Dee of multilateral US imperialism plus smooth PR. To mangle Winston Churchill, both candidates offer America and the world nothing but blood, sweat and tears, yet the Kerry camp has managed to persuade a sizeable chunk of US left and social movement activists to support him.

Understandably the Democratic Party (www.democrats.org) are standing by their man. Much of the materials are recycled hand-me-downs from the Kerry campaign site (Weekly Worker September 9) and, like its sibling, the whole website is short on detailed policy content. Still at least we can read the “shocking” news that Bush has been stacking the courts with his hard-right friends, or get to grips with the campaign’s real issues by reading the irrefutable facts surrounding Bush’s youthful holiday in the Texas air national guard. It says everything about the bankruptcy of the Democrats when they refuse to concentrate their fire on Bush’s disgraceful record, preferring instead to play the kind of personal politics few follow and care even less about. If they think this will turn out the Democrat vote, they are seriously mistaken.

The pro-Kerry ‘Democratic Underground’ site (www.democraticun-derground.com) seems happy to stick to the party’s electoral ‘strategy’, leading with Bush’s avoidance of the draft. To all intents and purposes the site is a grassroots Democrat bulletin board: the polished tone of its officious stable mates is out the window, and instead insults, sarcasm and dirty tricks of America’s ranting pundit culture are all on display. For example, its weekly edition of ‘Top 10 conservative idiots’ gives viewers the opportunity to nominate the cream of rightwing nincompoopery for ridicule. This week’s 10 includes Fox News in-house ideologue Bill O’Reilly for falling for the kind of phone pranks Bart Simpson would be proud of. The Bush-friendly media also secure a spot, Dick Cheney occupies two and Bush receives the accolade of featuring in the six remaining positions, including the coveted number one - all for lies and cover-ups around (you guessed it) his military record.

The rest of DU continues to mine the humorous vein, the ‘Hate mailbag’ being the most entertaining section by far, but it is in the busy forums where the real issues are debated in something approaching a serious tone. Overall it is a site for Democrats, their sympathisers and the occasional Republican troll: there is no attempt to pitch Kerry at those considering voting for third party candidates.

Straddling the membership of the Democrats, the Democratic Socialists of America (www.dsausa.org) have attempted to make the progressive case for Kerry. Tucked away in the editorial of its Democratic Left journal, the Political Action Committee’s statement runs through Bush’s agenda and the progressive movements that have mobilised against him, concluding: “Their goal is our goal: to kick the Bush regime out of office.” The PAC goes on to register the DSA’s disapproval of Kerry’s avowed neoliberalism, but a victory for the Kerry slate is preferable because his administration “would face pressure from below by those very social movements whose activism put them into office”. One is immediately reminded of those French comrades who evoked similar arguments to justify voting for Jacques Chirac over Jean-Marie Le Pen. Chirac may be many things, but being a political prisoner of the French left is not one of them. It seems this lesson is lost on the DSA.

Allegedly standing in the tradition of Marxism-Leninism, the Communist Party USA (www.cpusa.org) should really know better. Instead of seeking to mobilise the fragmented American left behind independent working class politics, it offers a dull social democratic electoral platform around which an anti-Bush movement could be mobilised. Perhaps showing some glimmers of a communist conscience, the CPUSA “does not endorse any candidate”. Someone ought to have reminded Sam Webb, the national chair, that this is his party’s position. His ‘Just being anti-Bush is not enough’ article pursues the ‘anyone but Bush’ line to its logical conclusion: the “overriding political task is to defeat Bush ... and elect Kerry”, because a Kerry victory would, apparently, “be a body blow to the right”. The comrade really should read Kerry in his own words before making such foolish statements.

Closing ones eyes to Kerry’s evils cannot make them go away, and a negative demand (Bush out!) will never build a positive movement without breaking from the Republican-Democrat duopoly. The real task of progressives in this election is not to use lesser-evil reasoning to endorse the Kerry camp, but to build their own independent alternative.