Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 23:13:31 -0800 From: t1ma1010@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Bob Schlesinger) To: harelb@mssun7.msi.cornell.edu Subject: Kopkind article - November "Z" Hi Harel - Here's the Kopkind article from November's "Z" mag. Go ahead and spellcheck, format, and post to m.a.p and the AML list. Italics are surrounded by asterisks ( *like this*).j I'm currently using the DOS 5.0 "edit" program. I recently moved up to a 386 PC sys and the old word processing program I was using (PC-VI) will not run on a 386 (the version I have is 5 years old). I'm open to suggestions as to word processing programs (preferably WYSIWYG) that will allow easy typing in of articles without those screwy codes that WordPerfect 5.x works in. I'll send an acknowledgement of typing in the article to Chris, Joe, et. al. and will cc you. Thanks for your response to my original question. I'll be happy to type in articles as time permits. Bob Schlesinger t1ma1010@ucselx.sdsu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Typed by Bob Schlesinger DEMOCRATIC RACE by Andrew Kopkind The earnest young Democrats who decide all of a sudden to seek their party's presidential nomination next year have a great deal in common, but little to recommend them to anyone who may still harbor a dim hope that two-party politics can reconstruct America. More than a pride and less than a pack, this is an odd lot of forty fifty-somethings who, for want of a more astute description, have been called the "1960's Democrats." Todd Gitlin, who has become Mr. Rent-a-Quote on movement matters, told Newsweek that they "are people who defined themselves in relation to the movements of the 1960's," but you'd never guess it from the things they are saying on the stump. It would be valid to say that they are defined by the television programs they watched in junior high school. What most of them are hawking in Iowa and New Hampshire this fall is standard 1970's neo-liberalism softened with a digitalized, MTV version of populism. And none of it -- or them -- may make it through the winter. For a bunch of guys who seem to be compulsive joggers, swimmers, meditators, or crowd waders, they have some peculiar infirmities. Bob Kerrey is an amputee from Vietnam service. Paul Tsongas is a cancer survivor. Jerry Brown clearly suffers from chronic space sickness. They also have their boomer-era quotient of family peculiarities, the likes of which would have disqualified candidates in earlier days: Bill Clinton has admitted to adultery (or "fooling around," which is the naturalized form of the sin). Douglas Wilder is divorced and "linked romantically" with the estranged trophy wife of a corporate billionaire. Jerry Brown and Kerrey are still single ("bachelors?") after highly publicized romances with Linda Rondstadt and Debra Winger, respectively. Only Tom Harkin seems, on the surface, at least, to be both of sound mind and a firm family man. Harkin, of course, is the early favorite of left-liberals and progressives (those of whom Alexander Cockburn calls the "pwogs"), some of whom worked for Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. If Jackson stays out of the race -- he was still making up his mind in early October -- Harkin will doubtless absorb the white Jackson faction, or at least that fraction of the fraction that absolutely can't kick the two party habit. But he'll have to fight for early money from a lot of the same people who will be approached by Kerrey and Brown. The Hollywood Women's Political Caucus and the Westside circuit in Los Angeles *loved* Harkin to death for a month or so, not only because he had opposed the war in the Persian Gulf, but also because he is practically an indentured servant of the Israel lobby. Word quickly went around that he was the third biggest recipient of "Israel money" in Congress, ahead of such *landmen* as Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and the recently elected Sen. Rudy Boschwitz of Minnesota. Harkin has delighted his slightly anarchoid following by shouting "Bullshit" in crowded ampitheaters, and, to be fair, he has proposed a program of radical Pentagon cuts, tax "fairness," and social investment programs not unlike that of the Jackson platforms, and in some instances better and more far-reaching than the Rainbow Coalition put forward. The problem is not with his program but with the political underpinnings of his campaign. Without a movement which is able to assert a degree of independence from the Democratic political establishment there is no hope for a Harkin administration as an agency of change. Even Jackson, who at one point seemed to be forging a movement or a coalition of movements within and without the Democratic Party, never felt secure enough to break with the party's power brokers. Indeed, his pleadings for a place at their table became more pathetic and more implausible as his campaign progressed in 1988. His petty fights with the Dukakis forces in the run-up to the nominating convention may have looked like declarations of independence but they proved to be more like suits for surrender. A Jackson administration (never remotely possible) based on his early-primary behavior would have been different, because the forces needed to change politics enought to get him elected would also be enough to change the whole society. But Jackson was willing to win by any means necessary, and what he came to believe was necessary was to become a Dukakis Democrat. Harkin starts out that way. What is really depressing, though hardly unexpected, about the coming Democratic primaries is the way the constituencies that were mobilized by Jackson in the 1980s have been excluded from an active role in presidential electoral politics. Forgest about the Reverend himself; from Vermont to Santa Cruz an array of Rainbow variants were organized locally and in one way or another they sought to participate in national elections. The coalitions were not ideal (whics ones are?) but they represented important steps in the development of independent progressive politics. This year, while individual members may swing madly behind this or that charming glib candidate, the embryonic (or, in some cases, adolescent) organizations will have no significant function, unless of course Jackson jumps in, and even then, he is unlikely to create the kind of campaign he had in elections past. The Rainbow may not be in the dustbin of history, but it is hardly on history's cusp. Since 1988 (or before), the debate within the progressive coalitions has been over their relation to the Democratic Party. The argument has been bitter at times, causing some key activists, particularly white radicals, to drop out of Jackson and Rainbow efforts. Things held together during the first part of the 1988 campaign because Jackson was doing so well. When the Jackson drive stalled, however, the debate about the Democrats continued, and in some measure its vehemence was responsible for the withering away of the coalition. But one must never sell opportunism short in politics, even in so-called principled politics. It was surely wise for the progressive/left coalition to suppress the nausea-response to the Democratic Party when there was a hope -- a good chance even -- that the coalition might indeed *take over* the party, at least in some areas and for certain functions. As a party, the Democrats hardly exist except during elections, when the candidate's committee becomes the party's effective leadership. Otherwise, the party is simply a posse of political hacks with a passing acquaintance to a bunch of entrenched politicians on Capitol Hill. Any energetic, well-planned grassroots group could bid to lead the party and control, to a certain extent, the considerable cash flow and job bank at its command. Such a takeover might not succeed as far as the organizers hoped, but the alternative -- a "third" party doomed, on the national level, to a permanent place on the margins of the big show -- is not all that attractive. Independent politics have hopeful histories on the local and sometimes state level. Bernie Sanders's recent election to Vermont's lone Congressional seat as an independent (and unblushing socialist) shows that it can be done, with a long-term commitment and a willingness to lose many times before winning. But organizing independent politics on the national level takes money and vision so far invisible in the late-capitalist left. The 1992 election will probably bring the return of the post-1960s liberals to the forefront of campaign activity, an event that was happily aborted when Gary Hart's phallo-political thrust flamed out in 1987. The lads who were in the Peace Corps with Paul Tsongas, at Oxford and Yale with Bill Clinton, in Vietnam with Bob Kerrey, and in Zen communication on whatever earthly or astral plane with Jerry Brown, will be vying for their place in the sun. It's not their last chance for an assitant secretaryship in the department of something or other, but there's another generation waiting in the wings to see this one fail. And what of the 1970s Democrats, those who defined themselves by "Saturday Night Fever" and "Saturday Night Live"? Where were they -- where were you -- when the U.S.S. Mayaguez was attacked?