Reply #53: dug back into the archives

[m berst]

My last post before Clark dropped out-

We may be in the final hours of the Clark campaign tonight, and I have been thinking about the future. I have been contemplating several seemingly unrelated ideas as I watched the campaign unfold, and they finally coalesced in my mind. What have we learned from the Clark campaign? What is the common thread?

At the Kucinich forum there is a Wesley Clark thread, and naturally I posted there. Charges were being made against Clark, but rather than defend him I posted a positive statement of support.

Whom do I want to win?

In the Clark campaign we saw the professional campaign people cut the legs out from under the grass roots groups. Then we saw the grass roots groups controlled by people who seemed determined to stomp out spontaneity, creativity and motivation. We saw Clark struggle, and fail to get his message across in the various media outlets. We saw the Democratic core voters rally around a tried and true Democrat. Whom do I want to win? The American people.

What is the common thread?

It is this: the people who seized control of the Clark campaign and the Democratic party are upper middle class white college educated liberals, with a distinct East and West coast bias. These are the same people who dominate the media that isn't controlled by the neo-cons. These are the same people rallying around Kerry.

I believe that there is a liberal elite, and that they are driving the Democratic party away from it's roots as a progressive working class party. Who is left out? Most of the potential Democratic voters. The minority communities, the working people, those who don't embrace the looking down their noses more organic and politically sophisticated than thou crowd.

The people aren't too stupid to get the message. The message is dumbed down by the professional liberals and by the media elites, because they are protecting their perks and privileges.

The future for me is to work with the forgotten, the ignored, the disenfranchised, the hurting, the marginalized... the majority. Those are the people who could have put Clark in the White House. The beautiful people didn't want them at the party.

It is hard for me to imagine a scenario that could so thoroughly destroy the possibilities that LFA and General Clark's vision promised than the events we have watched unfold over the last few months. That destruction, in my view, is the result of the failures of the organization, both official and unofficial.

The organization always seemed to me to be working against the General's vision. We warned of this here very early in the campaign, and the response was pretty unambiguous - "go away!"

Many have expressed
the unique qualities that Clark brought to the race, and why it is so difficult for so many to get on the DNC orchestrated Kerry bandwagon.

- Clark showed us that progressive ideas could be expressed in a way that did not threaten or offend the sensibilities of the more conservative people.

- His incredible record of service and achievement would have served to further legitimize those progressive ideas.

- Clark could have actually ended the "Republican Revolution" rather than just slow it down a little.

- Clark could have been a President for all of us, not just half of us.

- Clark gave people hope.

If someone can explain to me how Kerry could do those 5 things, or convince me that the times call for less, or explain to me why we need to give them up and settle for something less, then I will consider jumping on the bandwagon.

After 35 years of voting straight Democratic party ticket in every election, I will not be doing that automatically this time. I enrolled many, many conservatives in the Clark campaign, and they are saddened today about the future of the country. They did not sign on only to be told to support whomever the DNC annointed, and neither did I.

I don't agree that the campaign was ever solely about taking back the White House, nor do I recall it being about "Clark or whomever as long as it isn't Bush."

Whether this means working within the party to overturn the elitist leadership, or forming a third party, it is too soon to tell. It is bait and switch, however, for people to now say that removing Bush was the only or even the main objective all along. I cringed the first time I heard a Clark supporter say "eyes on the prize" because I feared it would lead to this.

Many Clark supporters are not Democrats, and to suggest that they should now embrace Kerry insults their intelligence and does a disservice to Wes Clark's original vision that called us to service. So many new people were brought into the process by the Clark campaign. They weren't enrolling in DNC politics as usual.

If our enthusiasm and hope is so easily and instantly transferrable to Kerry, then I have to question just what it was we were hopeful and enthusiastic about. Removing Bush? I think not. Many of us want to change the conditions that allowed the crisis we are in, not just swap out occupants of offices. The DNC has stood by and made compromise after compromise with the RNC. Leaders in the Democratic party have been up to their eyeballs in political corruption and "go along to get along" strategies. If not for that, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in.

There was a revealing exchange between Clark supporters today. Many who are saying "ok I am ready to go to work for Kerry" are discovering that there IS no Kerry campaign that they can find. We have seen from many of the communications to us from staffers that our suspicions that Kerry is the hand-picked candidate of the DNC leadership, and that we were cheated out of having a voice in the process are true. But I guess I should keep my "eyes on the prize" and be quiet about this.

People are having difficulty connecting up with the Kerry campaign because there WAS no Kerry campaign. It was a DNC campaign. The emperor is wearing no clothes.

But..... it is ok to pull the shenanigans that the DNC pulled, because we need to stop the shenanigans of the Bush adminstration? I came aboard the Clark campaign to stop ALL of the anti-democratic shenanigans, not to swap one set for another. I, and many others, came on board the Clark campaign to save our constitution and to restore decency to the political arena, not to sign on for "getting rid of" Bush as the "prime mission." The problems are just a teensy bit bigger than that, wouldn't you say? Or if they aren't quite a bit bigger, why the scare tactics about Bush to get us into the Kerry camp as quickly as possible? I resent the bait-and-switch tactic that now tells us we signed up for a different mission then the one we thought we were signing on for. "Getting on the program" behind Kerry just means "shut up" in any case, it seems to me. I don't find that very persuasive. I will work for a campaign that allows me to retain my freedom of speech, thank you very much.