Democratic Primary as American Revolution

McCamy Taylor

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Tue Apr-22-08 01:05 AM
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Democratic Primary as American Revolution

Among the charges against King George III in the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson was this:

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

The right to self determination was hard won and has been fiercely protected in the United States. One of the surest ways to power has been to stuff ballot boxes or deny others their right to vote. The Black and women’s suffrage movements fought hard--and often hand in hand---for the 15th and 19th Amendments. The Civil Rights Movement of the mid Twentieth Century sought to enforce the 15th Amendment through federal legislation which was passed with the help of Lyndon Johnson in 1964

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/summer/civil-rights-act-1.html

The key to Senate passage of the civil rights bill was Minority Leader Dirksen, for only with substantial help from Senate Republicans was there any hope of success. Humphrey recalled LBJ putting it this way: "Now you know that bill can't pass unless you get Ev Dirksen. You and I are going to get Ev. . . . You make up your mind now that you've got to spend time with Ev Dirksen. You've got to play to Ev Dirksen. You've got to let him have a piece of the action. He's got to look good all the time."

So Humphrey spent considerable time conferring with Dirksen, in Dirksen's office. That infuriated Humphrey&'s liberal associates, who fumed, "You&'re the manager of the bill. We're the majority party. Why don't you call Dirksen to your office?" Humphrey replied, "I don't care where we meet Dirksen. We can meet him in a nightclub, in the bottom of a mine or in a manhole. It doesn't make any difference to me. I just want to meet Dirksen. I just want to get there."

Humphrey went public with that strategy. In early 1964 he made an appearance on Meet the Press. When asked how he expected to get civil rights passed, in light of Dirksen's early vocal opposition, Humphrey recalled replying, "Well, I think Senator Dirksen is a reasonable man. Those are his current opinions and they are strongly held, but I think that as the debate goes on he'll see that there is reason for what we're trying to do. . . . Senator Dirksen is not only a great senator, he is a great American, and he is going to see the necessity of this legislation."

Humphrey said later that LBJ immediately phoned him and exclaimed: "Boy, that was right. You're doing just right now. You just keep at that. . . . Don't you let those bomb throwers now, talk you out of seeing Dirksen. You get in there and see Dirksen! You drink with Dirksen! You talk to Dirksen! You listen to Dirksen!"
This vignette tells a lot about both LBJ and Humphrey. Its show what a determined president---and vice president can and will do to ensure the passage of important legislation.

In 2000, we saw a corrupt Secretary of State in Florida strip African-American Democrats of their right to vote and a partisan Supreme Court make a ruling based upon the identities of the party in a case in order to anoint George W. Bush the president of the United States, a job for which he was fit only if one believes in hereditary monarchy. Tom Paine, did not.

Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked, and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
Thomas Paine Common Sense

Tom Paine’s words have been proven so true, that I still can not understand why the first act of the Democratic Congress in 2007 was not the impeachment of Cheney, then Bush in that order. We know that Ohio 2004 was also the seen of the suppression of the rights of legal voters, but on a much larger scale than in Florida 2000. If Tom Paine were alive today, he would have demanded it.

Fearing that Congressional Republicans would use impeachment as an excuse to close ranks behind their unpopular party leaders in order to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, Congressional Democrats decided to wait for the 2008 elections instead, forgetting that elections are a most undemocratic, chancy process in 21st century America.

Now, we have Karl Rove and his hand selected gang of RNC veteran operatives attempting to “prove” that the Bush-Cheney administration was legitimate by stealing one more presidential election. This is like fighting the last battle of World War II on a chess board, and if the German master wins, Auschwitz is declared a labor camp ravaged by an unfortunate typhoid epidemic and the Allies admit that “Jews are responsible for all the wars of the world” just like Hitler said.

Under the guidance of Rove, the RNC and America’s major corporations, the candidate most likely to win this fall---John Edwards with his emphasis on economic issues, his clean record and his personable style---was knocked out of the race early. The two candidates with scandals in their closets, Barack Obama (Rezko, whose federal trial was scheduled for the campaign season) and Hillary Clinton (Whitewater) were anointed by the press as the front runners. Agitators have been pitting the two sides against each other, ensuring that whoever wins, the Democrats will enter the general election split as they were in 1972. The historic nature of the campaigns has added a cult of personality to each candidate. Among Clinton’s supporters are a faithful core who must have her or no one, because she will be the first woman. Among Obama’s supporters are a faithful core who must have him or no one, because he will be the first African-American. Together, they play out an old contest which Angela Davis describes eloquently in her classic study Women, Race and Class. The obvious solution—a Unity ticket---has become intolerable---thanks to the work of the Republican agitators posing as supporters of the two candidates, who have broken every truce, hurled every insult, violated every common rule of decency gleefully, the way they did back in 1972, when Pat Buchanan said that the number one strategy was “attacks against one Democrat from another Democrat”.

He also warned that the Republicans must make sure that nothing they did could be traced back to them. By the next year, 1973, everything which they had done would be traced back to them. This would enable future generations to spot members of CREEP (like Karl Rove) who tried to recycle the same dirty tricks, as long as the future generations remembered what George Santayana said

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

When George McGovern, desperately reeling from the Eagleton affair, reached out to Humphrey to be his VP running mate, in order to salvage the Democrats’ chances in 1972, Humphrey, that intrepid party stalwart who had kissed the ass of the Senate Minority Leader in order to win passage of the Civil Rights Act, snubbed him.

We are repeating history.

****

In his first inaugural address delivered March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson said

http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres16.html

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.

This was after an administration very much like the Bush-Cheney administration, one which made it illegal to criticize the government or praise France. One that liked war. One that liked to jail its political enemies and violate a Constitution so new that the ink was hardly dry.

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.

Here is a very quaint list of the political smears that Thomas Jefferson had to weather in his 1800 campaign for president:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/policamp/parton.htm

His opponents declared him an atheist with a Black slave mistress and illegitimate children who planned to dismantle the Navy, leaving the United States open to attack by all comers while leaving Revolutionary War vets to starve to death and the nation’s manufacturing sector to wither and die.

He also had to face a mini coup to name his VP Aaron Burr president in his place, proving that the course of democracy has never run smoothly.

Jefferson was a strong defender of the will of the majority—with the coda that the rights of the minority must be protected. So, he would look favorably upon the democratic process of nominating a candidate who gets the plurality of the vote in a series of primaries. What would he think about a nomination process that is dominated by contributions from corporations and lobbyists (on both sides)?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-crawford/obamas-lobbyist-fib_b_95399.html

Or a nomination process that takes a year and a half? One that becomes a substitute for ending the war, which this Congress was elected to do and impeaching Cheney and Bush which this Congress is morally obligated to do? A nomination process as ritual purge of the nation’s Bush Infestation (sort of like a secular exorcism)? I don’t know. He was pretty tolerant. He knew that people could not help being flawed. They are only human.

I think Thomas Paine would have had some harsh words to say about the current situation. If you think about it, the hundreds of millions of dollars we have spent on the primaries could have done more good in NOLA. And the political rhetoric that is flying back and forth between the two Democratic candidates’ camps is only serving to kneecap both of them. That doesn’t show much common sense . Nor does declaring that one is more electable than the other, when who knows if the GOP will even nominate McCain (he does not look real healthy) or what the hot topic will be this fall. And assertions that one candidate is already the winner, because as of a certain date he has a lead in pledged delegates if you exclude the Florida and Michigan primary are like saying that the South won the Civil War after the First Battle of Bull Run.

Speaking of Florida and Michigan, this is a really uncomfortable topic. Many democrats would like it to just go away. Unfortunately, the voters of Florida refuse to go away. As one little old woman proclaimed by hand lettered sign during the 2001 anti-inaugural march in DC when protesters outnumbered celebrators by at least 2 to 1

I am here because for the first time in my life my vote has been stolen.

The Florida vote was stolen again in 2004, but the nation focused on Ohio, because the theft there was bigger and flashier and people up north get even more irate when their vote is stolen. That is why Ohio is a blue state now.

Last year, Republicans in Florida decided to move up the primary. They probably did this to help out Rudi, the candidate whom the Bush family was backing. They got some Dems to go along by promising them an end to hijacked elections with fair voting technology. The Dems probably did not expect their own party to disenfranchise them.

Shows what they know.

Of course, a year ago the Democratic leadership had every reason to expect that the winner of Michigan and Florida would be the winner of the nomination. And if not, there would be a clear winner, as there usually is, within the first month or two of the nomination process, so it would not matter if those early primaries did not count. But then circumstances changed. The RNC interfered. They set up Clinton and Obama neck and neck, taking care to add news media support to whichever candidate was behind and attack whichever was ahead in order to achieve a Brokered Democratic Convention just like the one Pat Buchanan engineered in 1972. And suddenly the voters in Michigan and Florida had the feeling that they mattered a lot.

Now, in a practical sense, they don’t matter. If the Florida and Michigan results were thrown in, Clinton would get 56 extra delegates more than Obama would get and his 136 total delegate lead (or 162 pledged delegates since that sounds bigger, I expect once Obama has more SDs than Clinton we will hear that number used) would fall to 80 total (or 110 pledged). That is still a lead. It still is not enough to give either of them a win by delegates alone.

Are 56 delegates that do not change the dynamics of the race worth alienating a state like Florida and its electoral votes, which can easily go for a moderate Republican like John McCain with his unorthodox immigration views? Only if the prize is the Democratic nomination and not the presidency.

This election is truly historic, just as people say. We have the possibility of the first woman receiving a major party nomination for president of the United States—in a year when the Democrats are supposed to win. We have the possibility of the first African-American receiving a major party nomination for the president of the United States—in a year when the Democrats are supposed to win. The nomination is a prize to be coveted in and of itself. That is why each side has resorted to slash and burn tactics. Clinton says that Obama is not fit to be Commander-in-Chief. Obama says that mandatory health insurance---a prerequisite for universal health care---is unfair. Clinton says “Shame on you, Obama.” Obama says “Shame on, you, “ back. Bob Novak accuses Clinton of having dirt on Obama before the Iowa primary and Obama calls out---Clinton. Matt Drudge creates a doctored tape of Clinton’s “60 Minutes” interview and Hillary’s supporters call it Obama dirty oppo. Obama says he wants no distractions but his campaign sends out repeated emails to keep the Bosnia lie story—started by his own supporter, Sinbad—alive. Clinton says that she will not use the Wright story, but then her surrogates do.

Someone needs to take them both into a corner for a time out. This is not political theater. This is not street protest or an antiwar demonstration. The enemy is not a fellow Democrat. And the enemy most definitely is not the voters of the states of Florida or Michigan. The later in particular have suffered terribly under the Bush-Cheney administration.

What about the rules. I hear a lot of talk about “the rules”. People forget that this country was founded upon breaking the rules.

There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. The Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government shall be organised, or how administered.

Snip

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living or the dead?
Thomas Paine The Rights of Man

http://www.ushistory.org/Paine/rights/c1-010.htm

Paine was speaking about laws of one generation being imposed upon people living in new circumstances, but they can apply to any people who find themselves in a changed situation who find that old rules are suddenly counter productive. For Paine, as for many of the Founders, government did not exist outside or above the people. People actively created governmental bodies or rules to serve their needs. When rules took precedence over the immediate needs of the people, the rules became tyranny.

Let’s step back a second. What are our needs? We need to end the war. We need to get the economy back on track. We need to restore the Constitution. We need economic justice.

How will we satisfy those needs? By driving Bush and Cheney from office. And how do we do that? Not with a symbolic nomination victory of any one candidate. Neither candidate is the magical Anti-Bush whose mere existence proclaims Bush and all he stands for to be illegitimate, the way that voters in 1972 thought that McGovern's nomination proclaimed Nixon's system illegitimate. A symbol will not cut it. We need results. Since our Democratic Congress will not do its job, we must drive the Bush/Cheney NeoCon regime out of office. Our goal is and must be victory this fall. Our goal is not to nominate the first woman or the first Black. Our goal is to elect a Democratic president. Anything that stands in the way of victory this fall---including people’s egos and petty grudges—is superfluous and has to go.

So, if Democratic leadership says We must make an example of Michigan and Florida now or other states will test our authority again that is putting the power of the Democratic leadership above victory this fall. There are other ways to punish states that break the rules—or better yet to encourage them to follow them. I am sure that over the next four years, the Democrats can think of plenty of them. If Democratic leadership insists upon not counting these state’s votes and if the fall election is lost because of Florida, I can tell you which Democratic leader will be the first one hounded from office—and we need him.

If Democratic voters think that counting these votes is unfair, then this is where the Super Delegates will come in. With over 200 uncommitted there are still plenty out there to make up for any perceived wrong that may have been done to either candidate.

Now, about the Super Delegates, I agree that their presence in the primary does not seem entirely democratic. However, after 1972, when Republican interference lead the Democrats to nominate the lovable but unelectable George McGovern after the primary from Hell, the Democrats agreed that they needed SDs. And this year, as Karl Rove seeks to relive the best days of his youth, it looks like the SDs are finally going to get to do what they were create to do. They are going to bring order out of manufactured chaos.

So, just be glad that we have Super Delegates, who can not be hacked and who want what is best for the party and who, for the most part, already have jobs and so they are just going to try to pick the best candidate for the nominee. If Congressional Dems are smart, they will keep Rove tied up this summer with investigations, so that he does not have time or inclination to blackmail SDs. That is how dirty this election is.

And one more time, I am going to go on record as saying that the Unity ticket---Obama’s college educated, white collar, youth, African-American, male base, plus Hillary’s working class, blue collar, older, Latino, female base—is the obvious way to go. It does not even matter who is at the top of the ticket. The two complement each other, like the sun and the moon. Michigan and Florida are no longer a problem. None of the dirt that has been thrown by either candidate is a problem. Bush Sr. laughed off his “voodoo economics” remark when he was running with Reagan. It is like those Las Vegas ads. What you say in the primary stays in the primary--- if you run with your main opponent.The fact that neither candidate has succeeded in chipping away at the other’s base ought to prove how devoted a following each candidate has and how the combination of the two will spell victory this fall.

But a Democrat with half a base and the other half lukewarm or maybe even alienated because of negative campaigning aimed at their darling? That is 1972 all over again.

Bonus. These are all most likely RNC lies being played on the Democratic Primary:

1. Stories about how Obama bussed in the same 800 voters to caucuses all across the country

2. Stories about how Hillary has been hacking the E-vote

3. Stories about how Obama/Hillary is doing push polls but the person did not use their caller ID so they do not have a number and they did not record it but they know what was said word for word

4. Anything you read in Drudge that says it comes from a Democrat

5. Stories about violence directed at supporters in which no police report is filed--real violence of this nature would be a big deal and would lead to a police report, newspaper coverage, major media coverage

6. Polls that are totally screwy

I keep posting this link just to remind Democrats of what people like Rove did to Ed Muskie back in 1972 to drive him from the race. With the internet it is possible to do much more sophisticated dirty tricks now. Be skeptical of any anonymous claims you read that sound weird and which can not be documented.

http://www.woodstockjournal.com/elections.html

If in doubt, do like the patriots did in Boston Harbor and dump that tea into the water. Do not drink it.