Can the Democrats Be Saved
Garvey, Ed
Can the Democrats Be Saved! BY ED GARVEY For eleven months prior to the November election, I spent lots of time in Vermont working with rail workers to stop the sale of the Central Vermont...
...Let's discuss the real situation in America today as viewed by a Democrat who argued, election after election, with Erwin Knoll that it matters if you vote...
...And who helps direct those folks...
...The consultants get lots of money...
...So long as they could always say, "Look, you didn't like NAFTA, you didn't like the budget, you don't like GATT, you don't like the appointments, but: (a) it would be worse under Bush, and (b) if you don't vote for us, Jesse Helms will head Foreign Relations, Orrin Hatch at Labor, and Newt Gingrich will be Speaker...
...Where was the anger at the loss of jobs to Mexico...
...No one with his views could win a statewide election in today's conservative climate, the DLC argued...
...To watch the DLC spin doctors explain this election debacle has been almost as humorous as listening to Dan Ros-tenkowski claim, "Truth is on my side...
...Take a look at Tennessee, where potential Senate majority leader Jim Sasser was seeking re-election...
...Just be quiet and vote...
...It takes a lot of gall to argue that Clinton went too far to the left...
...Barnum's famous line, "There's a sucker born every minute...
...Rail workers in Vermont voted and helped those candidates who spoke to their issues...
...And contribute it did—millions of dollars for incumbent Democrats, not for reasons of conscience but for reasons of expediency...
...He didn't call Washington to find out if it was safe to oppose Monsanto's rBGH for cows...
...There was something wrong with the Party of the People sounding like the mean-spirited Doles and Newts who want to lock 'em up, throw away the key, take the children from their mothers, and blame the poor for poverty...
...It was a stunning defeat for the DLC...
...The message to the little guy was clear: "We don't need your money, your phone banks, your door knockers...
...Should he have said, "One strike and you are out," or how about, "Two months on welfare and the kid goes to the orphanage...
...What has been left for the rest of the folks...
...BY ED GARVEY For eleven months prior to the November election, I spent lots of time in Vermont working with rail workers to stop the sale of the Central Vermont Railroad to a Texas outfit that specializes in buying railroads and firing employees...
...And almost every time, Erwin was right...
...They don't understand "neo-liberal" or "neo-conservative," they don't watch The McLaughlin Group, nor do they wait on every word by George Will...
...Well, let me tell you, it will happen to you...
...You think because you are making 15 bucks an hour that the Republicans will take care of you—I voted Republican...
...As Bernie put it, "Workers, family farmers, and the seniors know I'm on their side...
...Working alongside Congressman Bernie Sanders was one of the great pleasures I have experienced...
...But I begin with a strong belief that the American people are neither mean-spirited nor ideological...
...Can people be motivated, and can the grass roots respond...
...As FDR put it best, "If there is a problem, do something...
...there were two parties in each of the 435 House districts and 200 Senate districts...
...No one spoke for working people holding down two and three jobs...
...No, the goal is to get away from labor, break from the past, become more like "them," and we "Democrats" will win...
...That message resonates with working people...
...He did what his conscience told him to do, and the people responded...
...But to do this on a national scale we must first free ourselves of the burden of the Dan Rostenkowskis, the Al Froms, and the Stan Greenbergs, and re-establish a Democratic Party with a conscience...
...Many are just a few paychecks away from welfare...
...Soon there were not two parties across the country...
...The man-bites-dog-and-dog-dies story is that the Party of the People was purchased by big business...
...No one spoke for the Ringier workers of New Berlin, Wisconsin, thrown out on the street by a multinational corporation despite the fact that the plant was profitable...
...And while you're at it, how about explaining why Bemie Sanders pulled off his victory, or why David Bonior, Democrat from Michigan, the hero of the anti-NAFTA debate, won with 62 percent of the vote, or why Ted Kennedy overwhelmed Mitt Romney with old-fashioned liberalism...
...They know a genuine article when they see it and hear it...
...And so, a Richard Shelby of Alabama could say, "I'm a Democrat," and no one asked "Why...
...Stan Greenberg, who reportedly received more than $2 million from the Democratic National Committee and the White House for polling over the past two years, joined Al From at a news conference to announce that the solution is simple: "Move to the right...
...Where the dismay about our schools falling apart...
...Now he says, "Oops, that didn't work so let's try again but this time with feeling...
...Don't hold back...
...After all, it was the findings of Greenberg that created the Democratic agenda for 1994...
...You got it, Al From and Stan Greenberg...
...As the arithmetic became obvious to candidates, they soon figured out that if organized labor and liberal PACs gave them every allowable dollar, that was about enough to hire competent fundraisers to go after the big corporate money but not enough to run a campaign...
...Bernie didn't need a poll to decide to get on the side of the rail workers...
...When you think about it, who elected From and Greenberg anyway...
...Tell us, Stan...
...If it doesn't work, try something else but do something...
...The DLC tells us truth is on its side...
...Why bother going to the union halls, the city parks, the farm meetings when a TV spot will reach thousands or even hundreds of thousands...
...The Democratic Party became irrelevant except as a funnel for what is known as soft money...
...He never shied from the task, never minced words, knew which side he was on, and told both management and the workers that he had made a choice...
...You don't think it will happen to you because I didn't either," one Ringier worker said with tears in his eyes...
...It happened on the DLC watch.M Ed Garvey was the Democratic candidate for U.S...
...DLC head Al From and Bill Clinton's pollster, Stanley Green-berg, devised this strategy, and it failed miserably...
...These little parties announced, hired staff, raised money, raised money, and raised money...
...It was nowhere...
...As an AFT member said to a labor meeting in Bloomington, Indiana, the week of the election, "If the Democrats have controlled Congress for most of the past forty years, surely we have card-check recognition, arbitration of first contracts, triple back-pay for those fired for organizing a union, strike-breaker legislation, don't we...
...Those who brought us the Clinton craving for a balanced budget, the love affair with Alan "I'll get you into a recession for the '96 election" Greenspan, NAFTA, and three strikes and you're out, have now stepped forward...
...Whatever happened to the party of LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Harry Truman, and the Kennedys who called on us to share the burden...
...Washington-based political advisers, attached by an umbilical cord to the super PACs known as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, tell the candidates that it is all in television...
...Or was it the decision to go with the big-insurance-company and big-hospital health-care plan that made a Pentagon organizational chart seem elementary...
...In a word, he would have driven the Democratic Leadership Council completely nuts...
...And that was the death of the Party of the People...
...I don't know but at least now there is a chance...
...Somehow, Democrats responding to the agenda of fear and loathing set by the Republicans sounded tinny...
...We must skip the $l,000-a-plate dinners at fancy hotels to honor Jefferson and Jackson, and turn to $5 bean feeds to honor Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader...
...They do, however, know if you are on their side or not...
...You know the answer...
...And for the past twenty years, the Democratic Party has drifted away from them...
...Where the disgust about GATT and how it would destroy the small family farm and water down our environmental and consumer protection laws in the name of free trade...
...The campaign issues were crime and punishment, welfare cheats and free-loaders, crime and punishment...
...Was it Mickey Kantor, craftsman of the NAFTA and GATT strategy, who gave Clinton this lefty label...
...Each candidate or incumbent became a party...
...They should have come in clown outfits to remind us of RT...
...In Wisconsin alone, workers marched to Madison and even occupied the Senate until a vote was promised on a bill authorizing the state to seize plants to save jobs by asserting eminent domain...
...When the PAC revolution began twenty years ago, the handwriting was on the wall...
...If there is a boom, they don't feel it...
...It didn't resonate and it never will...
...An annual or semi-annual convention that features legislative incumbent speakers who urge re-election for all...
...They know something else...
...Something strange happened at the polls on November 8. Bernie Sanders won 50 percent to 47 percent with the help of rural voters, suburban voters, and many who voted for moderate Republican Jim Jeffords for the Senate and who gave Republicans big gains in the State Legislature...
...Or, if the old habits are too hard to change, we have to form a new party...
...I suspect the reason many of these Democrats lost was because people could tell they weren't being themselves...
...They will take your job and the Republicans don't give a damn...
...He is an attorney with Garvey and Bauer Legal Services of Madison, Wisconsin, and president of Labor Strategies, Inc., of Madison...
...They were mimicking someone else's message...
...Where was the passion for those less fortunate...
...Was it Ron Brown at Commerce, Lloyd Bentsen at Treasury, Warren Christopher at State, or Bob Rubin who dragged Clinton kicking and screaming to the left...
...The once-proud grass-roots Party of the People is now reduced to a social event...
...Pogo might ask, "Who is we...
...Not one...
...No question about it...
...Well, it has happened, but not on our watch...
...Senator from Wisconsin in 1986 and sought the Democratic senatorial nomination in 1988...
...While Sanders was winning his third term with old-fashioned values and progressive positions, how did the DLC do...
...But in 1994, those selected by the consultants and the campaign committees did not defeat a single Republican...
...The Republicans are for the rich and controlled by big business, so it is not news that they get millions from those sources...
...Where was the outrage at "downsizing...
...They want to help those who need help, they believe the wealthy should shoulder their fair share of the burden, and they are pragma-tists...
...Representative Jim Cooper and Jim Sasser, pure models of the "new Democrats," lost their races, as did other Southern conservatives, as the Republicans won both Houses of Congress for the first time in forty years...
...No standards, no forms, no exams, no permission needed...
...Fact is, labor has been reduced to the role of collection agencies at the local level to give money to the Washington-based political director, who gives it to the legislative Democrats...
...Those people marched, lobbied, and they voted...
...Instead of dealing with the illness, the Congressional Democrats simply joined the fray and told big business it had better contribute or its legislation would never see the light of day...
...Can the Democratic Party be saved...
...Once that occurred, few if any legislative victories could be counted by the most loyal Democrats, including African Americans and labor-union members...
...They tell the candidate to raise money and hold news conferences and all will go well...
...I watched in horror as Sasser, a DLC devotee, started calling for prayer in school in his TV ads and, of course, went with the DLC litany of issues: welfare and crime...
Vol. 59 • January 1995 • No. 1
