[Iowa-dx] Fwd: US needs a drastic change of political landscape (Scott McLarty, OpEdNews.com)

[hhart@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu]

Op-Ed by GPUS Media Coordinator, Scott McLarty



America needs a drastic change of political
landscape

By Scott McLarty
OpEdNews.com, November 27, 2007
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_scott_mc_071126_america_needs_a_dras=
.htm


Let's consider the following scenario:

=95 Thirty years from now, American politics
remains the exclusive domain of the Democratic
and Republican parties.

=95 The US in 2037 is no closer to national health
care. HMOs and insurance companies are still
paying off legislators, still in charge of most
Americans' health care, and making record profits
while the number of uninsured has doubled. (These
companies have become so powerful that they've
wrecked the national health care programs of
Britain and some other European countries.)

=95 Republican lawmakers, with help from Democrats,
have fatally damaged Social Security, Medicare,
public education, and other programs through
partial or full privatization. The disastrous
effect on working Americans hasn't dampened the
zeal of politicians for the free market and
dismantling "big government." New trade
agreements, built on the early successes of
NAFTA, have resulted in even greater economic
upheavals in the US and abroad, with whole
populations facing displacement.

=95 Under both Democratic and Republican White
Houses and Congresses, the US has launched new
wars as oil, fresh water, food, and other
resources became scarcer and more expensive. The
conversion of agriculture in many parts of the
world from provision of food to provision of
biofuel has threatened peace as nations began to
realign -- many of them against the US, thanks to
American overconsumption and decades of
belligerency that began after 9/11.

=95 By 2037, the effects of climate change have
accelerated, leading to mass evacuation in some
areas. Carbon-trading among polluting industries
and the construction of hundreds of nuclear power
plants have had no effect on global warming's
advance. Nuclear power has proved an enormous
liability to security and the environment.

=95 Under both Republican and Democratic
administrations, the executive branch has gained
nearly unlimited power. Thanks to the new
national ID card and microchips in credit cards,
cars, and other items, satellites can pinpoint
the whereabouts of any American at any given
time. (Associated Press, November 11: "A top
intelligence official says it is time people in
the United States changed their definition of
privacy."
<http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hJKgeE0Z-SivATjok-utYBdh9wDwD8SRIV8O0">)
As a result of new spy technology, warrantless
surveillance of citizens, the War on Drugs, more
zero-tolerance laws, and increasing poverty,
America's prison population has more than doubled
since 2007.

=95 With campaigns now costing millions of dollars,
even for local office, both parties' politicians
take record amounts of cash from corporate
contributors. Elections in the 2030s are huge,
expensive spectacles, but hardly anyone bothers
to vote. Among Democrats, a small group of
progressives hold out hope that they can
rehabilitate their party. But the Democratic
Party's leadership knows from the evidence of the
past century that it can assume the votes of
progressive, antiwar, and ecologically minded
voters, as well as African Americans, gay people,
and other constituencies, because they have
nowhere else to turn....

That's what the world might look like thirty
years from now. All of the above is either
probable or all too plausible.

On the evidence of the Reagan, Clinton, and both
Bush administrations and the current crop of
likely nominees for 2008, the US will continue in
the same direction whether we elect Democrats or
Republicans to the White House and Congress. The
only difference is that it'll happen a few years
sooner under Republicans.

Can we forecast an alternative, more humane
future? Yes... but not without a dramatic
disruption to the political status quo. America
needs a transformation comparable to the
abolitionist Republican challenge to pro-slavery
Democrats and Whigs in the 1850s, the
confrontations that led to the end of the Robber
Baron Era and ultimately to progressive and New
Deal reforms that gave the middle class its mid
20th century prosperity, and the point of anger
that led black people to launch the Civil Rights
movement.

Americans are by nature conservative. They prefer
stability instead of revolution. Some historical
upheavals, like the Civil War, resulted in
enormous violence and suffering. It's very likely
that the thirty-years-from-now scenario I
described will also bring violence, domestic as
well as international, unless some kind of less
tumultuous political disruption happens now to
offset it. In short, we need a drastic change in
America's political landscape.


Bipartisan business as usual

We can begin by admitting that the Democratic
Party, if it regains executive or maintains
legislative power or both, is not going to end
the Iraq War or enact national health care or
make other significant changes. The Democratic
leadership has no incentive to do so, nor do they
intend to gamble with the generosity of corporate
contributors.

On the Iraq front, Democrats no less than
Republicans want to keep US control over the oil
spigot as much as possible. Democratic leaders
have endorsed the Iraqi hydrocarbon law
"benchmark" that would place 2/3 of Iraq's oil
resources under the control of major US and UK
energy companies. The benchmark will require
continued US military presence in Iraq to protect
the investments of corporations like ExxonMobil,
ChevronTexaco, and BP.

It's why top Dems are only offering delayed
timetables for partial withdrawal, instead of a
plan for all US troops be ordered home safe and
sound as quickly as possible. Democrats in
Congress could force such a withdrawal simply by
stalling on Bush's requests for war funding, but
have declined to do so. According to an
Associated Press news report on October 10,
congressional Democrats have put troop removal
"on the back burner," and in November passed a
bill (doomed to veto) for partial withdrawal by
the end of 2008, but which will leave tens of
thousands of US troops deployed in Iraq
(Associated Press, November 11: "Democrats' bill
on Iraq wouldn't end war"
<http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hCwFdr1kPXe2fDoezo2dDrBqR2HgD8T32QS00>).

The same oil companies that contribute to
Republicans also give campaign checks to
Democratic candidates. Insurance, HMO, and
pharmaceutical industry contributions (with
Hillary Clinton a top recipient among both
parties) ensure that none of the leading
Democratic presidential hopefuls will endorse
genuine universal care under a single-payer
national health plan.

There's no greater evidence of such collusion
than the reluctance of Democratic leaders to seek
impeachment and hold the Bush-Cheney gang
responsible for criminal abuses of power:
deceiving the American people about why we
invaded Iraq, torture, detention without trial,
surveillance of US citizens without warrant,
violation of international laws and treaties,
inaction and racist response to environmental
emergencies (Hurricanes Katrina and Rita),
endangering public health by tampering with
scientific research on global warming, former
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's
revelation that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were
involved in the conspiracy to expose the identity
of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame.

When Dems in the current Congress approved the
nominations of of Samuel Alito and John Roberts
to the Supreme Court and Michael "Waterboard"
Mukasey as the next Attorney General, they made
the damage of the Bush-Cheney White House
extensive and probably permanent.

There's a tendency among many liberal and
progressive Americans to think of the Democratic
Party as the opposition, that it provides a check
on the Republican agenda, and that the excessive
power of the Bush Administration represents a
break in two-party democracy.

This is wrong. The Bush catastrophe is a natural,
perhaps predictable outcome of bipartisan
politics. Dems and Repubs compete on the same
turf, seeking corporate campaign donations and
the votes of a vaguely defined 'moderate'
constituency, without any strong countervailing
progressive political force. The drift of
Democrats into ever greater loyalty to corporate
lobbies and increasing abandonment of working
people has guaranteed a license for the
Republican Party, under neoconservative
standard-bearers, to adopt agenda so extreme they
imperil US democracy and global stability. It was
thus inevitable that a Bush and a Cheney would
come to power and wreak havoc

Progressive and antiwar Dems remain a vocal bloc
in their party, but with nearly zero influence.
The Democratic Party's leadership knows that
upstarts like Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel
won't get the corporate dollars necessary to
compete with the Clinton and Obama war chests,
that they barely register in the media, and that
Democratic voters who oppose the Iraq War and
favor various progressive reforms will vote for a
nominee annointed by Wall and K Streets who
shares none of their sentiments "because they
have nowhere else to turn."

Mr. Kucinich and Mr. Gravel will have no effect
on the Democratic Party platform and will not be
permitted to speak at the party's convention.
Their only effect in 2008 will be similar to the
role played by Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown, Al
Sharpton, Mr. Kucinich, and others during the
past few decades: they'll corral millions of
voters behind a Democratic ticket that ignores
them.

As Green Party candidate David Cobb said during
his 2004 presidential campaign, "The Democratic
Party is where progressive ideas go to die."


Third Party Interference

The only way to thwart the direction of
bipartisan politics is for bipartisan politics to
end. I'm not arguing for a new era in bipartisan
cooperation, which would accelerate all the worst
things I've described, but for an end to politics
limited to two parties.

The first step is the election of candidates to
Congress who are neither Democrat nor Republican,
who accept no corporate money, and who embrace a
platform that demands immediate withdrawal of
troops from Iraq, enactment of
single-payer/Medicare For All, dedication to the
rights and needs of working people, and other
progressive and populist goals. There are many
third party and independent candidates who meet
these criteria, among whom the best organized and
most promising belong to the Green Party.

If Greens win seats in Congress in 2008, it'll
shock Democrats (and some Republicans, too) into
immediate action to end the Iraq War. Democratic
and Republican candidates will no longer be each
others' sole competition for votes.

With Greens in the House and Senate, genuine
antiwar Democrats and Republicans who aren't
getting help from their own parties will expand
their own numbers and be able to create the
political bloc necessary to end the war.
Democrats and Republicans won't be able to ignore
thinly supported legislation like Rep. John
Conyers' single-payer bill, and more will sign
on. Greens in Congress will help write and
sponsor such legislation.

Green competition often leads Democratic and
Republican candidates to modify their positions.
In 2000, the presence of Green candidate Ralph
Nader forced Al Gore to not to take the
Democratic Party's progressive base for granted.
During the Democratic convention he promised
voters "I will fight for you" and won votes from
many Americans who had considered voting for Mr.
Nader. (It's one of many reasons that the
'spoiler' accusation against Mr. Nader and the
Green Party is dishonest.)

The growth of the Green Party, as more Americans
register and vote Green and more Greens win
elections, represents the necessary shock to the
system. It's a nonviolent and modest shock -- the
Green Party is hardly a revolutionary vanguard --
but it's dramatic enough to change the nation's
Bushward direction. It's as necessary as the
Republican Party's arrival was in the 1850s.

Prospects for the emergence of the Green Party
and other alternative parties are fragile.
Democrats and Republicans in many state
legislatures have conspired to rig the system,
passing ballot access laws designed to privilege
themselves and hinder third party and independent
candidates.

In some states, the rules are an affront to any
minimal notion of electoral fairness. In
Pennsylvania, Democrats and Republicans need
2,000 valid signatures to run for President,
Governor, or US Senator, while all other
candidates must hand in petitions with over
67,000 valid signatures. The Pennsylvania courts
have begun to penalize third party and
independent candidates with crippling court costs
and fines for disqualified signatures. If you're
not a Dem or a Repub and you run for high office,
you face personal financial ruin, as independent
presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Carl
Romanelli, Green contender for the US Senate,
discovered in 2004 and 2006, respectively.

Mr. Nader's current law suit against the
Democratic Party for an array of dirty tricks
against his 2004 campaign presents evidence that
Democrats are as capable of extra-legal election
manipulation and voter obstruction as Republicans
showed themselves to be in 2000 and 2004. Mr.
Romanelli and other Green candidates have also
mounted legal challenges.

Such antidemocratic rules and practices suggest
that two-party politics has persisted in the US
for reasons other than the canard that "Americans
prefer only two parties" or the popular fallacy
that it's enshrined in the Constitution. They
also suggest that Dems would rather lose to
Republicans than tolerate third parties and
independents. We have a two-party system because
that's what the two dominant parties want, and
they're ready to use any means to keep it that
way.

They're right to fear alternative candidates. The
Commission on Presidential Debates (owned and run
by the Democratic and Republican parties, funded
with big corporate checks) restricts the number
of debaters because it knows that millions of
Americans, if sufficiently informed about all the
names on the ballot, would seriously consider
voting third party.

In this context, Green and other alternative
party participation in elections doesn't just
offer a challenge to politics-as-usual. It's a
necessary rebuke against the bipartisan
perversion of US democracy.

As Ebenezer Scrooge learned near the end of 'A
Christmas Carol,' the future isn't carved in
stone. The scenario at the top of this essay
describes a few things that are likely based on a
reading of the current state of US politics --
unless something else intervenes.

According to chaos theory, interference in a
process with an expected outcome is caused by one
or more agents from outside, after which many
other very different and unpredictable outcomes
are possible. It's in these possible futures that
we should seek some hope. Without the
interference of Green, independent, and other
'free radicals,' the world thirty years from now
-- or two years from now, if Democratic and
Republican leaders make good on recent threats to
attack Iran -- will be a very dark place.


Scott McLarty has served as media coordinator for
the Green Party of the United States and for the
DC Statehood Green Party. He has had articles,
guest columns, and book reviews published in Roll
Call, Z Magazine, Green Horizon, The Progressive
Review, In These Times, and several local and
community publications and small press. He joined
the Green Party in 1996, and in 1998 ran for the
Ward 1 seat on the Washington, DC City Council.
Mr. McLarty grew up in Long Island, New York, and
now lives in Washington, DC.