[Laborgreens] Four More Years

[Ted Glick]

Future Hope column, November 3, 2004

Four More Years

By Ted Glick

One of the first thoughts I had today after I learned that 
Kerry was conceding to Bush was of something the late Dave 
Dellinger once said. I was with him in a group that was on a 
hunger strike in the summer of 1972, protesting the 
escalation of the war on Vietnam. At the time Democratic 
Presidential and peace candidate George McGovern was going 
down in the polls and war President Richard Nixon was 
pulling way ahead. A number of us were very concerned about 
what Nixon's re-election would mean for the Vietnamese.

Dave's input was to the effect that what happened with the 
Democrats and Republicans was ultimately not that important. 
What was important was the strength and vitality of the 
independent movements and organizations, like the peace 
movement. If they were strong enough they could eventually 
force whomever was in office to change course. And six 
months later, following Nixon's re-election, the Christmas 
bombings of North Vietnam and the shooting down of many B-52's, 
the Nixon administration decided they had had enough. One 
month later, on January 27, 1973, a peace agreement was 
negotiated and signed with the Vietnamese, and the U.S. 
began its withdrawal from all of Indochina.

I've thought of Dave's words more than once over the last 
many months as I've worked to help get the Bushites out of 
office. But since I've been working to strengthen the peace 
movement, the racial justice movement and the Green Party as 
my approach to that anti-Bush work, I've not felt too 
conflicted.

Today, however, I must admit that the thought fleetingly 
crossed my mind that perhaps my decades-long commitment to 
using the electoral arena to help advance the cause of 
justice and peace has been misplaced. It's not just that 
Bush won and that the Republicans picked up additional seats 
in the House and Senate. It's also that the Green Party and 
other third party campaigns, including Nader's, did not fare 
well as far as total votes for their 
Presidential/Vice-Presidential tickets.

Maybe, I found myself thinking, I should put my energies 
into another kind of organizing for social change.

I've also been wondering what it was that lost it for Kerry.

One reason could be that his pro-war, pro-corporate, 
Democratic Leadership Council-type politics didn't exactly 
motivate young people to come out and vote. Initial reports 
indicate that there was little change in the percentage of 
young voters in 2004 as compared to 2000. If true, this is 
huge. The voter registration effort among young people was 
one of the reasons why many people were optimistic that 
Kerry could win.

Another possible culprit, of course, is extensive voter 
intimidation, disfranchisement, partisanship and structural 
racism in the way our electoral system functions.

And how can it be that exit polls showed Kerry in the lead 
by several percentage points at mid-day and, by the end of 
the evening, he's behind by several percentage points? Were 
those electronic voting machines pre-programmed after all, 
and will we ever know if they were or weren't?

Certainly the anti-marriage equality referendums on 11 state 
ballots, including Ohio's, helped to bring out the 
conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists who make up 
Bush's base vote. This may have neutralized reported anxiety 
among that constituency over his statement in an ABC 
interview a week before the election that he personally 
supported civil unions despite a Republican Party platform 
that opposed them.

It will be interesting to see analyses of how many 
low-income people voted. Kerry's campaign rhetoric was all 
about "watching your back" for middle-class people but very 
infrequently about "raising the boats at the bottom." And if 
Kerry did much outreach to inner-city Blacks and Latinos, it 
sure didn't get much coverage in the news I saw. I know that 
he very rarely addressed their issues in a substantive and 
direct way.

And so now we have to prepare ourselves, psychologically, 
emotionally, politically and organizationally for four more 
years of the same group of dangerous, neo-conservative fools 
who've been messing things up for the last four years.

It's not the end of the world. There are major obstacles in 
the way of the Bushites:

-a war in Iraq that is going very badly. Reports just before 
the election indicated that even Colin Powell was telling 
friends that he believes his government is losing;
-serious economic problems, from the high price of oil, to 
massive foreign debt, to the growing weakness of the dollar 
compared to other currencies, to the huge budget deficit;
-the growing strength of the Left in Latin America as 
reflected by recent victories in elections in Venezuela, 
Uruguay, Brazil and Chile, to go with popular movements that 
have recently ousted pro-IMF governments in Bolivia and 
Argentina;
-the nearly-half of the electorate who voted against 
Bush/Cheney, many of whom will continue to feel strongly 
about their positions on issues. These feelings are not 
going away, and neither are most, if not all, of the 
organizations that have developed over the last several 
years in opposition to the Bush agenda; and finally,
-a shaky electoral coalition that includes Christian 
fundamentalists and moderate, pro-choice Republicans. There 
are very real conflicts and divisions within the Republican 
Party that cannot be wished away and that will make 
themselves felt as the Bushites attempt to move their 
regressive agenda. There are a number of prominent 
conservatives like Pat Buchanan who are vocal about their 
opposition to the Iraq war and other Bush policies.

What is key, what is absolutely essential, is that those of 
us who have been actively building the peace movement, the 
global justice movement, the racial justice movement, 
democratic trade unions, strong community organizations, the 
Green Party, the Labor Party and other third party groups, 
women's, student, youth and lgbt organizations-all of us 
need to keep our heads up, our minds clear and our hearts 
strong. We are needed, desperately needed, right now, and we 
can't let down those in this country and around the world 
who are depending on us to fight these bastards.

In the words of Joe Hill, "don't mourn, organize."



Ted Glick is the National Coordinator of the Independent 
Progressive Politics Network (www.ippn.org) and 
co-coordinator of 2004 Racism Watch (www.racismwatch.org). 
He can be reached at futurehopeTG@aol.com or P.O. Box 1132, 
Bloomfield, N.J.  07003.