Thoughts on Kerry's campaign (long)

[jpgray]

The assumption that everything he says in the campaign is exactly what he means and intends to do is all over the place. DUers often take Kerry exactly at his word during a presidential campaign.

This is silly, because the nature of national campaigning is pandering to as many as you can while alienating as few as you can--this is the one and only way to win a national campaign. You can't win by "telling the truth", because every group demands that its own truth be placed in the forefront. If he gave us what we want, which would be a general adherence to the editorial pages of Counterpunch or Common Dreams, the moderates would abandon him as "crazy" or "socialist" and what support he's built with power brokers in the media and in the system would take a heavy blow.

You often see DUers complaining that America is made of "sheeple", and that we need to "wake up." This is true, but it's also a reason why Kerry can't go around spouting what we see in General Discussion every day. It's strange to me that in one thread people are amazed Bush can call 40+% of the population his own, and yet in another they demand that Kerry abandon the center and campaign from the left--he has to go where the votes are, and there aren't enough with us to win him the election at the cost of the center. Kerry has to *campaign* to the center, but either he will *govern* to his base, or he will never be reelected. Look at Bush for a good example--his policies are the right-winger's wet dream, yet his campaign speeches were sugar-coated moderate duplicity personified. This is how a presidential campaign wins a majority of votes--it has to be vague and at the same time pandering to moderates.

If the leftists and progressives had the numbers and ability to win presidential elections, we would be pandered to. Unfortunately, we don't win presidential elections on our own. Kerry has to count on us while he pushes us away. It sucks, but that's the way it works. Dean tried a half-and-half approach, built a great organization and lost when the voters went to the polls. Kucinich went wholly with his values and was marginalized out of existence, with a few great showings in states like Maine, Washington and Hawaii.

Of course, pandering to the center risks turning off the base, but this time I see people are threatening to jump ship over obvious political gambits. Stratagems like floating up McCain are particularly smart on Kerry's part, but anyone with sense should seriously doubt he has any intention (if he plans on winning) of picking McCain as VP. As he says, it drives Rove nuts. Striking moderate tones that conservatives and moderates can identify with is also very smart on his part--Bush could not have stolen the election with the troglodyte set alone, and Kerry cannot win with leftists or progressives alone. We need to trust him so far as to get him elected--if he abandons his base, then he deserves to lose reelection.

Do Kucinich and Dean have better platforms? That's not for me to say, but their positions on the war at least were superior to Kerry's, and in my opinion Dennis was superior in all other fields beyond perhaps abortion. But primary voters rejected both candidates, either because they couldn't get their message across to voters due to media/system obfuscation, or their message simply didn't resonate. If the former is the case, the media/system would have even more reason to crush that message in the general election--no one can best Bush in corporate/media/system friendliness. If it's the latter, the lack of resonance could only increase as more conservative and moderate voters are added to the mix in the general election. Claims that the 50% who don't vote are waiting for a progressive candidate are unfounded speculation. Nader candidacies have failed to attract non-voters in any significant numbers, and moreover the primary candidates who laid claim to populist themes failed to generate a significant movement in nonvoters.

The quality of a candidate is near to meaningless unless he wins the office. People here loved Howard Dean mostly for his excellent rhetoric in the primary, not for his deals with IBM, environmental cutbacks in VT, etc. People here don't really hate Kerry just for his war vote, but for his ties to the establishment, his pandering, and his unexciting, discursive manner. Editorials from the left have excellent hunting in Kerry, because he can't work to the left or he will lose. People already disappointed that the anointed populists failed to win the primary feel Kerry should be made to suffer for it, and he is a wide open target, because if he wants to win, he has to sit in the center. He could make us feel warm and fuzzy, but it is a near certainty, based on the performance of such candidates, that he would lose as a result.

I don't want Kerry to lose, I want him to win. Electing the most sympathetic people to all offices is my goal as a progressive--you don't advance progressive goals by making things worse. In 2004, Kerry is the most sympathetic person that can be elected to the presidency. The Supreme Court retirements, the use of the Executive Branch to detain Green party leaders and consolidate the media, the imperialist wars *initiated* by the administration, the outrages at Abu Ghraib made doctrine by the DoD, the blaming of "shadowy outsiders" for our problems and our targeting of such in wars and fear-based propaganda--these are clear movements towards a fascist state.

Ask your favorite history teacher how many independent newspapers there were in Germany in 1930 as compared to 1935. Ask that teacher what happened to Ernst Thalmann, who believed the Social Democrats were the real enemy, and a Nazi victory would help to unite the left against the bourgeois Social Democrats. There comes a point where allowing right wing authoritarians to win ceases to unite the left and begins to destroy it as an effective force of opposition. People need time to come around, and things are bad enough already to facilitate this, in my opinion. Feeling we need to create disasters to make things better is ridiculous, ends-justifies-the-means nonsense, and causing suffering for one's own political gain is a strategy totally alien to the ideals of true progressives.

I voted for Kucinich in my caucus, and I will be voting for Kerry in the GE to help create an environment where I can vote for a Kucinich in the GE.