I've written previously about the fact that many of John Kerry's key policies are similar to (and in many cases more extreme than) those of the Bush administration. But a dedicated ABB liberal or progressive will just respond that, yes, that may be true, but overall Bush is still worse–and we can't afford four more years of his administration's policies. This is the argument that needs to be confronted head on.
I strongly believe that John Kerry must lose this election, for the future of progressive politics in the US, and ultimately and more importantly for the good of the world. I've come to this conclusion slowly over the course of the past year, as I've seen Kerry's positions shift right and harden.
Kerry is a trademark Democratic Leadership Council "New Democrat"–perhaps even more so than Bill Clinton, the prototypical New Democrat (DLC founder and CEO Al From noted approvingly that "this campaign is building on Clintonism"). And rightly or wrongly, his performance in this election will be taken as a referendum on the validity of the DLC's continued ideological control of the Democratic Party.
The DLC has had a stranglehold on the Democratic Party for over a decade now. They saw their success in getting Bill Clinton elected twice as a mandate for their brand of centrism, and his electoral success cemented the DLC's power. But Clinton's success was more a result of his extraordinary personal charisma than his DLC-approved political stance. Where Clinton wasn't involved–at the Congressional level, and in 2000 with Al Gore–the Democrats' DLC-guided strategy has been an abject failure, leading the party into serious decline. Election 2004 could very well be their last hurrah; although the DLC will never admit that their strategy is flawed no matter what the election result, if they cannot beat a candidate as bad as Bush, I'd strongly suspect that the Democratic Party's rank and file would finally revolt against them and their policies.
The DLC and Kerry have pursued an active policy of shifting to the right in an attempt to court conservative voters. In an election year where their base was completely energized by its opposition to the Iraq war (90% of the Democratic convention delegates opposed the war), the DLC and Kerry made a conscious choice to reject an antiwar position–going so far as to prevent even the mildest antiwar language in the party platform, preventing any debate about the war on the floor of the convention, and even preventing delegates from sporting antiwar messages on their clothing. On issue after issue, they have aggressively and contemptuously rejected progressive positions, counting on the fact that progressives are so afraid of Bush that they will support Kerry no matter how far to the right he moves.
So if Kerry wins in 2004, the DLC will conclude forever more that it can piss on progressive values and still count on the progressive vote. Furthermore, the DLC will point to Kerry's victory as the ultimate vindication of their strategy, erasing the stigma of Gore's failure in 2000. They will have beaten Bush while in effect co-opting his worst policies, and they will refuse to see that the the victory is a repudiation of Bush rather than a validation of their own ideology. The result will be DLC domination of the Democratic Party for at least the next 20 years–and probably more–and the complete undermining of any hope for the advancement of even remotely progressive principles in this country within the two-party framework. Progressive principles and positions will for all intents and purposes be a dead letter in US politics for decades to come.
Progressive values will be undermined in another major and more important way if Kerry wins: namely, if Kerry is elected, liberal and progressive Democrats in this country will go to sleep. They'll disappear. Instead of there being 250,000 people in the streets of San Francisco before war even starts, they'll be sitting in their armchairs cheering–just as they did for Yugoslavia, when 70 days worth of vicious bombing by Clinton wasn't enough to get more than a few thousand people out into the streets. I have absolutely no doubt on this point, because I've seen it for myself. I participated in the demonstrations against Clinton's attacks on Iraq and Yugoslavia, and I saw just how few people participated–and how few of those appeared to be mainstream Democrats (if you've participated in any demonstrations, you know that it's not difficult to distinguish them from the usual suspects). I recall one Yugoslavia-related protest in Sacramento outside of a Democratic convention where one of the delegates came outside, wearing his gray suit, and literally screamed at us and gave us the finger from the moment he left the building until he finally disappeared down the street. He was absolutely livid that we would presume to oppose Clinton's policies, so much so that he threatened people with physical violence. The contrast with the behavior of Democrats during the protests in the runup to the Iraq war couldn't possibly have been more pointed.
So I can say with confidence that those progressives who are looking forward to rallying all of their new allies on November 3rd to put positive pressure on a Kerry administration are in for an extremely rude awakening. When they march out to oppose the Bush-like policies that Kerry has repeatedly promised to implement, they'll look behind them and see…nobody. By helping Kerry, they are in fact doing everything they can to undermine the issues in which they so strongly believe.
More importantly, the same narcotic effect will occur on an international level as well. Just as with Clinton, Kerry is smart enough and diplomatic enough to market his Bush-like policies to the world without ruffling feathers and making enemies. So instead of mobilizing other nations of the world to oppose those policies, as Bush has done through his arrogant incompetence, Kerry will be able to placate and neutralize them. Let me emphasize the point here: the actual policies (in particular the international policies) of the United States will not change significantly under Kerry, but the opposition to them by other governments will most definitely be significantly reduced; indeed, this is one of Kerry's primary campaign planks. The major potential countervailing force to US violence, obstructionism, and exceptionalism will have been removed, just as it was under the Clinton administration.
So the result of a Kerry victory would be that policies that are nearly identical to those of the Bush administration would go forward, just as they did under Clinton–but with practically no domestic opposition, and no significant international opposition either. The harm would be all that much greater as a result. And because the DLC would have cemented its ideological hold on the Democratic Party for years to come, the chance that we might return to sanity someday–however slim it may be–would essentially be eliminated.
That is why Kerry must lose.
I'm of course aware that the flip side of what I'm calling for is four more years of Bush, and the very idea is excruciating, to say the least. Bush is without a doubt the worst and most corrupt president in my lifetime–and that's saying a lot. But for the reasons I've stated here, I strongly believe the ultimate harm that will occur with a Kerry presidency is far greater. This is the place the DLC has brought us to, and by rewarding them for it, liberals and progressives will only guarantee that it will continue indefinitely. And I genuinely fear that for a multitude of reasons, the world is running out of time, and that without a major realignment of US policies–or at least some effective domestic or international brake on the worst effects of those policies–that time will run out.
Electing Kerry now is like going to a doctor to get treatment for a serious leg wound and having him give you a prescription for morphine. If you take it, you may no longer feel the pain, but eventually gangrene will have set in and you'll lose the entire leg…or if you take the drugs long enough, you may just wind up dead. But you'll have felt fine all along the way.
We can either choose to face the pain of four more years of Bush now, or we can choose to take the morphine and pretend that everything is better–right up until the moment when it's too late.
The Distant Ocean 