Hephalumps And
Woozels:
A Review Of Josh Frank's "Left Out"
By Adam Engel
17 August, 2005
Countercurrents.org
First the good news: Joshua Frank is a first-rate journalist who's written
a superbly researched, incisive book about who and what the Democrats
really are. Now the bad news: Joshua Frank is a first-rate journalist
who's written a superbly researched, incisive book about who and what
the Democrats really are.
Depending upon your
outlook, you may not care that there are still real journalists out
there, like Frank, who are willing to search for and describe the truth.
You may be one of those "fundamentalist" types who still believe
what Mommy and Daddy and whatever relevant Authorities told you when
you were one to ten years old -- the years of impression, the mind-minting
years, the years of language-acquisition and consequently, myth acquisition:
that the Democrats are the "party of opposition," the defenders
of "the little guy" and all that's worth fighting for. Mr.
Smith goes to Washington, etc.
It's been five years since the appearance of Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair's The Al Gore User's Manual, which gave us a detailed
account of the real Al Gore, who was no more an "environmentalist"
than Lee Iaccoca, no more a "typical American" than his rival,
George W. Bush. One wonders whether if more people had known the truth
about what the Democratic party was and is, Ralph Nader would have received
more votes than "Bronx Cheers," or if people would still have
blamed the man whose life was spent working for the public good for
lost votes for/against two men whose lives had hitherto been spent living
off the fruits of public misery. Perhaps the User's Manual came out
too soon; people were still high on the deeply inhaled myth of Clintonian
prosperity, though by the 2000 election the bubble had burst; lives
and markets had begun to crash.
Joshua Frank's Left
Out deals with the myth that "America would be 'A.O.K' again under
a Democratic president." Just as it had allegedly been flying high
with Clinton and his co-pilot (Hillary? Gore? Blair?).
The first part of
the book, filling half of its densely sourced and researched, yet blazingly
readable 211 pages, deals with the phenomenon of the alleged "progressive
outsider" Howard Dean, Vermont Governor, M.D., and putative challenger
to the neo-liberal, Clinton-influenced Democratic Leadership Council's
(DLC) lock on the Democratic party.
But Frank's analysis
of Howard Dean is "about" Howard Dean in the way Robert Penn
Warren's novel All the Kings Men was "about" an earlier populist
challenger to the Democratic liberal elites, Louisiana
Governor Huey Long. Long's popularity and the cult of personality that
surrounded him led many to wonder aloud (a cunningly oblique method
of character assassination) if "fascism could come to America."
Well, we know the answer to that -- though a close reading of Bertram
Gross's Friendly Fascism published in 1980, might be in order -- and
so does Frank.
Part One of Left
Out is not about Dean as an individual phenomenon, which could be sloughed
off, like Long was by the Depression-era Democrats, as a "fluke",
but about the system that allows such
individuals to rise to power, only to be put back in "their place"
by the real rulers of the Democratic Party come election time. Frank's
systemic analysis avoids the excuses we hear about "bad apples"
(which allowed the ultimate insider/party hack, Richard Nixon, to be
cut loose from the Party that nurtured him and that he served so well
from the McCarthy era on, as an "aberration.")
True, George W.
Bush and Company might be roaring along at 120 mph in a gas guzzling
SUV while Gore and later Kerry pretended to obey the speed limit --
though eagerly put the pedal to the metal when the arbitrary speed limit
jumped from 55 to 65 in various states -- in a slightly more ecological
European or Japanese sedan, but both are burning environmentally hazardous
fossil fuels in their journey down what Sioux Medicine Man/American
Social critic Lame Deer called "that great American superhighway
toward oblivion."
Frank makes clear
in the beginning that the "Dean Phenomenon" had less to do
with Dean himself than the arduous efforts of self-proclaimed "Deaniacs"
who used the Internet to spread the message of "change". The
Deaniacs were composed of diehard Democrats who couldn't bring themselves
to vote for the same old mush offered by the party leadership but at
the same time wouldn't admit "The Party" is over and let go
(perhaps to create a new, grassroots organization that really would
speak to "the people"), as well as Internet savvy college
students and twenty-somethings looking for change and believing they
found it in Dean. But, as Dean discovered during the Iowa primaries,
the Internet is still an untested, unpredictable medium. Websites and
mass emailing campaigns can create a buzz among activists and journalists,
but the net is still not as omnipresent as television in voters' living
rooms. A well-organized petition or signature campaign entailing legwork,
phone-calls, canvassers and people talking to people the "old fashioned
way" might have reached Iowa Democrats before the
primary.
But by then it was
too late, and seeing their chance, the DNC, DLC and other party elites
pounced. They savaged Dean the way they had savaged Nader four years
earlier, but unlike Nader, Dean was a Democrat, trying to work within
the system, and he was certainly no progressive. What at first frightened,
then, once they realized it could be contained, infuriated the DNC/DLC
masters was the way in which Dean "earned" his contributions:
"Unlike his
rivals in the campaign to unseat Bush, Dean claimed to actually be in
tune with his community of faithful supporters, who by June of 2003
had raised over $10.5 million for his campaign. Bringing in over $15
million in small online donations -- which typically averaged a meager
$25 a pop -- Dean broke the record for money raised by a single Democrat
in one period by the presidential race's third quarter.
"It was the
making of a new wave of democratic participation -- call it 'credit
card activism' -- where tech-savvy liberals latched onto Howard Dean's
unorthodox campaign while he challenged the Iraq war and took on the
Democratic Establishment (Democratic National Committee, DNC, and the
Democratic Leadership Council, DLC) by raising bundles of cash outside
the Democratic normal corporate circles.
"When the online
activist organization MoveOn.org held their mock primary in late June
2003, the Dean campaign received an added boost, receiving funding from
their own broad membership base. Echoing the beliefs of these liberals,
Dean felt that the DC insiders were taking their party 'too far to the
right.' And they were none too happy," wrote Frank (Left Out, p
34).
But was Dean really
going against the grain, or was he merely using an image the Democratic
elite themselves created for him as the "progressive outsider"
to define himself as something he was definitely not?
"The story
of how Howard Dean went from a supposed attacker, battering down the
stodgy gates of the Democratic institution, to an insider hell-bent
on weakening the party, further explicates that he and his party in
fact helped reelect George W. Bush. What follows should serve as a dramatic
warning of what the liberal end of the Democratic Party actually looks
like, and why such a slight alternative to the Republican Agenda will
not win important elections," wrote Frank (LO, p35).
How did Dean and
his party help Bush? By driving down the same "super-highway to
oblivion," only slower, a bit more cautiously; hence, "like"
Bush, but not Bush. What "follows?" A detailed, description
of what Dean and his party are really about, and it's not pretty.
First, Frank puts
the real Dean, not the media inflation/creation, under the journalists'
microscope and finds . . . a Republican in "Democrat Drag."
As five-time governor
of Vermont, Dean did to that state what Bush/Clinton/Bush did to the
Nation as a whole (and Clinton and Bush Jr. did to Arkansas and Texas
respectively).
He "balanced
the budget" on the backs of the poor, the handicapped and the elderly,
cutting social services while allowing corporate interests to develop
on protected wilderness, pollute the environment and pay less than their
fair share of taxes.
Dean criticized
Bush for meeting privately with energy hucksters such as Ken Lay and
closing the records of Cheney's "energy task force," yet he
himself plotted Vermont's energy policy behind closed doors with the
Vermont Energy Group.
His environmental
policy was straight out of the pro-business-citizens-be-damned handbook.
He turned a blind eye to corporate polluters and Big Agriculture's dangerous
use of pesticides, despite frequent complaints by Vermont's citizens
(LO, pp. 84-86).
"Dean's lackluster
farm policies forced native Vermonter John Tremblay to move his family
to New Hampshire. During his move Tremblay contended in the Vermonters
for a Clean Environment report that Dean 'is a businessman with big
money. He is not a farmer. He doesn't care about the people or the environment.
He doesn't care that the air stinks or that there are flies everywhere.
He doesn't care that his trucks ruin roads and make it unsafe for your
children to ride their bikes. He doesn't care that he destroys your
way of life, and unfortunately the state of Vermont doesn't care either.'"
(LO, p86)
Tremblay could have
been talking about Texas under Beef and Oil friendly Bush or Arkansas
under Tyson Chicken Clinton. Or about the United States of America under
both.
Perhaps most hypocritical
of all was Dean's position on the death penalty and medical marijuana.
A former doctor who allegedly took the Hippocratic oath to "do
no harm," Dean seemed as enamored of capital punishment as his
alleged "rival" Bush, who excised over 130 human beings from
the planet during his tenure as Governor of Texas.
[Note: this reviewer
has never read the famous Hippocratic -- hypocritical? -- "oath";
perhaps it's merely the expletive spit out by recent med-school graduates
when they receive their bill.]
"The problem
with life without parole is that people get out for reasons that have
nothing to do with justice. We had a case where a guy who was a rapist,
a serial sex offender, was convicted, then let out on what I think an
believe was a technicality, a new trial was ordered and the victim wouldn't
come back and go through a second trial," Dean told Meet the Press
in June of 2003.
Better one guilty
man die than a thousand innocents go free on "technicalities"
such as the Bill of Rights, Dean seemed to be saying.
Dean's position,
on drug policy, as governor and presidential candidate, mirrors the
draconian policies favored by both the Republican and Democratic parties
and enforced by both Presidents Clinton and Bush II in which hospice-like
organizations that administer marijuana to cancer, aids and glaucoma
patients are raided by the DEA. There are thousands of drugs with harmful
side effects and addictive properties manufactured by big pharmaceutical
companies and sold legally by prescription. Because of the government's
bizarre phobia of marijuana, the drug hasn't been studied fully for
its various healing properties, yet it is known to ease the nausea and
sickness caused by legal drugs used in chemotherapy and other legal
procedures. Why would a doctor prevent terminally ill patients from
obtaining relief from pain by any means necessary?
[Note: also, as
far as this reviewer knows, examples of people getting "doped up"
on pot and robbing a convenience store at gunpoint or beating up family
members are relatively rare.]
Frank shows that
the Dean Phenomenon wasn't all that phenomenal. Howard Dean was no more
"progressive" than the "mainstream" candidates of
the DNC/DLC party elite. He was attacked viciously and vigorously by
his "fellow Democrats," especially around the time of the
Iowa Primaries, merely because he'd threatened the "business-as-usual"
method of cadging corporate donations. By the time of the New Hampshire
Primaries, he ran a distant third behind Party favorites Kerry and Edwards.
But then, he faired better than the truly progressive Dennis Kucinich
and Al Sharpton, who were barely acknowledged at all.
As Part One of Left
Out demonstrates, even a conservative challenger will incur the wrath
of the Party Masters if he threatens their hegemony in any way. Hence,
Dean, who hasn't a progressive bone in his
body, was labeled a "liberal kook" and "too far to the
left" to run a "real" candidacy, whereas the Party's
Chosen ones, Kerry and Edwards, who followed the same political philosophy
as Dean, but who got their money "the old fashioned way,"
won the approval of the Party and the Media, "We the people,"
as usual, were conveniently ignored. We'll vote Democrat anyway, won't
we? Unless we're willing to "throw our votes away" on a third
party, which in the DNC's view is equivalent to voting
Republican, we have no choice. Hence, the true platform of the Democratic
Party in 2004 was the same as it was in 2000: Anybody But Bush (ABB).
Though "liberal"
filmmaker Michael Moore stumped briefly for "war hero" (in
Clinton's murderous, illegal Bosnia campaign) General Wesley Clark,
the candidates of the DNC/DLC's choice were never in question, once
Dean's brief flame flickered: Kerry and Edwards.
What did Kerry,
the man who would unseat the tyrant George Bush, who was repeatedly
compared to Hitler (and rightfully so, though people in glass houses...)
throughout the campaign, represent? What changes would he bring to America?
As it turned out, the only change Kerry offered was orthographic: instead
of "President Bush" the newspapers would have to print "President
Kerry."
The war in Iraq,
an outrageous, racist, oil-inspired, cruel, murderous adventure supported
from the get-go by both Republicans and Democrats by large majorities
in the House and Senate, would not be stopped. Rather, Kerry would do
a "better job" than Bush in ravaging Iraq.
The War on Terror?
The War on Drugs? Campaign Finance reform? The Environment? An Israel-slanted
Mideast policy? The unspoken but obvious "war" on minorities
as exemplified by the "Prison Industrial System" (PIS) and
capital punishment?
On nearly every
issue, Kerry was more or less in agreement with Bush in that the "issue",
whatever it was, had to be dealt with firmly, with grave war metaphors
and tough talk. The only difference was the way in which these numerous
"wars" would be fought -- Kerry's strategy for winning wars
against diseases, ideologies, methodologies, nouns, adjectives, adverbial
clauses, was somehow better, less costly and smarter than Bush's.
Of course, this
is nothing new. "McCarthyism" played itself out during a Democrat's
tenure, as did the first years of heavy fighting/bombing of the Viet
Nam war. But even Lyndon Johnson had the liberal fig leaf of the "Great
Society" to balance his warmongering. The real leap of bad-faith
for the Democrats, the poisoning of the well which will never yield
potable water again but must be abandoned for a fresher source, began
with the first term of Bill Clinton.
Clinton's "welfare
reform" forced single mothers to work minimum wage jobs without
the option of child-care or other crucial services. Clinton's NAFTA
agreement sent millions of American jobs across the border and overseas.
Clinton began the first major assault against the Bill of Rights, which
would culminate in the USA PATRIOT ACT under Bush, when he signed the
"Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act" in 1996.
In addition to bombing Iraq several times, bombing the Sudan, and launching
the planet's first "Humanitarian War" in Bosnia, the Clinton
Administration was responsible for well over half a million Iraqi deaths,
according to former Secretary of State Madeline "It Was Worth It"
Albright, due to lack of medicine and other necessities blocked by sanctions.
More money was spent on PIS and more Americans went to prison (especially
Americans of Color) under Clinton than under Reagan or Bush I.
The list of Clinton's
offenses against the people and environment of the U.S. and the world
is long and painful to read, but Frank explores this list of swindles
and privations worthy of the most right-wing of Republicans, worthy
of and indeed expanded upon by George W. Bush. The Democratic Party
is not the party of "the people," it's just not the party
in control, or at least, not the party with a president in office. It
lost the past two presidential elections, and many House and Senate
seats, by following the pro-war, pro-corporate, anti-environment, destructive
lead of the Republicans while trying to maintain the charade that it's
the "party of the people."
Kerry offered nothing
that hadn't already been supplied -- in abundance
-- by Bush.
"It can be
safely said that the economic pendulum would not have swung in the opposite
direction had Kerry won the election. The number of people living in
poverty would surely have increased. Jobs would still continue to be
exported. Livelihoods would have continued to go down the drain. And
health care for all would certainly not have been attainable, much less
wished for by the Democrats," wrote Frank (LO, pp. 162-163).
U.S. foreign policy,
from favoring Israel over the Palestinians to continuing the colonization
of Iraq to entering new conflicts under the guise of "The War on
Terror" would have remained Bush's in substance, had Kerry won,
differentiated only in whatever ways Kerry's "style" of management
differed from Bush's.
The assault of civil
liberties and the Bill of Rights, expanded by Bush but begun during
the Reagan era and managed by Bush I and Clinton (particularly the Clinton
of Waco; the beating of WTO protesters in
Seattle; the V-chip and other obtrusive technologies, and the Anti-Terrorism
and Effective Death Penalty act) would doubtless have continued.
"Racist profiling,
harassment of black and Latino youth under the guise of "anti-gang"
activity, and no-knock SWAT raids on the homes of non-whites increased
dramatically under Bill Clinton" as did the number of Americans
in jail and Police on the streets, wrote Frank (pp. 169-170).
Bush expanded and
accelerated these policies -- crusin' down that superhighway -- and
Kerry promised to at least maintain them -- same highway, different
vehicle, perhaps slower in deference to state speed limits and "rule
of law."
"[B]y ascribing
all the civil liberties tribulations of this country to one date, September
11, 2001, and one administration, George W. Bush's, the liberal establishment
has avoided any painstaking analysis of our systemic civil liberties
problems that would indeed point back in its own members' direction.
Like so many other issues, the Democrats had been doing Bush's work
for him all along," wrote Frank (p173).
That there are few
if any substantial differences between Democrats and Republicans, that
settling for the "lesser evil" is like settling for the "less
broken" of broken bottles, is the ultimate thesis of Left Out.
With both parties offering variations of the themes of war, corporatism,
intrusive state control and environmental meltdown as "real world
choices," we must imagine a better world and make it so, or resign
ourselves to the Oblivion at the end of the great superhighway.
The "choices"
in 2004 boiled down to war or Bush's; Kerry's environmental sell-out
or Bush's; Kerry's bond market economy or Bush's; Kerry's Patriot Act
or Bush's. How dare they have mocked Greens and Naderites for not being
"realistic?" What does "realistic" mean, supporting
the murder of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis under false pretenses
and paranoid lies?
Highway America:
Last stop Oblivion, or Renewal?
As Frank demonstrates
through a relentless barrage of source material, sober analysis, and
the kind of clear, concise prose that can only be achieved through integrity
and honesty, the last time the Democrats were the party of the people,
if it ever was, the Andrews Sisters were at the top of the pops and
there were two Major League Baseballs: one for white people and one
for "colored". It was considered unrealistic, loony, Utopian,
and downright un-American that the best players of these separate, unequal
(in terms of wealth, not talent) leagues would ever compete on the same
field of play.
To quote the late
baseball commentator, MelAllen, who covered the game both before and
after the "Utopian fantasy" of integration: "How about
that!"
Adam Engel lives at www.adamengel.com. He can also be reached at: [email protected].