Beware:Peace
Voters
Mean Business
By Linda Schade
09 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
“In a post-Lieberman
world, waffling on the war is no longer on the menu.”
For
months, polls revealed increasing opposition to the US occupation of
Iraq. Lamont’s victory shows clearly that Americans oppose the
war and are willing to vote en mass against pro-war incumbents. In Quinnipiac
University’s Thursday poll, 94 percent of Lamont backers cited
Lieberman's position on the war as one reason they backed the challenger.
In the final days, Lieberman
futilely urged voters to put aside their top priority. “Look at
the whole record,” he pleaded. “Don't vote on one issue."
Protests that he was a ‘good Democrat’ and ‘critical
of Bush’ did not spare him from the Peace Voters’ wrath.
Rather, anti-war voters across the country flocked to Lamont signaling
that they are dead serious about Iraq withdrawal and will vote accordingly.
A Gallup poll (June 23-25)
showed that 55% of Americans -- including 59% of Democrats and 49% of
Republicans -- say that Iraq will be extremely important to their vote
for Congress this year. Add this to the 56% who say the war was a mistake
and the 62% who think Bush is mishandling the war and you have a potent
electoral bloc of voters which may prevail in numerous Congressional
races.
Democratic pollster Peter
Hart summed up the meaning of the Lieberman-Lamont race in Sunday’s
Washington Post: “…[T]he status quo in Iraq … is unacceptable
to Democratic primary voters, … to independents and … to
a large minority of Republicans. Iraq is the number one issue and the
message is exceptionally simple: We cannot abide the status quo.”
Senator Hillary Clinton,
the ear-to-the-ground pol running for re-election in New York and likely
for the presidency, reacted to Lamont’s rising fortunes by aggressively
questioning Donald Rumsfeld and then calling for his resignation. While
unabashedly supporting the war, she’s made careful gestures to
the increasingly mobilized anti-war bloc in her party. Unlike Lieberman,
she joined 38 fellow Democrats last month on a resolution calling for
US troops to begin exiting Iraq this year, though without a deadline.
And last November, Clinton supported a "phased redeployment"
of U.S. troops from Iraq; Lieberman opposed that measure as well.
Clinton faces a challenge
from anti-war Democrat Jonathan Tasini who stands at 12% in the polls.
It remains to be seen whether he will get Lamont-like traction but Clinton
is taking heavy hits for playing both sides. New York Times columnist
Bob Herbert lambasted Clinton as an ‘Iraq War Enabler’:
“Mrs. Clinton .. should have known better from the beginning,
and [is] now (with the wheels falling off the Iraqi cart and public
support for the war plummeting) engaged in the tricky ritual of rationalization.”
In the post-Lieberman world, waffling on the war is no longer on the
menu.
Significantly, the Lamont
win showed that being an anti-Bush Democrat is not enough. Peace voters
inside the Democratic Party and beyond increasingly require candidates
to take public and principled stands on the war. Another way voters
are organizing is by signing a Voters’ Pledge at VotersForPeace.org
stating that they will not support pro-war candidates.
Peace voters – some
willing to dialogue and even vote across party lines – are coalescing
into organized, reliable sources of votes and donations for peace candidates.
Anti-war sentiment spans the political spectrum; it would not be surprising
to find Green, Libertarian, or Republican contributors to Lamont’s
campaign.
Indeed, another problem for
soft-on-peace incumbents are alternative party candidates. Battered
by anti-war challengers, Senator Maria Cantwell(D) is expected to win
the primary but only after hiring her most vocal opponent. She still
faces three peace candidates in November: Aaron Dixon(G), Bruce Guthrie(L),
and independent Robin Adair. Cantwell now talks about bringing the troops
home.
For Maryland’s open
Senate seat, former frontrunner Ben Cardin(D) tried to correct his pro-war
Congressional record by posting an anti-war petition on his campaign
website. After months of pounding by peace challengers, Kwesi Mfume
overtook Cardin’s lead. In November the victor will face attorney
Kevin Zeese, backed by three anti-war parties – Green, Libertarian
and Populist. Raising the bar,’ Zeese vocally opposes a US war
of aggression against Iran and uncritical support for Israel.
In 2004, the peace movement
was swept up in an Anybody But Bush mindset. However, Kerry lost that
election leaving unanswered the question of whether a clear anti-war
stance would have brought more peace voters to the polls.
Incumbent politicians take
note. If a former VP nominee and incumbent Senator can be ousted, what
does that mean for the lesser among you?
Linda Schade is Executive
Director of VotersForPeace.US and former Director of TrueVoteMD, a non-partisan
election integrity project working for voter-verified paper ballots.