Democrats
Running Scared... Again
By John A. Murphy
08 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The
Democratic Party in Pennsylvania is once again trembling in fear. The
last time it suffered such a political panic attack was when it faced
the prospect of having to run against Ralph Nader in 2004. Since it
could not possibly deal with Mr. Nader on an issue by issue basis given
a candidate like John Kerry, the leaders of the party decided to destroy
democracy in Pennsylvania. That sounds like strong language but there
are two ways to destroy democracy. One is by preventing people from
voting, the other is by preventing worthy candidates from ever appearing
on the ballot. In 2004 the Democratic Party removed 63% of the signatures
of Pennsylvania citizens from Ralph Nader's petitions using the minutia
embedded in the anti-democratic ballot access laws it helped create
and effectively destroyed democracy in Pennsylvania.
The Democrats and Republicans
in Pennsylvania worked together, in true bipartisan spirit, to create
a set of ballot access laws which would virtually prevent third party
or independent candidates from running for statewide offices like Governor,
Senator or President. These the same laws even make it four times more
difficult for local candidates to run against duopoly candidates. Next
to Alabama, Pennsylvania's are the worst ballot access laws in the nation.
In fact, if Pennsylvania's ballot access laws were to be applied to
Utah, the Democratic Party would be disqualified as a major party. If
Pennsylvania's ballot access laws were applied to Massachusetts the
Republican Party would be disqualified as a major party.
This year the Green Party
candidates, like the Libertarian Party and Constitutional Party candidates,
needed to gather 67,000 signatures just to get on the ballot and needed
100,000 signatures to cover any possibility of errors. Yet the duopoly
candidates only need 2,000 signatures. Independent and third-party candidates
in essence are required to obtain 50 times the amount of signatures
needed by the Republicans and Democrats.
This was an impossible number
for any party third party in Pennsylvania to reach let alone an independent
candidate. Impossible, that is, unless it had professional help. But
the tiny Green Party could not afford such help. Help came nevertheless.
Help came in the form of contributions from registered Republicans.
The Republican contributors
however did not support the Green Party's petitioning efforts simply
because they believed in fair ballot access laws. Like the Democratic
Party, they too are responsible for creating the unconstitutional ballot
access laws, the modern-day versions of Jim Crow laws, in Pennsylvania
which effectively prevent all but Democrats and Republicans from running
for statewide office.
The Republicans funded the
petitioning efforts of the Green Party simply because they knew that
if Carl Romanelli appears on the ballot, progressive Democrats will
vote for him. The way Democrats and Republicans phrase it however goes
something like this "Carl Romanelli will take votes away from Bob
Casey guaranteeing that Rick Santorum will win". That is the way
they talk. The very phrase itself "take votes away from" says
it all. No one can take votes away from anyone unless there is presupposed
ownership in the first place. That's the problem. The Democrats and
Republicans both believe they actually own our votes. They do not believe
that our votes must be earned.
While this is not the most
noble of reasons for the Republicans to fund the petitioning efforts
of the Green Party it does, nevertheless ensure that justice is done
in the final analysis and it is hard to think of a better way for Republicans
to spend their money. While it is never ethically acceptable to do something
wrong in order to achieve something good, the ends never justify the
means; it is quite acceptable to do something right for the wrong reasons.
For whatever reasons the Republicans had in contributing to the Green
Party, they nevertheless did the right thing. They made sure that the
Green Party would not be denied access to the ballot simply because
of the unconstitutional ballot access laws in Pennsylvania.
Now the Democrats are even
more in a snit than they were in 2004. This year the Democratic Party
is running Bob Casey. Like his Republican opponent, Casey is both anti-choice
and pro war. With the Green Party's Carl Romanelli on the ballot, Casey
will now have to face a challenge from the left as well as the right
and deservedly should go down in flames.
This thought makes many rank-and-file
Democrats crazy. "What's wrong with those Greens; do they want
six more years of a psychopath like Rick Santorum?" That's how
Democrats have been taught to think. Instead of saying "now we
actually have a candidate who represents our political hopes and desires",
they have been conditioned to settle for the crumbs from the corporate
owned table of the Democratic Party.
It should be remembered that
the corporate owned Democratic Party could have prevented all of this
by creating fair ballot access laws in Pennsylvania and by introducing
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). But they did not. They called Ralph Nader
a "spoiler" in 2000 and blamed him for the loss of Gore to
Bush. If they truly believed that Nader was a spoiler then they would
have enacted legislation to install IRV thereby ending the "spoiler
effect". They took no such steps. They want to continue their little
party with the Republicans; once again however they see that someone
wants to spoil their little party. Now, when a candidate who offers
a real choice comes along like Carl Romanelli, instead of changing the
position of their candidate, or dumping him altogether and supporting
the Green Party candidate, they have decided to remove Romanelli from
the ballot in the same fashion as they removed Ralph Nader.
In a recent press release,
"RAMPANT DISCREPANCIES IN GREEN PARTY SIGNATURE GATHERING",
http://www.politicspa.com/pressreleasedetailed.asp?id=5001 the Democratic
Party of Pennsylvania leader T. J. Rooney even compared the Green Party's
petitions to Ralph Nader's petitions of 2004 signaling that just as
the Democratic Party aborted the democratic process in 2004; they were
prepared to do the same thing here in 2006. They even quoted from a
judge who never even looked at Nader's petitions. The Democratic Party
removed 63% of Mr. Nader's signatures yet only 1.4% of Nader's signatures
were rejected as forgeries. The other signatures were all rejected as
being from people who were either not registered to vote or not registered
to vote at the time of signing the petition. The egregious Pennsylvania
ballot access laws were used in a way that can only be described as
"political profiling" (see http://www.counterpunch.org/murphy06282005.html
).
In the case of Mr. Nader's
petitions; 6,411 signatures were removed simply because the signers
had moved from one home to another between the time they had signed
the petition and the time when the petitions were challenged. 1,869
were removed because the signer forgot to write down the date or neglected
to put in their middle initial. 7,851 signatures were removed because
they were "in the hand of another". In other words if a husband
filled out all the information like name and address for both he and
his wife and then passed it to his wife for her signature, the wife's
signature would not be accepted because part of the entry was "in
the hand of another". This also happened in many cases because
one signer might notice a missing date next to another signer's name
and then fill in the blank. 3,513 were removed for "other"
reasons. This means that instead of writing the name of their borough
they wrote the name of their township or city.
Without going into all the
other bogus reasons for thwarting the will of Pennsylvania citizens
we can see that the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania removed 19,704
signatures for purely frivolous reasons in order to destroy the Nader
campaign and at the same time the democratic process in Pennsylvania.
Now the Democratic Party
leaders are planning to do the same thing to the Green Party candidate
Carl Romanelli. They will probably get away with it. Many rank-and-file
members of the Democratic Party literally believe it does not matter
how Romanelli is eliminated as long as he is removed. These Democrats
have essentially left the mainstream of American political thought and
have become virtually totalitarian. Just as the ABB (Anybody But Bush)
mania gripped the rank-and-file Democrats in 2004, a similar fear grips
them now in Pennsylvania with respect to incumbent Republican Senator
Rick Santorum.
Make no mistake about it;
Rick Santorum is a monstrosity. Given his record as a pro war, anti-choice
Senator it might be supposed that if the Democratic Party wished to
defeat him they would have given the people of Pennsylvania a candidate
that was significantly different. Instead, their pro war, anti-choice
candidate is now faced with a real alternative to Rick Santorum; a pro-choice,
antiwar Green who would be supported by an overwhelming number of Democrats.
The Democratic Party simply doesn't care about getting rid of Rick Santorum.
The contest between the Democrats and Republicans is no more significant
than an intramural softball game. Everybody's really on the same side
after all when the game is over. This is why the Democrats did nothing
about voter fraud in Florida in 2000 and nothing about Ohio in 2004.
The Pennsylvania Democratic
Party doesn't really mind if it is beaten by a Republican. But if the
Republican wins because a real progressive received a significant number
of votes, that is a real defeat. The Democratic Party in Pennsylvania
is cornered again just as it was cornered by Ralph Nader in 2004. The
Democratic Party demonstrated quite dastardly in 2004 just how it behaves
when it is cornered.
It is long past time to give
up on the Democratic Party. The creation of the DLC (Democratic Leadership
Council) as the representative of corporate America within the Democratic
Party coupled with the addictive influx of corporate funds has caused
the Democratic Party to replace the voter as its constituency with the
lobbyists of the corporations that have financed its election campaigns.
The plaintive, futile pleadings
to "change the system from within," to make the party "wake
up and smell the electorate" have become both boring and maddening.
This pitiful whaling on the part of progressive Democrats is not a strategy.
It is nothing more than a tragic, senseless wish. The Democrats must
give up their search for Rumblestiltskin. Their desperate desire to
"take back the Congress" ignores the question "take back
the Congress for whom".
The rank-and-file members
of the Democratic Party are constantly encouraged to sacrifice the long
run on the altar of the short and vote for the lesser of two evils;
yet voting for the lesser of two evils has never given us better Republicans
only worse Democrats.
It is also time to get rid
of the myth of the "spineless Democratic leadership". The
leaders of the Democratic Party are not spineless. They are doing just
what they are told to do by their corporate paymasters.
It is time to stop fearing
what will happen when we have finally given up on the Democratic Party.
That fear is really all the Democratic Party has left. The Democratic
Party is broken beyond repair; denying that reality supports a sham
democracy and one-party politics. The Democratic leaders are not stupid.
But those rank-and-file Democrats, who are still expecting something
to change, have every reason to wonder about themselves.
John Murphy is independent candidate for House of Representatives
in the 16th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. He has been endorsed
by Michael Berg, Peter Camejo, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and Howard
Zinn. He has been endorsed by two county level Green Parties, two county
level Libertarian Parties, the Pennsylvania Reform Party, the New American
Independent Party of Pennsylvania and the GDI among others. He is also
one of the founding members of the Pennsylvanian
Ballot Access Coalition, working to change ballot access
laws in Pennsylvania. He can be reached at: [email protected]
or through www.johnmurphyforcongress.org