Todd Chretien on the Year Ahead : Indybay

Looking for a Few Good Candidates in 2006

Todd Chretien

Could 2006 be the year that a sizeable number of people take their opposition to the war in Iraq to the polls? Of course, President Bush is enemy number one. His administration is guilty of war crimes and intends to ratchet up their rampage, witness Karl Rove's speech justifying NSA spying. No doubt, the Bush administration constitutes a grave threat that must be met by building a protest movement in the streets, against the military recruiters and amongst the soldiers themselves. But here's the question: is the Democratic Party the people's sheriff or part of Bush's outlaw gang? Most Congressional Democrats voted to invade Iraq. They voted for the USA Patriot Act. They voted for No Child Left Behind. They voted for CAFTA. Half of them voted for Chief Justice Roberts, and none of them even tried to filibuster Samuel Alito. As the National Organization of Women noted, simply casting a vote against Alito while refusing to filibuster him is a "meaningless gesture."

That phrase pretty much accurately describes the level of opposition the Democrats have put up against Bush's assault on the planet. The Democrats seem incapable of eating from the smorgasbord of scandals served up by Rove, Rumsfeld and Rice that ought to be destroying the Bush presidency. Why? Because they helped cook up most of the dishes. Remember when Secretary of State Albright said killing 500,000 Iraqi children through US-enforced sanctions was "worth it." Now Sen. Feinstein is making a lot of noise about the NSA spying, as well she should. However, her argument is that the FISA courts already provide a mechanism for domestic spying that she fully approves of. Her beef is that Bush is spying on Americans the wrong way. This is hardly a line in the sand to protect the Bill of Rights.

Last week, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi held a town hall meeting in a "safe" part of San Francisco. She assured the audience that Democrats support "90% of the USA Patriot Act" and want to win in Iraq, they just want to do it without Bush. She explained that Rep. John Murtha's resolution does not mean leaving the Middle East, only "redeploying our troops over the horizon [i.e. Kuwait] and leaving enough equipment in Iraq so that we can easily go back in to deal with any threats at any time." The audience of mostly loyal Democrats grumbled a bit about this. Then an audience member asked her to support impeaching Bush, which she scoffed off. This was too much for even most of her biggest fans, and the majority of the 1,000 people there erupted into jeers. When she tried to calm them by saying that instead of impeaching Bush, everyone should "get behind the Democrats in the 2006 mid-term elections," the jeers turned into shouts of exasperation.

Here in California, supposedly the Bluest of the Blue States, the Democrats hold large majorities in both the State Assembly and the Senate. Yet in the wake of Stan Tookie Williams execution, they couldn't even get a bill out of committee last week that would have placed a two-year moratorium on the death penalty. When I asked one of the State Assembly Democrats who supports the moratorium bill why, he said, "well, it's an election year and the Republicans would have used it against us." In other words, the Democrats let the Republicans set the terms of the debate. The cost of this permanent retreat strategy is real. Last week Schwarzenegger carried out the execution of Clarence Ray Allen, a Choctaw Cherokee Indian, on Martin Luther King's birthday. This comes eight weeks after California voters resoundingly rejected every single one of Gov. Schwarzenegger's referendums in November. But rather than fight, the Democrats are looking for "areas of commonality" with the governor, according to Don Perata, the Democratic President Pro Tem of the California Senate. This is all familiar stuff. But there are signs that many people are getting fed up. Just this week, Michael Berg (http://bergforcongress.us), whose civilian son Nicholas was abducted and beheaded in Iraq after he was detained and held incommunicado by the American military, announced that he is running for Congress in Delaware as a member of the Green Party. Next door in Maryland, Kevin Zeese is running for US Senate against the Democrats as an anti-war candidate. Here in California, I am running as a Green against Sen. Dianne Feinstein on a Million Votes for Peace platform. In the next few weeks, announcements will be made about at least one other serious campaign against the two pro-war corporate parties on the west coast.

This is a promising start, but what if 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 Gulf War veterans and military family members took Michael Berg's lead and stepped forward to say, "we won't vote for either party that sent us and our family members to war." And what if they ran as Greens or independents on anti-war platforms against the two pro-war parties for Congress and for Senate? This could be the beginning of bringing peace to the polls, rather than endlessly repeating the Dennis Kucinich strategy of speaking out against militarism and then telling his supporters to vote for John "Reporting for Duty" Kerry. Wouldn't drafting and supporting genuine third-party, anti-war candidates make more sense for the peace movement than responding to MoveOn.org's inevitable call to donate large sums of money to the help the Democrats win a few Congressional seats?

Breaking the stranglehold of the two pro-war parties won't happen all at once, but we could make a good start in 2006 by building a movement that both marches and votes to demand we Bring the Troops Home Now. The 100,000 dead Iraqis and 2200 dead American soldiers deserve nothing less.