The Democrats' dream has become Blair's nightmare

[frustrated_lefty]

Jackie Ashley
Thursday January 15, 2004
The Guardian

"Could anything expose the oddness of Tony Blair's politics more starkly? Faced with the prospect of a popular centre-left American Democrat taking on one of the most reactionary Republican presidents in recent history, this British Labour government isn't celebrating with fireworks; it is sending out distress signals. No 10 is against the amiable Democratic frontrunner, Howard Dean, and is for the grim Republican, George W. Wouldn't it be terrible, Blair's people are whispering, if the Democrats plumped for a lefty?
Dean is hardly Chairman Mao. He's hardly Dennis Skinner, either. He is in favour of guns, the death penalty and tax breaks for big business. He is seen as a fiscal conservative in his own state, Vermont. He is an impeccably patriotic doctor. Al Gore, hardly a marginal figure, has backed him. But Dean is also anti-war, a vociferous and eloquent opponent of the Iraq conflict. He is ferociously anti-Bush and his strategy is to win back the Democrat heartland voters, and ditch the right-leaning New Democrats of the Clinton era. His only real rival for the Democratic nomination, General Wesley Clark, is also a sceptic about the conflict, calling for a proper strategy for getting out of Iraq."

<snip>

"But it does matter. Blair is now left crossing his fingers or praying for a US president who is against Kyoto, who has been bad on trade issues, who remains a "big oil" hawk, who despises the EU, who has implemented massive tax cuts for the rich and who has channelled spending into another huge military build-up. For all the fine words, his impact on the Middle East peace process has been zero. With the possible exception of a programme to fight Aids in Africa, there is no progressive issue in the world where he isn't on the wrong side."

<snip>

"That doesn't alter the fact that after six years of trying to be at the centre of world politics, New Labour looks isolated. Blair may have wanted to be a bridge between the US and Europe, but the American superpower has gone its own way, and Europe has recoiled. Instead of being at the cutting edge, surrounded by friends and allies, Blair's third way suddenly looks like a fusty anomaly. And he would be lonelier still if the Democrats returned to power in Washington. It is more than odd, it is extraordinary, that the Democrats' dream has become Blair's nightmare."

The Democrats' dream has become Blair's nightmare

[Benhurst]

1. Sweet Dreams, Tony, you nasty little turd. n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Well, Tony . . .

. . . if you run with the dogs, you will be treated as a dog.

Specifically, as a poodle.

May you enjoy an early retirement.

[kskiska]

3. Tony made his bed

Now he can go lie in it – with his pea-brained master.

[candy331]

4. Oh the sweet thought of his demise

and not just for that speech he gave here either where they all kept jumping to standing ovation like he was King. My my my how sweet is the bitter sound of defeat.

[AP]

5. On the issues that matter,

Dean is to the right of Tony Blair, in my opinon. Dean was more hostile to traditional liberal values as Governor than Blair has been as PM.

[T_i_B]

7. The article address's the pair's politcs very well.

Dean is hardly Chairman Mao. He's hardly Dennis Skinner, either. He is in favour of guns, the death penalty and tax breaks for big business. He is seen as a fiscal conservative in his own state, Vermont. He is an impeccably patriotic doctor. Al Gore, hardly a marginal figure, has backed him. But Dean is also anti-war, a vociferous and eloquent opponent of the Iraq conflict. He is ferociously anti-Bush and his strategy is to win back the Democrat heartland voters, and ditch the right-leaning New Democrats of the Clinton era. His only real rival for the Democratic nomination, General Wesley Clark, is also a sceptic about the conflict, calling for a proper strategy for getting out of Iraq.

Blair is now left crossing his fingers or praying for a US president who is against Kyoto, who has been bad on trade issues, who remains a "big oil" hawk, who despises the EU, who has implemented massive tax cuts for the rich and who has channelled spending into another huge military build-up. For all the fine words, his impact on the Middle East peace process has been zero. With the possible exception of a programme to fight Aids in Africa, there is no progressive issue in the world where he isn't on the wrong side.

Besides which, Blair has everything to lose and nothing to gain from a grassroots insurgency on the left. The bottom-up campaign of Howard Dean is the exact sort of thing that Blair became leader of the Labour party to crush.

[w4rma]

10. I was wondering what kind of whacked out logic you would defend Blair

with this time, AP.

[bubblesby2002]

6. He IS a turd

Blair has been aq traitor to the traditionally left leaning Labour Party. His Third Way is the wrong way.

[Oggy]

8. He has used labour

to carry his own agenda and his ego. It comes to something when his main aim is to leave his mark on history. He serves his ego better than his country. He will leave his mark on history, but as the PM who lead us into a pointless and dangerous war. For those of you calling him a turd, I don't disagree, but his earlier work has been overshadowed by his attempt at world politics and his obsession with the market economy fixing everything. He was at first much better than a conservative leader.

[non sociopath skin]

9. There is no alternative, unquote.

One the less publicised items on Margaret Thatcher's wishlist in the 80s was her desire to ensure that the two-party system in the UK did not include a left-of-centre party - fully in line with the neocon idea that democracy is fine so long as your party always wins.

Tony the Tory delivered that for her. The destruction of the left-leaning Labour Party and its replacement not with a Euro-style Social Democratic Party but with a Euro-style Christian Democratic Party was deliberate and planned although I suspect that not even the righties who helped him do it realised just how suffused he was with his family's hard-core conservatism and loathing for the Labour mainstream.

I don't think Blair sees himself as having any dilemma at all. Clinton was about as far left as he could deal with. With anyone but Leiberman as Democratic candidate, he'll have no problem in pledging for the neocons.

Tragic, no?

The Skin

[T_i_B]

11. Good article

but it does ignore the other unsaid reason why the Blairites are shitting themselves over Howard Dean, namely the grass roots campaign he has been fighting. Any such insurgency in the UK will be against Phoney B:liar and he is aware of this. Here is a good article on the Dean campaign

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1120733,00.html

Dean's bid for the Democratic nomination is more than just an electoral campaign. It has all the attributes of a movement - a bottom-up surge of like-minded, motivated people who have discovered they all have something in common and are now mobilising in order to act on it. Around the country strangers are meeting in towns and cities in their tens and twenties, donating money in $10 and $20 bills and coming away with not just posters and badges but "to do" lists. "Participation in politics is increasingly based on the chequebook, as money replaces time," argued Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone. Dean has managed to get people giving time and money.

Dean is not the most leftwing candidate in the race by any standard. He is pro-gun, pro-death penalty and a fiscal conservative. But he is the most leftwing candidate to prove sufficiently attractive to sufficient numbers of people to be pivotal in the process. However, in order to run against George Bush he must first run against the Democratic party leadership. And in order to win that battle he has had to galvanise and energise entirely new constituencies that were either dormant or non-existent. As such, his insurgent candidacy marks the first electoral awakening of the growing ranks of the disaffected and disenfranchised - a group not confined to America but spread over most of the western world. Over the past decade, they have protested, petitioned or just grumbled in each other's company. But the one thing they have not managed, until now, is to make a decisive difference at the ballot box. Instead, they have chosen between voting for parties they no longer believe in, or parties they know cannot win, or just not voting at all.

In the Dean campaign we are gaining a glimpse of the organisational methods that could bond the disparate and disenchanted at a local and a national level, whether in Germany against Schröder's economic reforms or in Britain against Blair's foreign policy and tuition fees. It does not answer the question as to whether activists should stay in those parties, form new ones or join others. But it does indicate how, wherever they end up, they might mobilise large numbers of people effectively at the polls.

The fact that Dean has become the focal point for this energy matters. His winning the nomination would be roughly the equivalent of Ken Livingstone taking over the Labour party. Not that Dean has the same politics as Livingstone. But, broadly speaking, they stand a similar distance to the left of their party establishments and - recent reconciliations notwithstanding - are equally loathed by their party bosses.

[candy331]

12. Hear a caller on C-Span

mention that Japan is watching Dean too. Go Dean!