Kerry and the Democrats real problem

[Ardee]

Jonathan Shell is The Nation's correspondent in Iraq and has been writing a series of "Letters from Ground Zero" This is his latest effort:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040510&s=schell

Letter From Ground Zero
Truth and Politics
by Jonathan Schell



Halfway through Tim Russert's hourlong interview with Demo- cratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry on April 18, there was an exchange that revealed in microcosm some of the fundamental unspoken rules of American politics in our day. Russert played a clip from Kerry's 1971 appearance on Meet the Press following his testimony as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A long-haired Kerry, in uniform, was seen saying that he stood by the essence of his testimony, in which he had said that veterans had admitted they had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power." He added that under the Geneva Conventions such acts were war crimes.

Russert did not play the tape to congratulate Kerry for his truth-telling. On the contrary, he was clearly calling him on the carpet. He even suggested that "a lot" of Kerry's allegations had been discredited. In fact, every word that Kerry spoke then has been shown to be true in an abundance of testimony. Even now, new revelations pour out. For example, the Toledo Blade just won the Pulitzer Prize for unearthing the story of an army company that went on a seven-month rampage in Vietnam, routinely killing peasants, burning villages, cutting off the ears of corpses. Troops in the field can hardly engage in such conduct over a period of months without the knowledge and at least tacit approval of higher authority.

Kerry answered warily. He began by trying to make light of the clip. "Where did all that dark hair go?--that's a big question for me," he joked. He went on to say that although some of his language had been "excessive," he was still proud of the stand he had taken. His predicament is worth pondering. The powers that be, with the approval of mainstream opinion, had sent him into a misbegotten war whose awful reality they covered up. When he helped uncover it, it was not they but he who was punished. In short, by sending young men into an atrocious, mistaken war, they created a truth so distasteful to the public that its disclosure, by discrediting the discloser, keeps them in power. Was Kerry "flip-flopping"--the Bush Administration's main campaign charge against him? Was he all-too-characteristically trying to back off from a position he had once taken while at the same time embracing it? And didn't this performance echo his complicated and equivocal stance on the Iraq war, in which he has said that his vote in the Senate to authorize the President to use armed force against Iraq was "not a vote to go to war" and that in 2003 he voted "for" the $87 billion supplemental authorization for the war "before" he voted "against it" (a statement the Republicans are making political hay with in a current TV ad)?

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and more:

Such is the archeology of the dilemma that Kerry and the Democratic Party face today. Their flip-flopping, which is real enough, is between the truth as they see it and politics as they know it to be. The party is an antiwar party that dares not speak its name. Its candidate is energized, but with a borrowed energy. He has a backbone, but it is a borrowed backbone.

The antiwar movement that has lent Kerry and his party this energy and this backbone faces a dilemma, too. On the one hand, it needs Kerry to win, even though he refuses to repent his vote to authorize the war. On the other hand, neither the movement nor Kerry can afford to let the antiwar energies that were and remain a principal source of their hopes and his die down. The movement must persist, independent of Kerry and keeping him or making him honest, yet not opposing him. If truth must be an exile from the mainstream of politics, let it thrive on the margins.

[bemildred]

1. It's up to Kerry.

He needs to decide. If he goes for politics as usual,
respecting the taboos, he will lose like Gore did. If he
decides to speak his mind he will stomp Bush flat, but he
will most likely also demolish the political status quo in
this country. Stay tuned.

[Miss Authoritiva]

2. "Kerry is stuck between politics and truth."

I saw the Russert interview, and I have to admit I was a little disappointed by Kerry's response to the tape. Nonetheless, I still remained impressed by the poised, sincere, and articulate young man making his statements to the Senate committee. Politically unwise though it would have been, I wish the gray-haired Kerry had stood the ground for the long-haired Kerry.

History doesn't consist of interchangeable parts; it was a different time and a different war. Kerry served his country and took a principled stand. If American "politics" cannot accommodate this "truth," then there's something seriously wrong with this country.

[KoKo]

3. An excellent article. My question still is how could Iowans and NH folks

have made such a "shrewd or overly shrewd" assessment of Kerry?

Was it really that Kerry was picked by citizens in two states who thought Saddam was aiding Osama and really had WMD? If more states had been added to that first primary, would the outcome have been the same?

Would Dean have done better if he had more time? Or, would it have been the same in all the states with Kerry being the chosen one.

I still think that Deans wife's reluctance hurt him and possibly he really didn't think he would win the nomination and folks out there in Iowa and NH picked that up, when many of his supporters couldn't see it because we wanted to believe that it would all work out if Dean had the momentum. His wife would give up her practice in the end and be a "First Lady" and Dean would win the hearts and minds of Democrats because he spoke the truth. But, voters with distance from the Dean campaign looked at the candidate field and went with safety.

Interesting.

[bemildred]

4. Iowa and NH are handy 'cause they are early and easy to rig.

Iowa is caucuses, NH is small and conservative. Dean would
have done better with better press, and Gephardt doing a
kamikaze attack on him didn't help either. It is true that
Dean could have run a better campaign, but he's a newbie and
an outsider, and they put that mole Trippi in his campaign,
and I can guarantee you Dean scared the shit out of the party
hacks with the amount of grass roots money he raised.

[Ardee]

5. sorry, Ive been salmon fishing

Well, in truth, Im not sorry , I expected this thread to die an ignoble death, ignored by those whose blind loyalty to Kerry or the DLC makes debate impossible.

I was rather impressed by the ability of the American voter (at least in the primaries) to see through Dean's phoney liberalism and send him packing.(my opinion only)

My personal opinion is that ,after the hand picked spoiler general couldnt make headway the DLC resigned itself to Kerry and is the cause of his rather tepid campaign ,one in which, so far, he refuses to distance himself from Bush on far to many issues.

If you havent read Ruth Coniff's current piece over at Tompaine.com:

A Dubious Hawk


Ruth Conniff is political editor of The Progressive.


Twenty-four-year-old Marine Michael Hoffman feels betrayed by John Kerry. Hoffman took part in the invasion of Iraq and served there for a year before returning home last May to tell Americans what he saw. "The troops aren't fighting for what Bush is espousing on TV," he says. "Basically, they're just fighting for their lives now."

Traveling up and down the Eastern seaboard, speaking at rallies for Military Families Against the War and Veterans for Peace, Hoffman sees a growing movement of dissent against Bush's Iraq folly. "The troops know it's not true that they're there because there were weapons of mass destruction or to bring democracy to Iraq," Hoffman says. Instead, as he sees it, the troops are stuck in a complex and ugly situation, with no clear mission and no way out.

In his anger and forthrightness, Hoffman sounds a lot like another young soldier who returned home from an ill-conceived war to protest against it: John Kerry. But that was back in the early 1970s. Today, Democratic Presidential candidate Kerry is singing a different tune.

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and:
Overall, Kerry has some incisive criticisms of Bush. But he seems to lack the courage of his convictions, often sounding apologetic or defensive. It wasn't supposed to be that way. The argument for Kerry during the primaries was that, with his war record, he could easily overcome the Democratic phobia of appearing "soft on defense." With so much going wrong for this administration, a tough critic could ride a wave of popular doubt.

Says Hartung: "I think he'd be smarter to think about whether he really wants, for example, his mantra about Iraq to be something other than 'stay the course' and 'finish the job.' That can lead to nothing but trouble. A larger U.S. troop presence is just going to provoke a larger backlash."

The anti-U.S. sentiment Bush is currently provoking throughout the Middle East will resonate for decades, Hartung and other critics charge. They say Kerry should make a clean break with Bush administration policy.

"The hand he's been dealt is really terrible," says Erik Leaver at the Institute for Policy Studies. "But he's just trying to patch up what Bush has been doing." Instead, Kerry could be talking about repealing the law that lets foreign companies control Iraq's resources and seeking regional allies, not to mention talking about getting American troops out soon.