Editorials

Editorial: AnybodyButBushers Unite!

Becky O'Malley
Friday January 23, 2004

People from around here who went off to Iowa to stump for their candidates of choice could be feeling pretty discouraged right about now. I’m on e-mail lists for Dean, Kucinich and the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, so I’ve been reading about how bad some are feeling. It’s safe to say that not many Berkeleyans were trying to persuade Iowa Democrats to support caucus winners Kerry or Edwards. 

A few points to keep in mind before you feel too bad about the primaries: 

1) It’s Anyone But Bush, remember? This might explain the recent spate of letters touting General Clark which I’ve gotten from all kinds of folks: Michael Moore from Michigan, George McGovern from South Dakota, and my friends Nelle from West Virginia and Bobbie Sue from Arkansas. All of them are heartland people, natives of what we coast-dwellers call, snobbishly, the Fly-Over States. To beat Bush, we need to win these Fly-Over States. As a Fly-Over State native myself, I can’t disparage their instincts about who can win—they could be on to something that writers for The New Yorker and The Nation don’t understand. Though Clark skipped their primary, Iowa Democrats seemed to agree with Clark supporters that Dean and Kucinich don’t have curb appeal in the heartland. Even Edwards, totally discounted by the publications Berkeleyans read, did fine there. (Texan Molly Ivins says some nice things about Edwards.) 

2) Primaries are good because they keep the Democrats in front of the cameras. That’s Kevin Phillips’ idea, and it makes sense. Primaries can be bad if the candidates cut each other up too badly, but a modest show of controversy builds ratings. There’s plenty to say about Bush, and a few good topics Democrats can debate with each other without doing any harm. 

3) Unions won’t save us now. Gephardt got their support, and it didn’t do much for him. No one should count on unions alone anymore to win elections or even nominations. 

4) It really doesn’t matter which of the four remaining viable Democrats wins the nomination. It will certainly be Yet Another Boring Old White Guy (YABOWG), like all of the winning candidates in my lifetime. Turns out, though, that there’s YABOWGs and YABOWGs, and some YABOWGS (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft) are a good bit worse than others. Dean, Kerry, Clark, Edwards—all pretty much cut from the same cloth, none of them all that bad, really. They all have their bad points, but let’s not talk about that, okay? Makes no difference in this race. 

5) It’s fun to vote for outsiders, and when you live in California, it usually doesn’t matter. Be glad that none of these people actually win, however. Many who know Ralph Nader think that he’s a jerk, on a personal level. I voted for Eldredge Cleaver, and it’s just as well he lost, given his subsequent political history. (Though I also supported Shirley Chisholm, and she would have made a great president. She got five percent of the vote in the 1972 Michigan primary, better than Kucinich in Iowa in 2004.) 

6) No third party is ready for prime time. Until Greens can put forward candidates who actually come from their ranks and participate in party organization, it’s dangerous to vote for them. Celebrity candidates like Ralph Nader are potential (and in his case actual) loose cannons. 

So what do we do now? Me, I’m saving my time and money for the main event. Let those who know and love the current version of the Democratic Party choose their candidate if they want, on their own time. (I trust they’re not stupid enough to choose Lieberman.) 

When the Dems make up their minds, we AnybodyButBushers in secure Northern California should consider heading off to work in those Fly-Over States which are in the swing voting category. Planes do land in mid-America, trains are possible, and chartered buses might be fun. The weather in the fall will be much nicer than it was in Iowa. We could help out the locals with basic stuff like voter registration and taking people to the polls.  

If we can’t travel, we should turn out our pockets and shake down our friends for campaign contributions, because Democrats are always behind in fundraising.  

Prayer, if it works for you, probably wouldn’t hurt either. 

 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Daily Planet.