Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Dem Schizophrenia

I'm enjoying James Ridgeway's coverage of the Democratic convention in The Village Voice. I don't agree with everything he says, but I appreciate his decision not (by and large) to demonize Republicans and his insider's view of what's really going on at the convention.
Wherever you go in this city, people talk about war--either the war on Iraq or the war on terror. This despite Kerry's original support for the invasion of Iraq and his current hedged backing for a continued U.S. presence there. The best the Dems can do in their platform is to gesture at troop reduction in a vague exit policy that would take place under the umbrella of the U.N. and NATO.

As a practical matter, none of this makes much difference, because the real platform is Fahrenheit 9/11. It's too bad the Dem leaders can't just hand out DVDs of the film instead of their platitudinous platform. Dumping Bush is what matters to the delegates.

He goes on to say that "Most of the party's 'ideas' come from the Clintonistas of the Democratic Leadership Council." He says that the Clinton wing of the party, not the Kennedy, is running the show.

Which has interesting ramifications: the Democratic Leadership Council supports middle-class tax cuts, affordable health care ("In all fairness, this idea came not from the DLC, but from the conservative Heritage Foundation"), tinkering with, not gutting, the Patriot Act.
Where the Dems are truly different from the Republicans is on social issues--gay rights, abortion rights, stem-cell research. Here the Dems offer a real difference to Bush's medieval Christianity.

OK, so Ridgeway falls off the wagon with "Bush's medieval Christianity"--so historically inaccurate that it's funny. How can Bush be a Protestant (post-Renaissance), fundamentalist (20th-century--he's not really, as far as I know, but that's one of the appelations) and medieval at the same time? It's like being both a moron and an evil genius who controls the world.

Anyway, Ridgeway has neatly captured the question arising from the convention: will the real John Kerry please stand up? Is the party represented by Michael Moore sitting in the presidents' box next to Jimmy Carter? or is it represented by the talking points of the Democratic Leadership Council? The only issue Kerry hasn't waffled is abortion, and even there he came up with that curious formulation that life begins at conception, but that has no application in law.

It's an illustration of the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it." In the primaries, the Democrats rejected a number of candidates with identifiable plans and ideas--Dean, Kucinich, Sharpton, Lieberman--because they wanted "Anybody but Bush." So they picked Kerry, a cipher, a Zelig, an Anybody. And what he truly stands for, at least if you ignore his voting record, as he seems to be asking people to do, is anybody's guess.

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