A Small Victory for Progressives
By: Steven Rosenfeld
Steven Rosenfeld is a long-time journalist who lives in San Francisco. He is currently senior producer of the Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio.
The way to get a progressive platform for the Democratic party is not through negotation or coalition building. It's about winning.
It has always bothered me when presidential candidates and their struggling campaigns tell over-idealistic supporters they will carry a message to their party's national political convention.
Why? Because after working on one of those message-carrying campaigns in '92, and as a reporter for 20 years, I've come to realize that in national politics winning is everything. Sending messages and declaring symbolic victories only feels good until you realize that you're being ignored by people who have the power to make real change happen.
For two decades, efforts to take messages to the Democratic Party Platform Committee largely have been all show and no substance - until now. This month, for the first time in a generation, the Dennis Kucinich campaign and a coalition of like-minded activists, the "Progressive Democratic Caucus," lobbied the party's platform committee and won a concession on troop reduction in Iraq.
"Within the DNC (Democratic National Committee), we went from being a pariah and marginal to being in," said Tim Carpenter, Kucinich's deputy campaign manager and a lead negotiator at the recent platform committee meeting in Miami.
The 2004 Democratic Party platform now has this language:
"As other nations, including Islamic nations, contribute troops, the U.S. will be able to reduce its military presence in Iraq, and we intend to do this when appropriate so that the military support needed by a sovereign Iraqi government will no longer be seen as the direct continuation of an American military presence."
You may read this and say, "Huh?" You might ask, "Is this what the anti-war movement was about? Can't Democrats do better against this president and this war?"
If you had those thoughts you would not be alone.
Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now!" covered the platform fight and had a segment on her July 14th show, entitled, "Did Dennis Kucinich sell-out anti-war Democrats?" She asked Kucinich to respond to the perception that "you backed down because you didn't want to have a platform fight over what many considered a key piece plank in the platform that they wanted to get in."
The presidential peace candidate replied, "I think what we were able to do was get some recognition from the Party, of the urgency of not maintaining a long-term commitment to Iraq, and it's a step in the right direction.
"It is not everything we wanted by any means," he continued. "But it manages to do two things. We carried the fight as far as we could in the Platform Committee, and we're intending to participate in helping to elect a new president, and our efforts are going to continue to try to guide the United States to a more constructive policy in Iraq."
It hurts to compromise, doesn't it?
Indeed, Carpenter's crew, which party stalwarts called the best-organized platform lobbying campaign they could remember, went to the Platform Committee's final pre-convention meeting with letters from prominent Democrats calling for more.
"I would wish the platform to declare: It was a mistake for President Bush to invade Iraq," wrote California's Tom Hayden, himself a former platform committee member. Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., wrote to committee members, "I ask you, are millions of anti-war/anti-occupation Americans welcome in the Democratic Party? If such voters are indeed welcome, I urge you to demonstrate this by permitting debate within the Party on the war and occupation issue, both in Miami and in Boston."
But instead of debate, there was a deal. As Carpenter recounted, peace-now Democrats simply did not have anywhere near the votes - seats on the platform committee - to successfully nominate new language, win a minority plank, or win wholesale new language. They took what the Kerry camp offered.
This reality can't be overlooked - it's been a historic impediment to progressives. Carpenter worked on the 1992 Jerry Brown campaign - as did I - and it's instructive to recall what happened to the 'People's Platform' that Brown pledged to bring to the New York convention. We had 600-plus delegates, held hearings across the country to compile a 'People's Platform,' and went to that year's version of the Miami meeting.
What happened? We were boxed out by Clinton staffers, led by the ever-combative party operative and attorney, Harold Ickes. Only one of our two-dozen proposals was adopted by the panel - and that was a mistake: They weren't paying attention and thought they were voting for something from the Paul Tsongas campaign!
To make matters worse for progressives, shortly thereafter Clinton announced that Al Gore would be his running mate. At the time, Gore had an eco-friendly new book, "Earth in the Balance," meaning that Clinton had all the left-leaning credentials he needed - and he didn't need us. There was - and would be - no seat for us at his table.
The same Tim Carpenter who in 1992 went on to the Democratic Convention in New York - and was knocked over by a delegate from Texas when Carpenter booed then-DNC Chairman Ron Brown - now has seen the Kerry campaign offer new platform language on troop reduction in Iraq.
"I realized a very long time ago that you never win at this level of the struggle," Carpenter said. "Working in the political process is a marathon, not a sprint. We made the best compromise, and we will continue to fight for our principles."
Did Kucinich sell out as Amy Goodman suggested? I don't think so. Of course, it's immeasurably frustrating for progressives to campaign on big ideals and higher standards and be offered crumbs by the nominee. But accepting crumbs from Kerry on withdrawing troops from Iraq in 2004 is better than being cast off by Clinton in 1992.
Take another look at that 2004 platform language. Admittedly, it's pretty vague.
"We pushed hard to get 'withdrawal' language, and they finally gave us 'reduction' language," the Kucinich website says.
Like so much with Kerry, the bottom line is hard to tell. But that doesn't mean the peace candidate or peace camp sold out to the man with military medals on his chest. It's just a sad fact of political life that progressives still have to settle for less - even though mainstream democrats congratulated Carpenter after the platform committee vote, saying, "Don't you realize what you achieved?"