Small Archive of Eli's Election Ramblings
These are some things I wrote during October and November of 2000 during the U.S. Presidential campaign. I'm no longer adding to it; anything I might say, you can find plenty of other people saying. The purpose was mostly to start a discussion with some people I knew, which I did, so I might do something similar next time. (Brrr... "next time"?!) But I'm not really looking for comments at the moment, thanks; it's for historical interest and amusement.
Forgive me for what I'm about to do -- The other day, a friend asked me about my voting plans, and my response was the slightly muddled pro-Nader rant below. This was before the debate; read on for my post-debate thoughts.
G.: You asked who I'm going to vote for... sigh... here's my really long answer:
I'll be forcing myself to watch the debates tonight and if by some miracle Gore starts talking like a decent and thoughtful person, I may vote for him but I doubt it. Nader not only makes sense, he's been running a very serious campaign even though the newspapers ignore him (I just went to a rally in NYC with fifteen thousand people -- there was one tiny news report buried in the late edition of the Times the next day) and I think getting massive support for the national Green Party is really important right now, especially looking ahead to 2004. So I'll probably vote for Nader, and no matter what happens I hope to help work for his movement in the next few years.
Gore is an opportunistic jerk and yes, I do worry about someone as stupid as Bush getting into power but...
A. No matter how much damage Bush can do to us in 4 years, he'll damage his own party even worse;
B. Conversely, I think if Gore wins we will also have a bad time for 4 years, and then the Republicans will win even bigger in 2004. Gore's half-assed policies are likely to make reform even more difficult -- the same way that Clinton's half-assed health insurance plan convinced a lot of people that universal insurance just won't work. I'm already hearing some people (even some nurses, who really should know better) saying that they'll vote for Bush because "the Democrats had their chance." Like Clinton, Gore is able to give Democrats and liberals a bad name without even really being one.
C. Regarding the Supreme Court, the Democrats are responsible for confirming Bush Sr.'s worst two Justices (Scalia and Thomas) and I really don't trust Gore to give us anyone better -- Bush may want to get rid of abortion and gun laws (though I don't think he feels strongly enough to take any risks on either) but Gore and Clinton have their own right-wing obsessions (expanding police powers for the "war on drugs" and supposed anti-terrorism, expanding the death penalty, throwing people off welfare, Internet censorship) which make Gore also likely to pick conservative judges.
Sure, the Democrats in general have a better record on a lot of principles that are important to me, but Gore and Lieberman are two of the guys who've been urging them to ditch those principles: Gore persuaded Clinton to listen to Dick Morris and sign the welfare bill, the Defense of Marriage Act, and NAFTA, and Lieberman ran the Democratic Leadership Council which came up with the whole "New Democrat" conservative platform. I think if we get either Gore or Bush, we'll end up with injustice, repression, poverty, and probably a small war. I don't want to be counted as a supporter of that way on either side. I'm hoping that whoever wins, wins with a pathetically small percentage and therefore can't claim any great mandate from the people.
Of course, this is all easier for me to say because I live in New York, where Gore is almost certain to win. And maybe I'm just a little giddy, because I haven't had anyone to root for since Jesse Jackson, and from where I am it looks like people are really fed up.
Beyond Thunderdome -- So, armed with beer and fresh bread and split-pea soup, and a helpful foreign friend to share the work of horrified laughter, I watched the debate. Or whatever you want to call it ... I think the format (carefully screened audience questions with 2 minutes' reply from each candidate) was pretty much guaranteed to prevent debate of any kind, although Lehrer seemed to enjoy exercising his whim to occasionally grant extra rebuttal time as the candidates jumped up like little kids -- hey you can't let him get away with that, lemmejustsayonemorething! The striding-around-the-arena format was very strange; I kept expecting them to collide and demand satisfaction, or for the audience to toss in weapons (or factual information).
They began with a moment of silence due to the sudden death of Governor Carnahan. We then learned that both candidates are against tragedies. Gore's team must have really busted ass at the last minute to work up his opening remark, in which he claimed Carnahan's support for his platform, possibly hoping that Bush would be dumb enough to attack a dead man.
Obvious things: Bush is pretty dumb. How dumb, it's hard to say, because he seems to have been watching old Reagan tapes and studying how to act even dumber in order to seem like just plain folks. ("In-surance... that's a Washington word.") Someone should let him know that it doesn't work so well if you're not as likeable as Reagan; you at least have to be able to smile. Bush has learned that the only thing all Republicans can agree on is that big government (not including the military) is bad. But the Democrats have been fairly clever in co-opting that position, so to distinguish himself from a New Democrat, Bush has to deny the usefulness of any government at all; that, along with sheer blindness to the reality of the non-rich, makes him able to say that a $2000 tax credit and "trusting people to make decisions with their lives" will compensate for lack of health coverage. I'm not sure this will convince as many people as he thinks it will.
Gore is smart and slick. He continues to come across as extremely phony, but in the same benevolent way as a (less sexy) Clinton: you can easily imagine that among the many tricks up his sleeve is something that will benefit you. And he has the advantage of knowing that what he promises is more or less accurate: four more years of Clinton (minus the sex), only more so. He will probably succeed with that message. Triumphal complacency is the message: we're doing all right, and don't think too hard about the past. The Clinton-Gore-Morris method by which Democrats and Republicans blur together (which made Bush's attacks on "partisanship" so hilarious) isn't really based on America becoming more conservative; it's an all-purpose system of removing all principles from the equation, making it easier to take credit for anything and everything, and harder for an opponent to describe you convincingly. When the Democrat boasts that he'll increase military spending twice as much as the Republican, you know anything you thought you'd learned in the last 20 years is useless and you might as well vote your pocketbook.
Boldest lie (at least that I caught at the time): Bush trying to take credit for the Patients' Bill of Rights legislation in Texas, which he had opposed. I couldn't figure out why Gore didn't tear into him for that, but I guess it's not such a mystery: it takes too much time to consistently rebut an approach based on constant whopping lies, plus which Gore is not averse to that approach himself. Runner-up for boldest lie: Gore: "Listen, for 24 years I have never been afraid to take on the big drug companies" -- well, it would have been bolder if he'd tried telling it to a South African AIDS patient.
Weirdest non sequitur: Gore's prediction that struggling farmers will become Internet entrepreneurs. (Speaking of the Internet, no one has mentioned yet that Gore's glorious information economy will be dead in the water if he succeeds in stamping out pornography.)
Most suspicious audience question: to Bush, on the death penalty. If I were a medium-clever Bush strategist, aware of GWB's reputation as a smirking death-dealer, I could hardly do better than to have a worried-looking black man ask him whether he "overly enjoyed" executions. Bush instantly turned serious, spoke about tough decisions, and repeated his amazing whopper about how he knows every single case was fair -- knowing that Gore, who will say virtually anything to avoid appearing soft on crime, would let it slide. If that question wasn't planted, at least Bush was coached amazingly well for it.
The only way I can explain the polls, in which 40 percent (vs. 45) thought Bush made more sense than Gore, is that most people have given up really listening to either one. Bush made an ass of himself nearly every time he opened his mouth. Even if you disagree as I do with more than half of what Gore says, there's no way to say with a straight face that Bush "won" this "debate." But it seems to have served its purpose for both parties: solidifying the unexamined assumptions of the campaign and making the whole process seem more legitimate, while avoiding any unpleasant surprises.
Savage tells me where to get off -- Last thing: you may have read Dan Savage's response to Nader voters in his sex advice column. You may not know that Savage is a decent writer outside his sex column too (you can read his local political reporting in Seattle's weekly The Stranger) and I think this column, though snide as usual, is a fair summary of the liberal anti-Nader position. Here's his argument and my brief rebuttals:
Now let's observe a moment of silence in memory of our standards. They served us well, but all things must pass.
Thunderdome Revisited -- My debate review was not all it could have been. There was enough raw material in there to keep us all laughing and crying for the next four years, which is basically what we'll get with or without my comments. However, as a friend pointed out, I forgot to mention one of the most revealing lines in the whole thing: Gore saying that we won the war in Kosovo without losing "a single human life in combat -- er, a single American life."
So I'm not just talking to myself -- Sometimes I feel a little nervous at the thought that I and the people I happen to be talking with are just a bunch of weirdos who don't represent the real America. I mean, just about everyone I know is a liberal who's voting for Gore yet hates him. ("It often seemed to him, moving in the circles he moved in and reading what he read, that everyone in England was Labour, except the government" - Martin Amis, The Information) I couldn't find any Republicans to talk to but I did get a letter from the next best thing: my old friend who wants a flat tax, totally privatized health care, and a foreign policy "based on Tom Clancy," but is pretty smart about a lot of other things. My old friend wrote:
"What will happen if Gore is elected?
* Republicans can actually get perceived anti-socialist legislation passed since the New Democrats support it
* Nothing with healthcare
* Nothing with Soc. Security which is actually something if the economy turns south again
* Republican Congress forever
* Scandals and the gov. will lose even more credibility here and abroad
* Many people will die under 'unusual' circumstances (humor)
* Buy NASDAQ!
"If Bush is elected?
* No bills passed for four years and bitter political atmosphere (yeah the Democrats can do it too)
* Progress in alternative energy research set back 20 years due to funding cuts (not humor)
* Roe v. Wade overturned
* Major military conflicts and increase in terrorism as foreign policy will be neglect then kill
* Stock market uncertainty
"I am interested in taxation, healthcare, social security and military/ foreign policy/trade (which cannot be separated). Most every other issue is a state or local issue to me."
I'd say I agree with most of those except the Vince Foster joke and the "Republican Congress forever" -- and I wouldn't trust the stock market either way: Gore seems awfully credulous of "information economy" hype which is sure to cause some woe. By the way, my old friend claims not to be voting, so take that how you will.
Here's a sampling of other responses I got:
"Personally I'm voting for Gore because there are important issues at stake that we can't afford to throw away on a protest vote. One is abortion, which will definitely come to an end if Bush gets elected -- this is not just a hypothesis, at least three and perhaps as many as five Supreme Court justices will be nominated by the next President.
"The second is campaign finance reform, which Gore claims is the first bill that he'll send to Congress and for which McCain has promised to shut down both houses with monkey wrenches if it doesn't get passed. Campaign finance reform is the key to all of the issues that Nader speaks of. It will cut the political power of the multinationals and corporations radically. We can talk about serious reform to our economic system, environmental policies and social services only when our campaigns aren't funded entirely by the interests that oppose reform in these areas."
When I hear the "lesser evil" argument, one obvious question is until when? How long must we vote for lesser evils before we can support what we believe in? I see two possible answers above: 1) Until no one on the Supreme Court is near death and Roe v. Wade is safe; 2) Until a campaign finance reform bill is passed. Okay, these are worth discussing.
In my earlier notes I think I avoided writing much about the Supreme Court and abortion because it seemed like everyone everywhere was already writing non-stop about abortion and the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court and abortion. One thing most of these arguments have in common is the assumption that if the Court overturns the Roe v. Wade precedent, abortion "will definitely come to an end." I'm not sure whether pro-choicers all really believe this, or if they're just echoing what so many pro-lifers hope. Rather, it would be the beginning of a very loud popular struggle to be fought in state legislatures. And a loud popular struggle is what it should be; when people think that women's freedom was saved for all time by a single and fairly vague court ruling, they're less likely to speak their mind about the legal compromises and terrorist pressure that have crept in since then. The extreme right-to-life crowd is a minority -- and yes, I know the NRA is a minority too and Washington still bows to them, but the NRA has two huge advantages: a huge economic interest from the weapons industry, and the Second Amendment. So if after 27 years we don't have anyone in elected office who will defend the legality of abortion out loud, then we're in more trouble than a Court appointment will fix. This odd situation, in which a large majority of Americans apparently favor abortion rights but still think those rights are in the President's hands rather than theirs, is illustrated in polls like this one.
Regarding campaign finance reform: yes, many of the things I'm unhappy about boil down to the fact that money talks. Is the incredibly compromised crowd in Washington -- with Gore near the top of the list -- going to pass any legislation that would force real change? I don't know, but it's only going to happen if Congress is behind it much more than they are now. With that support, Bush can't dare oppose it; without it, Gore can't push it through and is unlikely, given his history, to even try. And McCain is campaigning for Bush, if you didn't know.
"a) Political problems caused by presidents can last a lot longer than the four years they are in office. We inherited the 'War on Drugs' and 'Three Strikes' laws from the Reagan era, both of which I think are terrible. Plus, I don't believe that just because Bush is incompetent he will damage the Republican party. Reagan was as bumbling as Bush, and he is still widely popular.
b) I'd rather have half-decent policies than totally indecent ones.
c) The Supreme Court has no say over funding issues like welfare or the size of police or military forces. They WILL handle legal issues such as availability of abortion and access to guns. Gore would definitely provide Supreme Court Justices more to my liking than Bush."
(a) We inherited the current form of the War on Drugs from Nixon, and it continues because of enthusiastic support from people like George Bush and Al Gore. Three-strikes laws were not magically enacted from the White House; they're part of the general law-and-order rhetoric that's become inescapable in local, state, and federal politics for the last 30 years, which the Democrats have largely embraced.
I think my idea of Bush making the Republicans look bad was oversimplified (though I don't think he's the Reaganesque charmer that he thinks he is). What's more relevant is that Gore will make the Republicans look good -- especially if the good times (for some) that Clinton takes credit for turn out not to be permanent.
(b) Half-decent policies that leave people hurting often make them desperate enough, or apathetic enough, to accept totally indecent policies the next time around. Especially if no one dares to speak up for a really decent alternative in the first place.
(c) The Court has no say? Hmm... removing search-and-seizure protections in the name of the drug war, allowing states to violate labor laws in welfare-to-work programs, overruling the states' ability to define marriage, trying to build wiretapping features into every new communications system, allowing the FBI to investigate any political organization by labeling it "pro-terrorist," attempting to get the Pentagon involved in domestic law enforcement, privatizing prisons, allowing secret evidence in deportation cases, trying to impose "decency" standards on all Internet speech, allowing WTO guidelines to pre-empt U.S. trade and labor standards... these aren't Constitutional issues? These are all pet projects of Clinton and Gore, and several of them have already run into court challenges. Which would you rather have: a strongly pro-Roe judge who will still cave in to this kind of agenda, or a judge who respects the Constitution? If it comes down to that choice, you can bet Gore will pick the former.
And I feel silly repeating this so often, but people really don't seem to know: Al Gore voted for Antonin Scalia, and both Gore and Lieberman backed Clarence Thomas ("An impressive man with an astounding background .... He speaks and writes with precision, power, and persuasiveness" - Gore) until the last minute. You can read more about that in CounterPunch.
Give me my car and I'll shut up -- Wisconsin must be a nice place to be a young person. From a fine Nader-related interview with Michael Moore:
Q: Last night in Madison, I was talking to kids about their thoughts on getting out the youth vote, and why young people don't vote. They didn't seem to think it was because kids are cynical, but more along the lines of people having it so good. They said that for most young people they know in Madison, unless someone's going to take their BMW away, why should they vote? They don't see politics affecting their lives because they're so privileged.
Moore: No, 10 years ago when there was a recession we still had the problem of people not voting. The kids with the Beemers and the parents with Beemers, they're the ones who do vote. If you look at the statistics, the people with money show up to vote because they want to run the show, and they hope that the kids without that much money will stay home so they can run this country the way they want to run it.
The short version -- A fair summary of some of the main pro-Gore and pro-Nader arguments was presented in a panel discussion hosted by WNYC, with guests including Eric Alterman, Cornel West, and (representing the last progressive holdouts in the Democratic Congress, biting their tongues as they fall into line behind Gore) Major Owens. I transcribed it so you can read it here. For what it's worth, I think the most thoughtful speaker was Frances Fox Piven, but absolutely no one's opinion was changed by this discussion.
Roe v. Wade v. Bush re-revisited -- A friend writes:
"Abortion: I must say I was stunned by your argument on this. Bring it to the states? This is a civil rights issue. Why don't we also let the states determine whether blacks should have to pay a tax or take a literacy test before they're allowed to vote? Why don't we let the states decide whether or not they want separate bathrooms for blacks and whites, and whether or not African-Americans have to ride on the back of the bus? It is the duty of the Federal Government, not the states, to assure citizens of basic human rights. Give the states the decision and abortion will be outlawed and unavailable in half the US. We finally have RU-486 approved and tested as safe, and this is going to make the whole abortion debate moot. But with a Bush Presidency, he'll appoint people to the FDA (and he's said as much) that will express 'concern' that the drug is not safe for women and then shelve it permanently."
Here we go again. (I know that sounds like an old Reagan line; really I'm just frustrated that I've apparently been explaining my thoughts so poorly.)
A civil rights issue? I think I know what you mean, but I think the analogy to the anti-segregation struggle is... really, really, really flawed. Not because of their relative importance; in the words of another friend, I think abortion is "a terrible thing which must stay legal." But your argument rests on the central role of the Supreme Court in both of those struggles, and as I've said, I think that role was very problematic in the case of abortion. Roe v. Wade is so vulnerable because it did not make a clear case that reproductive rights are Constitutionally guaranteed; it said they fall within privacy rights and, as such, are limited by "state interests in regulation." Thus reassured, states have jumped at the chance to make such regulations. Imagine the mess if voting rights had been "protected" in the same way.
I don't subscribe to the Republican fear of "judicial activism" but there really is a limit to how much the Court can read into the fairly conservative social assumptions of the Founders. It took massive popular movements and Constitutional amendments to secure civil rights for blacks and women, followed by Court decisions to enforce those rights.
"Abortion will be outlawed and unavailable in half the US" -- well, that's your opinion. I don't see the evidence for this happening in legislatures; we are not where we were 27 years ago. But it already is unavailable in more than half the country, due to (a) closing of clinics under terrorist pressure and (b) federal defunding which makes it a non-option for poor women. The New Democrats turned a blind eye to the former and actively promoted the latter.
As for RU-486, I'm not sure how you think Bush's FDA appointees could be worse than Clinton's. It's been 20 years, and they've run out of excuses.
A thought experiment -- I think loyal Democrats and Republicans might benefit from a mental exercise about priorities. Here's the version for reluctant Gore supporters: Say, for instance, you disagree with Gore on the death penalty and the welfare bill and NAFTA, but you agree with him on abortion rights and gun control. Okay, imagine a dream world in which Gore is passionately opposed to the death penalty and the welfare bill and NAFTA, but is anti-abortion and a gun nut. Would you still support him? You get the idea.
I'm a crank -- I know I'm not saying anything useful or realistic. For instance, I know the experiment above doesn't really have any effect on the "lesser evil" argument. But it's just so hard for me to take the "lesser evil" argument seriously when the people saying it don't seem too upset about the evil. I hear a lot of people who are just vaguely dissatisfied with Gore or don't like him personally. That's not where I'm coming from. I think what he stands for is EVIL. I think these two choices are both indefensible. Pick any two people you would totally reject as too crazy or dangerous or criminal -- Perot, Buchanan, Nixon -- then imagine you have to choose one of them. I'm not exaggerating; that's really how I feel. So if I look like a dreamy idealist, I'm really just sick and afraid.
I'm afraid that it will keep being like this, but worse. If Gore wins, the New Democrats will figure they've been proven right for 12 years and will complete their project of turning the party into a cross between Giuliani and Nixon. If Bush wins (or should I say Cheney -- it's not really "Gore vs. Bush" unless you think the Republicans will ever let George operate anything bigger than a pencil sharpener) we'll get warmed-over Reaganism which will keep our hopes low enough that we'll welcome another Clinton next. Repeat as necessary.
I'm afraid that the right-wing meanness that the Gore crowd keeps warning me about is going to get worse either way, not imposed from above, but growing from below. Whether the "good times" (for some) continue or fail, a hell of a lot of people are being left behind, and both parties are working to keep it that way. Many of those people will be easy to convince that what kept them from getting ahead was the blacks or the gays or the women. All the ugly anti-civil-rights state initiatives we've seen in recent years have taken advantage of the deep discontent of people who know that the good times are at least partly bullshit. Eric Alterman (in the discussion I mentioned at the top of this page) said that by not supporting Gore, I'm throwing vulnerable people to the dogs; I think that's what I'd be doing by giving him my vote.
Finally, I'm fairly sure that if Bush wins, those who care will never listen to anything I say again, so I won't have to keep writing this kind of thing. What a relief!