Some not-so-random observations.
By: Hank Kalet
Some thoughts on Sunday night’s debate:
1. The Democrats seem committed to recreating the debacle that was the 1972 election for them, but not because the candidate they appear likely to nominate former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is too liberal.
What people forget about the 1972 race was the way in which George McGovern won the nomination and how the party establishment reacted. Early in the process that year, it appeared that the party mainstream wanted Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie, the party’s vice presidential candidate in 1968, to secure the nomination.
But Sen. McGovern’s opposition to the Vietnam War generated a lot of energy among younger voters, who helped him rack up primary wins and secure the nomination.
What happened next, however, helped doom the McGovern candidacy. Perhaps he was too liberal for voters in 1972 and his own missteps didn’t help his initial choice for vice president, Thomas Eagleton, had failed to disclose that he had been treated for depression. But it is likely that the party’s aggressive disinterest in his candidacy, beginning with a failed anybody-but-McGovern push that started during the latter primaries and culminated in a failed attempt to prevent the former North Dakota senator from being named the candidate. The convention debacle Sen. McGovern made his acceptance speech during the wee hours of the morning resulted in him being further behind in the polls after the convention ended than before it started.
The bad blood continued to flow afterward, with Philadelphia’s Democratic Mayor Frank Rizzo backing President Nixon and Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago giving only nominal support.
It’s this bit of history that the Democratic Party should consider as the primaries move ahead especially if Dr. Dean does as well as expected in Iowa and New Hampshire. An anybody-but-Dean push is a dangerous game to play when you’re hoping to field a candidate who can unseat a popular incumbent.
2. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Conn. belongs to the wrong party. Far too many of his policy positions seem to come straight from the Republican platform.
3. Dr. Dean is combative, if a little stiff, and he is not nearly as liberal as his detractors make him out to be. He remains the strongest critic of the Bush Administration Iraq war plan and is the only one of the major candidates to have come out against the war before it began (U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and the Rev. Al Sharpton are not considered serious challengers). And he is very critical of the Bush tax cuts, which he would repeal.
But his other policy positions can’t really be called leftwing. He is for incremental change in health care that will expand coverage to everyone; opposes federal interference in the gun issue, preferring to let states decide how best to regulate firearms; and he is promising misguidedly to balance the budget sometime during a second term.
4. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts seems to have no vision and is lost in the arcane details of legislation. He fails to project any sense of a broader context, anything that ties his stray initiatives together. I have no faith that he could inspire anyone.
5. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina is a lot more impressive than I’d anticipated when all this began last year, though I still have reservations. He seems genuinely interested in the plight of working people and had the line of the night on Sunday. When asked about balancing the federal budget he said "if somebody gives you a straight answer to that question, you can’t trust it."
Basically, he said, everyone the president included is talking about spending money. If you’re spending you can’t reduce the deficit unless you’re willing to raise taxes. The Democrats to varying degrees are talking about tax hikes at the upper income levels, but those hikes are not likely to generate enough cash to plug the quickly inflating deficit.
6. U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt of Nebraska is killing his candidacy which seems a good thing, when you get down to it. He is doing it by touting his experience and not offering the kinds of compelling ideas necessary to inspire voters. And that seems to me the key. Dr. Dean has caught on with disaffected Democrats because he is willing to get in President Bush’s face, is willing to challenge him on Iraq and his tax cuts, while Rep. Gephardt and Sen. Kerry have talked some about challenging the president but have caved when it mattered. I’ll be surprised if either are left standing when the calendar turns to March.
7. I remain a supporter of Rep. Kucinich he is against capital punishment, would hand over control of Iraq to the United Nations and would create a single-payer healthcare plan modeled on Medicare but I have no illusions that his candidacy is going anywhere. At the same time, his presence on the dais injects a much-needed bit of old-time democratic populism into the proceedings, ensuring that progressives like myself have a voice in the process.