>This message will put me over my limit for the day so I'll just put
>it out there for others to comment on.
>
>I read the revolting lead editorial in _The Nation_ of the issue with
>the Lewinsky sillouete on the cover. It was a call for people to
>support The Working Families Party candidate Vallone in the coming
>election. My simple question for supporters of this strategy is this:
>
>Why has *every* account I've read in favor of this candidate start off
>by saying "we know Vallone's a sleazebag, but the WFT is cool and you
>should vote for him"? I mean, if the WFP is so damn righteous, why
>couldn't they find a more respectable standard bearer?
I've gotten about 5 emails urging me to vote for the WFP in the last few days, plus paper mail from my dear union, the National Writers Union, and its parent, the UAW. What utter crap. I posted some quotes from a New York Observer article a few weeks ago on how the WFP was a scheme by some Dinkins cronies to exact revenge on the misleadlingly named Liberal Party for its endorsement of Giuliani in the 1997 NYC mayoral race. That may be overly cynical and reductive - no, scratch that, overly reductive, since there may be more than one aspect to the cynicism behind the WFP. The WFP, which is tightly connected with the New Party's local operation (which itself was tightly connected to the Dinkins campaign in 1993), looks very much like the typical New Party scheme of binding "progressives" to the Democratic Party. It allows those divided souls, who just can't fully break with the party of Clinton and Gephardt, to have it both ways - take a slightly independent stance but still vote Democrat. Vallone is a dim, uninspired product of the Queens Democratic machine who, as City Council speaker, has largely gone along with Giuliani's agenda.
Here's a taste of Vallone, from a front-page profile in today's New York Times:
<quote> But less than a week before Election Day, the candidate himself is still struggling to make an impression.
He is pleasant as can be when pressing the flesh, but rarely seems to connect with people on a deeper level.
During a tour of a poor neighborhood in Buffalo, Vallone smiled benevolently as the owner of a dry-cleaning shop complained about the pressures on small businesses. But he did not offer any insights, and his thoughts were elsewhere as he left the shop.
"Did you ever see so many suits inside one place?" he asked his aides. </quote>
As far as I'm concerned, the New Party has now lost all claim to "independent" or "progressive" politics with this move. I was about to reconsider my opposition to them <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/New-Party.html>, but the WFP thing only confirms my worst suspicions.
Doug