International Socialist Review Issue 32, November–December 2003
The Dean Deception
By KEITH ROSENTHAL
We must face the appalling fact that we have been betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties. –Martin Luther King, Jr., in Facing the Challenge of a New Age, 1957
WITH more than a year remaining before the presidential election of 2004, the former Vermont governor, Howard Dean, has stolen national attention for his criticisms of the recent unilateral war on Iraq by confidently arguing on the campaign trail: "We’re gonna’ beat George Bush!"
He has called for universal health care, environmental protection, the shredding of the "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive attack, a reversal of the tax cuts and has even called out the leadership of the Democratic Party for cowering before Bush’s right-wing onslaught.
But Dean has done much more than simply grab the attention of the national media. He also has many antiwar activists, progressives and former Ralph Nader voters excited about his campaign. Gary Younge described Dean in the Guardian (UK) as "the great red hope."1 In the Nation, Katha Pollit recently wrote, "My fingers itch to write Dean another check." She continued, "Howard Dean is Ralph Nader’s gift to the Democratic Party."2
(snip)
Thinking that the Democrats are any better for us than the Republicans is like thinking that the bully who pushes you down and steals your money is worse than his friend who helps you up but shares in the bully’s spoils.
What happens if Dean gets elected, puts all of his electoral rhetoric aside and pours more money into fighting terrorism, takes his axe to American social programs and dispatches more troops to Iraq? Will the left stand by its "antiwar" candidate and refrain from fighting against cuts at home and war abroad because "at least he’s better than Bush?"
That Dean will prove to be a conservative in office of is frankly admitted by BusinessWeek, which assessed Dean’s politics this way:
Dean had a knack for positioning himself and never lost an election. Those who know him best believe Dean is moving to the left to boost his chances of winning the nomination. "But if he gets the nomination, he'll run back to the center and be more mainstream," predicts [Vermont Repubican businessman Bill] Stenger. Says Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont: "Howard is not a liberal. He's a pro-business, Rockefeller Republican."54
If Business Week can see Dean clearly, so should we.
Real change in America has always come when masses of people take to the streets on their own initiative–the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, the labor movement, the Vietnam antiwar movement. The problem so far is that these kinds of movements have never coalesced into a lasting political party that could offer an alternative to the twin parties of American capitalism. Rather than argue for a vote for someone who is sure to repay our support by cutting our living standards and promoting American power abroad, progressives and socialists would do better to argue for a break from the Democrats, focus on building the struggles that make all real progress possible–and create the political alternative that can embody them.
The sooner we break our illusions in the Democrats the better. If Dean is attempting to transfer his policies from Vermont to the entire nation, I would propose that the example of the Progressive Party be transferred too.
Keith Rosenthal is an activist in Burlington, Vermont.
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