From: "JW Mason" <j.w.mason at earthlink.net> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: There are Democrats, and Democrats Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 12:43:49 -0400
[As Nathan often, and rightly, says, there's huge variation in the Democratic party. Listmembers in Brooklyn or Staten Island might be interested in this left outlier. And, anyone who's read Taibbi's stuff before knows that being ABB is the last thing he could be accused of....]
FRANKLY SPEAKING In Staten Island, Frank Barbaro could have been a contender, and is one.
By Matt Taibbi
THERE ARE VERY few public figures worth admiring in this country÷very few. But one of them is running for Congress right here in New York City. He has a chance to win, and he needs your help. His name is Frank Barbaro.
Barbaro is a former longshoreman, state assemblyman and state supreme court judge who is running in Staten Island against that most lightweight and blowdried of the Bush administration's regional yes men, Vito Fossella.
Vito was one of the original New York Press 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers. His great accomplishment as a congressman to date has been the pimping of large amounts of overdue parking fines from foreign diplomats. He has about five times as much campaign money as Barbaro, which would make him a shoo-in÷if not for the fact that he doesn't stand for anything, while his opponent does.
I repeat: Fossella's opponent stands for something, even though he's a Democrat. That is why this race is important. It is a referendum on the role of principle in our two-party system.
I have had the misfortune to watch the presidential election up close for most of the last year. Naturally, I have seen a lot of lying on both sides. But the central deception of the entire election season is the one that is probably the least seldom remarked upon in public. It revolves around the electoral strategy of the Democratic party.
For well over a year now, we have been told in a thousand different ways by the national political press and many of the Democratic candidates themselves that the Republicans can only be beaten if certain concessions to the "center" are made. We are told that we can't have an antiwar candidate because this will invite rejection by the swing vote. We're told we can't have a pro-union, anti-WTO/NAFTA candidate because that will scare the swing vote into believing the Democrats are "anti-business." And despite the fact that polls consistently show otherwise, we're told that we can't have a candidate who supports national health insurance, or is opposed to handguns, because the public does not want health insurance and apparently does want handguns.
This is a myth. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, invented by the media for the convenience of the ruling parties. Those two allies have managed to convince the entire country that a politician who actually represents the majority of citizens can't possibly win an election.
They have managed to convince workers, and even many union leaders, that the country will not vote for pro-union candidates. They have managed to convince people who do not have health insurance that the country will not vote for a candidate who supports national health coverage. And they have managed to convince war opponents that only a pro-war candidate can beat the Republicans. As a result, none of these people vote according to their interests. And so for candidates we get what we've got, which is not a hell of a lot.
The platform of the mainstream Democratic party is not, as is commonly believed, merely the most centrist and right-leaning position that this naturally progressive party is willing to take in order to defeat a terrible reactionary. On the contrary. It is the most progessive platform that the Democratic party's corporate donors are willing to tolerate, given a political climate that is increasingly favorable to them. It is they, the corporate donors, who are making concessions to us÷not we who are making concessions to the swing voter. That is the big lie of our politics, and no one ever talks about it.
The party leaders zealously promote this fiction of electability for one reason. If it were to ever come out that the party could win elections simply by allowing its constituents to vote according to their interests, the party apparatus would lose the money it gets from business contributions, and with it the power to control policy. It would have to allow the people to make decisions, instead of making those decisions themselves. For obvious reasons, this is unacceptable to party leaders.
Which brings me to Frank Barbaro. Barbaro, a tall, powerfully built older man with huge hands, was a longshoreman on the New York docks in the 50s. His political sensibilities developed in the same atmosphere of intimidation and corruption that was described in the movie On the Waterfront. In his speeches, he recounts a scene from those years that almost exactly recalls that movie. After complaining that the loading procedures were unsafe, Barbaro watched as 4000 pounds of cement fell in the middle of 12 workers.
"It's a miracle that none of us were killed," Barbaro says. "And at that point, I said, 'That's it, we're not working anymore,' and we climbed out of the hatch. The wiseguy boss came up and said, 'What the heck are you doing?' And I said, 'We're not ever working anymore until you change these conditions.' And we did that. We got the safe conditions, and we went [back] to work.
"The next day·when the hiring agent blew the whistle to call the men into work, I went to walk in, and they said to me, 'You don't work here anymore.' And 200 men had gone into work. And I don't know how the word got out, but within minutes, 200 men came walking out on the pier, and said, 'Unless [Frank] works, we don't work.' And I will never, ever, ever forget that."
Barbaro's entire career has been informed by that experience. "It inspired me," he says, "that I had to kick ass, some how, some way."
The lesson he learned on the docks was not only about doing what you believe is right in your heart, but in listening to the justice of simple mathematics. Which is: There are more people on the job than there are bosses. Acting courageously and in unison, the right side should always win, even without the guarantor of fair play that the ballot represents.
That's what makes his current candidacy so interesting. Barbaro is running on a platform filled with the kind of simple, unequivocal positions that the Democratic party should be taking. He favors universal single-payer healthcare. He believes in preserving overtime pay and raising the minimum wage. Breaking with the recent Democratic party tradition of holding unions hostage to circumstance, Barbaro is not merely slightly better than the Republicans on labor issues, but an enthusiastic worker advocate. Among other things, he supports the repeal of NAFTA. He has denounced the Iraq war from the start. He wrote New York State's first OSHA laws. He is an unabashed environmentalist who will vote to block efforts to allow increased toxic emissions into the air and rollbacks of clean water standards.
The guy is everything the Democrats should be. And guess what? He might win anyway.
"If we can win," Barbaro says, "that's the message to the Democrats. This is the formula. The formula is a real working family platform÷no equivocation."
If you're a progressive and you live in New York City, let me say this to you: John Kerry is going to win this state anyway. If you want to get involved in politics that is a real contest of principle with real implications for the future, volunteer for Barbaro's campaign. You will be helping slay a real Republican monster and also fighting for the soul of the Democratic party.
It's a winnable fight. Hope to see you there. For more information, log on to barbaro4congress.com.