Rebuffing Bush Seems to Be Primary Goal of New York's Democratic Voters

[kskiska]

New York's Democratic voters go to the polls today, with many less intent on casting a ballot for Senator John Kerry or Senator John Edwards than in lodging a first vote against President George W. Bush, political analysts, pollsters and ordinary voters said.

"You know what people are talking about," said Sarah Kovner, a longtime political activist who served eight years in the Clinton administration. "People have jumped to beating Bush. They have jumped to the next stage."

It has become a cliché this primary season to say that Democrats are looking for anyone who can beat Mr. Bush. But many, in fact, say they are, and polls show that they are turning to Mr. Kerry.

(snip)

That attitude - anybody but Mr. Bush - is believed to have tempered the political climate here. When Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards left Wisconsin two weeks ago, it appeared that the New York primary would develop into a sharp contest. For Mr. Kerry, it offered a chance - with its second largest bounty of delegates in the nation - to lock up the nomination. For Mr. Edwards, the senator from North Carolina, a robust showing could keep the two-man race alive.

While that calculus never changed, the battle never really materialized.

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/03/02/politics/campaign/02campaign.html

[Voltaire99]

1. The emptiness of "Anybody But Bush"

For all its defiant bluster, "Anybody But Bush" is a defeatist's slogan. Especially in a primary season, it's a form of early surrender - a bitterly ironic acknowledgment that the party is now firmly constituted so as to prevent anyone but a corporatist from becoming the candidate. Sounding less like the cry of an aroused public anxious to reclaim its republic and more like the fervent hope of a meek middle class that it won't soon be working in Wal-Mart, ABB invites the corporations who control our politics to merely retool their message.

As a rallying cry, the slogan would have meant something if it had taken stock of where we are: three years into a right wing putsch that was scarcely opposed in November 2000 and even less opposed during the next three years of Democratic Party collapse. My slogan: "Anybody But Bush - Or Those Cowards Who Voted For His Illegal War, Catastrophic Tax Cuts, And Anti-American Patriot Act." Of course, that's not a sound bite, and sound bite-slingers can't get much mileage out of it. More importantly, refusing to nominate one of Bush's legislative and policy helpers would have significantly narrowed the field.

As Alexander Cockburn and others have pointed out, the phrase ABB now really means "Nobody But Kerry" - it's code for conservative-centrist electability, simply an impoverished formula for installing another well-trained DNC apparatchik. But after Bush, America deserves a lot better. In fact, we need a huge amount of reform just to be dragged back to the center where we were before the right wing onslaught began. And now there is very little hope of getting it. What a disillusionment!

[aquart]

2. Well, how clever they are.

And what brilliant thing do they propose to do about it? Vote for Nader?

This nation and this world will be corporatist until the crash. Then there will be reforms because of the totality of the disaster. Which will eventually be eroded away by the complacency caused by the prosperity caused by the reforms. It's a cycle because human beings are naturally greedy and dislike hard truth.

That's the hard truth your Cockburns can't face, as they rail against the present and imagine an eternal utopia.

Nothing is forever.

[Kinkistyle]

3. ABB is just fine - Because it is truth.

Bush officially represents EVERYTHING that is wrong with this country. Even hard-core conservatives like once-reviled Pat Buchanan seems pale in the face of another Bush presidency. ABB is less slogan, and rather more of a truism.

[xchrom]

4. can't get there from here

while agree with your premise -- with out a real discussion of and a growing discontent with the current economic set up this is what the immediate future holds.
and the first two replys to your post are the evidence.