by Rahul Mahajan
So the results are in. After shellacking Dean in Iowa, Kerry once again won a very convincing victory in New Hampshire. Democrats who made up their minds last year tended to favor Dean, while those who made up their minds in the last four weeks favored Kerry; those who voted based on the issues favored Dean, while those who voted based on “electability” favored Kerry.
<snip>
Since before the war, I have maintained that Iraq will be the crucial issue in the election, and the one that it is most important for the Democrats to try to get right if they want to win. Counterposed against this was the argument that, even though there is widespread discontent over the war, those who oppose it are a minority, and that anyway Americans will vote on jobs and health-care, the issues that affect them most proximately. And, of course, in polls on the relative significance of issues, Iraq consistently comes in third behind jobs and health-care; a solid third that shows a persistence of interest in the issue, but notably behind the first two.
Until they were blindsided by the Dean phenomenon, the mainstream Democratic candidates were all running on the strategy of not allowing too much daylight between them and George W. Bush on Iraq while excoriating him on domestic issues; indeed, any other stance has been difficult given their votes on the Iraq resolution in October 2002. In the November 2003 issue of the American Prospect, Bill Clinton explicitly outlined this as the strategy necessary for the Democrats to win in 2004.
<snip>
After that, the only thing I can predict is this: a Democratic candidate who has little intelligent to say about the war will be swallowed whole. If the candidate bases his objections, as many do now, on our not asking France to help pay for the war, he will be ridiculed. If he signs on completely, he will become irrelevant. Although Iraq is not the “biggest” issue in the campaign, measured in gross terms, Iraq will be the defining issue, the issue the Democratic candidate has to get right if he wants to have a chance of standing up to Bush’s overwhelming advantage in money, Bush’s shock troops in the Christian right, Bush’s profound influence over the broadcast money, and the fact that the economy will be kept roughly afloat by extremely low interest rates.....
http://www.empirenotes.org/kerrydean.htmlFor your consideration. I happen to agree with Mahajan that Iraq will be the defining issue of the campaign -- if not the one that people list first. If Kerry is to be our candidate I think he'd do better to dig deep into himself to find the courageous young man who spoke so brilliantly against our imperialist venture in Vietnam, rather than boast so much of his veteran status. If he could find the courage to say the Iraq war was wrong, his vote on the IWR was wrong and that he wants to fundamentally change the course America is on - I think he'd get greater support from those of us now supporting Dean, Clark, Sharpton or Kucinich and be a stronger candidate against Rove/Bush.
Rahul Mahajan is the publisher of Empire Notes (
http://www.empirenotes.org) and serves on the Administrative Committee of United for Peace and Justice, the nation's largest antiwar coalition. His first book, "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism," has been called "mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a handle on the war on terrorism," and his most recent book, ull Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond," has been described as "essential for those who wish to continue to fight against empire." He can be reached at rahul@empirenotes.org
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
