Are the Greens running against Democrats ... and maybe giving
Republicans the edge? Anyone who thinks we'll have to wait till the
Bush-Gore rematch in 2004 to get into that can of worms had better look at
Minnesota this year. Here's Senator Paul Wellstone bidding for a third term,
with the tiny Democratic majority in the Senate as the stake. Writing in The
Nation, John Nichols sets the bar even higher. "His race," Nichols wrote
tremulously this spring, "is being read as a measure of the potency of
progressive politics in America."
Wellstone's opponent is Norm Coleman, who is the former mayor of
St. Paul, Minn., and enjoying all the endorsements and swag the RNC can
throw in his direction. The odds are against Wellstone. Coleman is a lot
tougher than the senile Rudy Boschwitz, whom Wellstone beat in 1996, and
many Minnesotans aren't enchanted about his breach of a pledge that year to
hold himself to two terms. But ignoring Wellstone's dubious future, liberals
are now screaming about "the spoiler," who takes the form of Ed McGaa, a
Sioux born on the Pine Ridge Reservation, a Marine Corps vet of the wars in
both Korea and Vietnam, an attorney and the author of numerous books on
Native American religion. The Minnesota Green Party picked him as its
candidate on May 18 at a convention of some 600, a lively affair in which
real politics actually took place in the form of debates, resolutions,
nomination fights and the kindred impedimenta of democracy.
Aghast progressives are claiming that even a handful of votes
for McGaa could cost Wellstone the race. Remember, in 2000, Ralph Nader got
127,000 in Minnesota, more than 5 percent. Some national Greens, like Winona
LaDuke, Nader's vice-presidential running mate, didn't want a Green to run.
Some timid Greens in Minnesota are already having second thoughts,
backstabbing McGaa. For his part, McGaa confronts the "you're just helping
the Republicans" charge forthrightly: "Let's just let the cards fall where
they're at," he recently told Ruth Conniff of The Progressive. "It will be a
shame if the Republicans get in. On that I have to agree with you. I'm not
enamored by George Bush's policies." But McGaa says he'll probably get a
slice of Jesse Ventura's Independent Party vote, too: "So you Wellstone
people can just calm down."
McGaa's own amiable stance contrasts markedly with liberal
Democratic hysteria. Wellstone is now being pitched as the last bulwark
against fascism, whose defeat would lead swiftly to back-alley abortions,
with the entire government in the permanent grip of the Bush Republicans. A
sense of perspective, please. Start with Wellstone. This was the guy,
remember, who promised back in 1991 that he'd go to Washington with his
chief role as senator being to work "with a lot of people around the
country -- progressive grass-roots people, social-action activists -- to
extend the limits of what's considered politically realistic."
So what happened? Steve Perry, a journalist with a truly
Minnesotan regard for gentility and good manners, wrote in Mother Jones last
year the following bleak assessment: "Ten years after he took his Senate
seat, Wellstone has disappeared from the national consciousness. He never
emerged as the left's national spokesman for reforms in health care,
campaign finance, or anything else."
Early on, Wellstone took a dive on the biggest organizing issue
for reformers in 1993. He abandoned his support for single-payer health
insurance in the face of blandishments from Hillary Clinton. No need to go
overboard here. As with all liberal senators, Wellstone has had some lousy
votes (yes to an early crime bill; no on recognition of Vietnam) and some
honorable ones. He denounced the Gulf War in 1991 but in 2001 endorsed
Ashcroft's war on terror, when Russell Feingold was the only senator to vote
no. Wellstone has been good on Colombia but, in common with 98 other
senators, craven on Israel. (McGaa has spoken up for justice for
Palestinians and is now being denounced as an anti-Semite for his pains.
Imagine, a Sioux having the nerve to find something in common with
Palestinians!)
So one can dig and delve in Wellstone's senatorial career across
12 years and find grounds for reproach and applause, but one thing is plain
enough; he's not shifted the political idiom one centimeter to the left,
even within his own party, let alone on the overall national stage. In the
Clinton years, when he could have tried to build a national coalition
against the policies of the Democratic Leadership Council, he mostly opted
for a compliant insider role.
If there was one opportunity for Wellstone to challenge this
system on an issue of democratic principle, it was surely after the
shenanigans in Florida after election day, November 2000. Why didn't he
exercise his option to protest the counting of the electoral ballots early
in 2001 as did the Black Caucus in the House (far too mildly, I should add).
If at least a single House member and a single Senate member had protested,
some sort of additional delay and investigation would have ensued before the
new president could be installed. Why wasn't Wellstone the one to have had
Congress officially weigh in on the controversy? It would have been ugly,
and it would have been lengthy, but it would have done heaps for the
national civics lesson following Election Day 2000. You don't have to be in
the Senate as long as Bobby Byrd to put together an impressive résumé.
There are examples of heroic one-term stints. Look at what Jim
Abourezk of South Dakota achieved in his one term, between 1972 and 1978.
Within a year of getting into the Senate he was taking on the oil cartel. In
one of the most astounding efforts of that decade, he pushed a bill to break
up the oil companies to within three votes of passage in the Senate.
Abourezk and Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio thwarted one boondoggle after another
by all-night sentry duty on the floor of the Senate in final sessions, when
the barons of pork tried to smuggle through such treats as a $3 billion
handout to the airline industry, which Abourezk killed. He and Phil Burton
managed an epoch-making expansion of Redwood National Park. Abourezk worked
with radical public interest groups and was a lone, brave voice on
Palestinian issues.
The suggestion that progressive politics will now stand or fall
in sync with Wellstone's future is offensive. Suppose he were to lose of his
own accord, without a Green Party third candidate? Would it then be
appropriate to sound the death knell of progressive politics in America? Of
course not. Even the most ardent Wellstone supporters acknowledge that
Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is moribund. Hence Ventura's
triumph. The Greens have every right to hold Wellstone accountable, and if
they have the capacity to send him into retirement, then it will be a
verdict on Wellstone's failures rather than some supposed Green
irresponsibility.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the
muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander
Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
