First Door on the Left

Jan Jarboe Russell

A friend asked the other day, “Who the heck made Tom DeLay king?”

It’s a good question, one that all Americans ought to be asking themselves now that DeLay is using obscene amounts of money, as well as his position as U.S. House majority leader, to win more seats in Congress next year for the right wing of the Republican Party.

While DeLay was in the Middle East whipping up opposition to President Bush’s road map to peace, 11 Democratic senators from Texas fled to New Mexico. They are attempting to stop the Legislature from implementing DeLay’s plan to pack Congress with more Republicans from the 32 congressional districts in Texas. These Texas Democrats are all that stand in the way of DeLay’s latest power grab.

These days, DeLay, who likes to pose as a humble former pest exterminator from Sugar Land, is the undisputed king of Capitol Hill. The only thing missing is his crown.

He’s the only Republican who dares cross swords with Bush, not only about the Middle East, but on a prescription-drug program for seniors and tax credits for the poor.

When Bush wanted a quick vote on tax credits for the poor, DeLay was churlish enough to remind the president that he does not have a vote in the House.

You get the feeling that if Bush were a bug, DeLay would like nothing more than to squash him.

The right wing is not about to defect from Bush to DeLay any time soon, but DeLay is not a man to be underestimated. He comes by his nickname “The Hammer” honestly.

So who made him king?

The answer is, two powerful interest groups — evangelical Christians within the Republican Party and a complex maze of very rich individuals and corporations, some based in San Antonio.

In 2000-2002, DeLay raised $12.6 million, according to the political watchdog group Democracy 21.

The reason that Texas lawmakers are wasting the taxpayers’ money trying to redraw congressional districts to DeLay’s satisfaction is that his political action committee helped give Republicans control of the Legislature.

Some of the financial kingmakers are the top corporations in America, including San Antonio-based SBC Communications, the third-ranked donor, giving a total of $221,999 to five of DeLay’s political operations; Enron, $140,000; Philip Morris, $138,000; Union Pacific, $106,000; Reliant Energy, $75,000; and AT&T, $67,000.

In many cases, the companies that helped make DeLay king reaped political benefits for their investments.

For instance, DeLay fought raising taxes on tobacco. Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and UST Inc. — all tobacco companies — contributed handsomely. DeLay helped deliver a friendly energy bill, and energy moguls, including Enron’s discredited Ken Lay, rewarded him big time.

Some of the contributors share DeLay’s Christian conservatism. James Leininger, founder of Kinetic Concepts in San Antonio, who shares his religious views, was DeLay’s sixth-ranked donor. Leininger gave $140,000 to two of DeLay’s committees.

The question is whether those who live by The Hammer might also die by The Hammer.

One contribution — $25,000 from Westar Energy — is the subject of several federal investigations. One Westar executive wrote an e-mail about buying a “seat at the table” by giving money to one of DeLay’s committees.

Hardball politics doesn’t get any more blatant than that, does it?

If DeLay persists in pursing the philosophy that those who pay get to play, then his reign may be short-lived.

Right now he appears to have his sights on unseating House Speaker Dennis Hastert. DeLay would do well to remember that another House speaker from Texas, Jim Wright, was forced to resign in 1989 after a congressional committee cited him with 69 violations of House rules in connection with outside business interests.

The mystery is why no House committee is investigating DeLay for the Westar controversy.

If DeLay keeps up his fund-raising tactics, as well as undercutting Bush, the next question is: How long will DeLay stay king?

“The Dean campaign has moved way beyond John Kerry.” And Dick Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman, and John Edwards… It’s time to concentrate on Dubya.

Burlington, VT.–In Howard Dean’s sprawling campaign headquarters, where the staff appears to come in two ages–young and younger–it is a 4-year-old who really stands out. Kasey, a West Highland white terrier and the official campaign dog, lives to do her official campaign trick. “Kasey?” Joe Trippi, Kasey’s owner and Dean’s campaign manager, asks. “Would you rather work for George Bush or be dead?” Kasey immediately flops onto her side and extends her front and hind legs in a reasonable imitation of rigor mortis. Kasey will get a dog biscuit for this and the staff always gets a laugh, but the trick is significant in one respect: Trippi used to ask Kasey if she would rather work for John Kerry, one of Dean’s Democratic opponents, or be dead (Kasey’s response was the same), but now the Dean campaign has moved way beyond John Kerry.

Having raised more money than any Democrat in the second quarter of this year, having attracted more volunteers, in its estimation, than any campaign in history, and having reached the magical “top tier” status in the eyes of most media, the Dean campaign is now looking to take on Dubya himself. Trippi describes the next phase of the Dean campaign this way: “Over the next six months,” he says, “we must be in George Bush’s face.”

And it intends to be there with more than doggie tricks. U.S. News has learned that the Dean campaign will spend between $100,000 and $200,000 to put up a new television commercial running this week in the unlikely (and probably unwinnable) state of Texas. In the ad, which Dean taped last Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he wears a blue, open-necked work shirt, faces the camera, and says, “I want to change George Bush’s reckless foreign policy, stand up for affordable healthcare, and create new jobs . . . . Has anybody really stood up against George Bush and his policies? Don’t you think it’s time somebody did?”

The pitch, which is airing only in Austin (at the same time President Bush is vacationing in Crawford, 87 miles away), is to some extent a stunt but on another level is intended to send the message that Dean will cede no ground to Bush anywhere. “We want to go right into the belly of the beast,” Trippi says.

Dean’s first reaction to the idea of a Texas ad was a somewhat amazed: “What?” But Trippi repeated his Zen-like advice to the candidate. “I tell him the only way he can win is to believe in his heart he cannot win,” Trippi says. “We’ve got to act like we have nothing to lose.”

Party pooper. And Dean has run a high-risk campaign from the beginning. Though some on the staff originally imagined that Dean would come across as Josiah Bartlet, the very bright, sometimes difficult, yet ultimately lovable president on West Wing, in fact, Dean has more closely resembled Howard Beale, the angry prophet from Network, who is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. In Dean’s “coming out” speech at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting in February, his very first line to the party elite (after a weak joke about maple syrup) was: “What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president’s unilateral attack on Iraq.” It was a body blow that Dean followed with a flurry of hooks and jabs, before ending with: “We’re going to change this party! And then we’re going to change this country! And we’re going to take back the White House!” Several in the audience noted (with no small amount of alarm) that Dean had put changing the party first on his list.

But that is what insurgent campaigns are about. Insurgents attract people who have been turned off by traditional party politics (followers of John McCain and Ross Perot, for instance) and also seek to win by drawing new voters into the process. Insurgent campaigns contain the seeds of their own destruction, however. Insurgents are not taken seriously until they win an upset in some primary or caucus and then the party regulars wake up and coalesce around the mainstream front-runner.

This time, however, Dean says things are different. This time, the insurgent has emerged before a front-runner has emerged. So Dean’s road map to victory is this: After he wins first or second place in the Iowa caucuses (January 19) and first place in the New Hampshire primary (January 27), the supporters of the defeated candidates will coalesce around him, which, combined with Dean’s own army of loyalists, will make him unstoppable. But his opponents are sounding the alarm early. They say that while there might be a theoretical opportunity for enough angry hard-core lefties, McCainiacs, Perotistas, Greens, and Deanie Boppers to put Dean over the top in the primaries, he will be a sitting duck for George Bush, defender of America, who will use Dean’s antiwar stance to paint him as a squishy-soft liberal who will not defend the nation in time of crisis. “Dean is a real and enormous threat,” says one highly respected Democratic leader who is not aligned with any campaign. “He won’t fold, and he won’t do something stupid and peak in August. He has only growth potential. If he wins Iowa and he wins New Hampshire, who is going to stop him? Nobody. But Karl Rove (Bush’s chief political adviser) and his crowd are dying to face Dean. It is going to be pretty tough for an antiwar candidate to win in 2004.”

Howard Dean has heard this before–he says he is not antiwar, just anti-Iraq war–and he believes voters will not be scared off. Sitting in the unpretentious Café Piccolo, a short drive from his campaign headquarters, and eating a bowl of soup and an oatmeal cookie (not, he admits, the most nutritious lunch an internist could have), Dean says, “Average Americans, who are concerned with working and feeding their families and are not that interested in politics, think this is a bunch of politicians who don’t have much to say. Average Americans vote for the person they like, and they vote for the person they trust.”

Respect. Which is a little jarring to hear from Dean, since likability and trust do not always come across in speeches that are often dominated by anger and accusation. “This president promised that he would be a uniter, not a divider, and that was a lie!” Dean thundered recently in a speech in Concord, N.H., even though most candidates go out of their way to avoid using “lie” or “liar.”

Dean, however, sees himself as a healer who provides hope and not a firebrand who scorches the earth. “I think being likable is a big deal,” he says. “Part of that likability stuff is not having a big smile and a glad hand; it’s about having people respect you. That’s very important. In fact, that’s more important than having them like you.” One other thing Dean recognizes, at least theoretically, is the limits of anger as a campaign tool. While it has certainly gotten him far fast, he knows it will not get him to the Oval Office. “Anger alone is never going to get you elected president; it’s not going to fuel a campaign,” Dean says. “My campaign is about hope, hope for a community, hope for a country where all of us are going to be included again, and that’s really fueling this campaign much more than the anger is.”

Jan Backus, a former Democratic state senator in Vermont who worked with Dean when he was lieutenant governor and then governor, says likability might not be the first word that comes to mind when thinking about him. “He is not that interested in what you think,” she says. “He is very high energy. He’s, ‘ok, I know what to think, now let’s go do it.’ ” Others find Dean’s style invigorating, however. “I find him very, very refreshing,” says Joe Mathews, 53, who owns a travel agency in Manchester, Vt., and, as a Republican, has always voted against Dean “out of habit.” But Mathews says he will vote for Dean for president because he admires the fiscal conservatism Dean displayed in 11 years as governor. “What the rest of the country is starting to find out,” he says, “is Dean is not particularly left wing. And as far as checkbook issues, he is to the right of George Bush, because if it isn’t in the bank, Dean doesn’t spend it.”

Dean has his own complex feelings about Bush. “I think we were all sort of hoodwinked by George Bush,” Dean says. “Everything he said he was going to do in the campaign he did the opposite of. He is a divider, not a uniter, there is nothing compassionate about him or about his presidency, and he just couldn’t give a damn about the American people.” Anger? What anger?

Campaign manager Trippi, who, at 47, is one of the graybeards of the campaign (only Dean, at 54, is older), says the argument that Dean would be weaker against Bush than a noninsurgent is wrong. “We started out with seven people and $157,000,” Trippi says, clutching his left side where he has either torn a muscle or broken a rib, “and nobody ever heard of us. Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, Lieberman, they had millions in the bank, access to the best staffs, and massive name ID. So if we can get this far against them, what makes anybody think Karl Rove couldn’t run circles around them? It is great that Karl Rove wants us, because we want George Bush. We are just afraid that at the last minute, the Republicans are going to switch him out for a moderate.” And if it didn’t hurt too much, Trippi would laugh.

Trippi sits in his campaign office, which is decorated in early dorm room–a change of clothes hangs from a picture hook on the wall–and types a secret logon into his battered Hewlett-Packard laptop. His screen soon fills with numbers and bar charts, showing the money pouring into the campaign and, even more important, the volunteers who are signing up. There is a certain obsession with numbers on the Dean campaign. After all, it was the $7.6 million the campaign raised in April, May, and June, largely through the Internet, that made the mainstream media take Dean seriously. It also encouraged Dean to take Dean seriously. Near the end of June, Dean logged on to the site to see if the campaign was going to reach its goal of $4.5 million. He immediately called Trippi. “We’ve been hacked!” Dean said. “Someone put $6 million on the Web site!” Trippi told him they hadn’t been hacked; they had actually raised that much and were raising even more.

And it just keeps coming in. Trippi hits a few keys. “In the month of July,” he says, “we raised online four times the amount of money we raised online in April and May combined.” As of late last week, 226,775 people had signed up to support the Dean campaign. Trippi wants to grow that to 450,000 by September 30 and to 1 million by December 31. If that figure is achieved, Trippi says, “I don’t know what specific [primary] states we will win, but it will be very hard to stop us.” Nor do the dreams end there: Trippi wants 2 million volunteers by the end of the Democratic primaries and 3 million by Election Day. In order to do that, however, the campaign must continue to excite, continue to captivate. “We have to be the most aggressive campaign there is,” Trippi says “and the most unpredictable. The others won’t take risks; Dean will.”

The one thing Dean won’t do, Dean says, is drop out. Some weeks ago, Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe privately asked each candidate to drop out of the race when it became “mathematically clear” that the party had selected a nominee, a date he estimated would be no later than March 9 of next year. McAuliffe asked each to release his or her delegates and endorse the presumptive winner before the convention.

Dean refused. “It’s not going to happen,” he told U.S. News. “I’m not deliberately going to sit it out [in order to] have an uncontentious convention. I certainly want the Democratic nominee to win and I hope it’s me, but this is about building the party, and I’m building the party and I’m in for the long run.”

I’ll have to admit that I was one who questioned the wisdom behind running television ads in Austin, Texas. Austin is the most liberal city in this state. It appeared to me like we would be preaching to the choir. Why not run the ads in Dallas or Houston, where the real conservatives camp out?

Then it dawned on me. This is not about beating George Bush in Texas. It’s about getting in George Bush’s face. It’s about letting the country know that this campaign is not afraid of George Bush. There is little to no chance that any Democrat can beat George Bush in Texas. People here love him, though I have yet to figure out why. I think it’s just stupid Texan pride… we’ve got a Texan in the White house, and we’re going to keep him there! Of course, money also has a lot to do with it. Plus, Texas is part of the slowly evolving South. New ideas and changes just do not play well here.

But look at the national press the Dean campaign is garnering by running these ads right in Bush’s back yard. The ads are costing about $200,000. There is no other way you would buy that amount of press for that amount of money.

Another thing to consider is that Texas will be sending a lot of delegates to the Democratic National Convention next July. It will be nice to have those delegates in Governor Dean’s pocket when he goes to Boston.

WASHINGTON — Senior Bush administration officials are debating whether to order military commanders to kill rather than capture Saddam Hussein to avoid an unpredictable trial that could stir up nationalist Arab sentiments and embarrass Washington by publicizing past US support for the deposed Iraqi dictator, according to defense and intelligence officials.

Trying Hussein before an Iraqi or international criminal court would present an opportunity to hold the Ba’ath Party regime accountable for its repression and murder of thousands of people over the past three decades.

Iraq’s new US-backed Governing Council said this week it wants to try Hussein in an Iraqi court, something the occupation authority there has said it supports. The New York Times, citing unnamed State Department officials, reported today that the administration favors creating a tribunal of Iraqi judges to try Hussein for crimes against humanity if he is caught.

But as US troops step up the hunt for Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit, the prospect of an open trial that puts him on a public stage has given pause to some in the administration, according to government officials with knowledge of the high-level meetings. Among those said to have taken part in the discussions are Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

One of the officials, who is involved in the Iraq reconstruction effort, described at least one of the leaders as having ”mixed feelings” about whether to kill or capture Hussein.

There is no chance that Saddam Hussein will be taken alive. One only has to look at how much effort was expended on taking his sons alive.

Of course, we have to find him first. Remember, we’re still looking for Osama bin Laden. (Remember him?) (We are still looking for Osama bin Laden, aren’t we?)

I read the following article on Jim Hightower’s Weblog. It was written by Ed Garvey, the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin in 1998. It is well worth the few minutes of your time it will take to read it through.

If you have decided that you will vote Republican in 2004 no matter what comes out about the use of “cooked” intelligence to deceive the American people and to justify the invasion, and if you will vote for George Bush even if the deficit reaches $600 billion and unemployment hits 8 percent, then please stop reading.

Stop reading because I want to talk to Democrats, Greens, progressives and independents. Anyone not afraid to be labeled as a “liberal” or “progressive.” It is time to get serious and to start planning.

Why? Because George Bush is in meltdown.

I think it is safe to say he is now or soon will be the underdog in 2004. Everyone who is reading the newspapers knows that he lied about Iraq in the State of the Union address. They know that he lied about the economy in order to pave the way for his tax break for the wealthy.

Six months ago it seemed like a cakewalk in 2004 for the Bush team, but now he has exposed himself as a man who has trouble dealing with the truth. That is fatal in a political figure.

Truth is, there is no chance of getting Bush’s numbers below 50 percent until there is a Democratic alternative, but once the primaries are over and there is a nominee, the polls will change.

If we work like hell between now and next January, we will have nominated Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean or John Kerry. (Let’s face it: Joe Lieberman has no charisma and talks like a Republican. While Dick Gephardt is a good, solid, liberal congressman, there is no fire in the gut, or if there is, he has an internal sprinkler system to put it out more effectively than Tums.)

Now each of the three has faults, because we all do. Believe me, those faults will be exploited by right-wing talk show hosts and people who would like to see those of us on the left divide in three different directions.

My plea to those of us who believe that stopping the Bush-Cheney march to disaster is imperative: Get ready to win. Translated, if Kerry is the nominee, let’s not start bashing him as if he were an enemy of progress. If Dean wins, let’s suppress the negatives that someone will dredge up. If Kucinich wins, let’s get behind him.

In the meantime, support one of the three but don’t dump on Kucinich, Dean or Kerry in the process. It won’t affect the outcome in any event. And once the process is over, we must work together if we want to win.

And I want to win.

As for a Green candidate, I would urge the party to take a break. Not from activist politics but from naming a candidate for president. While the major parties are way too similar for my taste, there is a difference. We need to defeat Bush because we are one Supreme Court vote away from catastrophe on a whole range of issues. Visualize a Chief Justice Scalia. That’s the splash of cold water in our face.

The federal district courts and the courts of appeal are being stacked with extreme right-wing ideologues. And with one, two or even three Supreme Court retirements coming soon, look out.

They could indeed reverse Brown v. Board of Education, not to mention affirmative action. Women’s rights? Quaint idea, but back to pre-Roe v. Wade.

And with three appointments, Bush could change America not just for us but for our grandchildren.

The extreme right knows the power of the judiciary. And they are not shy about using that power. They complain about activist judges and appoint them every time they get a chance. Hypocrisy has never been an impediment.

No need for me to write about Iraq and Afghanistan, you know the drill. We have moved from the most loved and admired country in the world to the most hated and least trusted in just three years. Imagine what the next four could bring. Korea, Syria, Iran? Whoa, Nelly!

So here is my suggestion. Let’s start a national dialogue with all who consider themselves liberal, left, green or progressive. Let’s take the lead at Fighting Bob Fest on Sept. 6 in Baraboo, where hundreds and perhaps thousands of those desperate for change will congregate to hear great speeches and share ideas.

Someone must start the national conversation among the sensible. You know, people who want Head Start to thrive, who think we need more money flowing to our schools than our prisons, who want national health care for everyone, who believe the Patriot Act must be repealed and John Ashcroft sent back to the Phyllis Schlafly charm school.

This is an appeal to avoid defeating ourselves. We cannot get trapped in the right-wing plot to win in 2004 by getting us to fight one another. (Remember, they haven’t won a presidential election in 12 years. Let’s make it 16.)

And now a word to our sponsors, those who put millions into the presidential campaigns for Democrats. You were angry when some said there was no difference between Bush and Gore. OK, I understand that feeling.

But rather than condemn those folks, don’t even think about forcing a Republican in Democratic clothing down our throats. Let the people decide the nominee and we will win in 2004.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want four more years.

Nor do I, Mr. Garvey. Nor do I.

Winnipeg — Saskatchewan’s government has tried everything to get the U.S. border opened to its beef: pleading, cajoling and even threatening a ban on foreign beef.

Now a researcher for the ruling New Democratic Party has resorted to name-calling, in a memo that described U.S. President George W. Bush as “Shrub.”

Titled, “Re: petition to President Shrub,” the bulletin on NDP caucus letterhead was distributed this week to members of the legislature, candidates for Saskatchewan’s coming election and MPs in Ottawa. Media outlets received the memo by mistake.

You know, I am really starting to like our neighbors to north more every day! They seem to have a tendency to call it as they see it.

WASHINGTON - Howard Dean is the hottest of the nine Democratic candidates for president - in more ways than one. Hot as in mad. And hot as in very successful.

The former Vermont governor has emerged as the angriest of the pack, angry at the war in Iraq, at President Bush, at Republican policies in general. He’s angry at the leaders of his own party as well, for not standing up to Bush.

At the same time, he’s jumped into the top tier of candidates with a real chance to win the nomination. Dean surged ahead of his rivals in second-quarter fund raising.

Early polls suggest he’s the only candidate who could win either of the first two nominating contests, in Iowa and New Hampshire.

I love it whenever I read one of these articles (and there seem to be plenty) that talks about how angry Howard Dean is. He has every right to be angry, and I think I’d be a bit concerned if he weren’t. If you aren’t angry about what Bush & Co. have done to our country, and to the world, you are in dire need of a reality check.

It’s kind of funny, though, because I think back to when I met him here in Dallas last month and he didn’t seem to be all that angry. Determined and driven, yes, but not really angry. He appeared to me as a man who understands what his mission is and will not rest until it is completed. He knows what is wrong (and there is plenty wrong) and firmly believes he knows how to make it right. I believe that, too.

If, by chance, you are not yet familiar with Howard Dean, please visit the sites under “Dean Links” to learn more. If you would like to help him make things right, there is a button to the left where you can contribute to the campaign and also one where you can sign up to attend a Meet-up meeting. Meet-up meetings are also an excellent place to learn about Governor Dean and his vision for our country and our world. I hope you’ll join us!