The Widening Gyre

One of the side-shows of the Democratic National Convention is credentialing. Before the convention, I sought to be credentialed for both my web site and for C-Ville Weekly, not certain that either would gain me entrance.

I was allotted a credential for C-Ville Weekly. I was not allotted a credential for my web site because I was credentialed for the paper and thus would still be attending.

With less than two weeks to go before the Democratic Convention, more than 30 independent Web journalists were accredited to provide blogging coverage, while 200 or so sought credentials.

In the meantime, Ralph Nader was rejected in his bid to attend the Democratic Convention as, apparently, was Michael Moore.

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CNN reports that “Given that Nader is running on the Pat Buchanan Reform Party ticket and is openly accepting both financial and organizational help from Republicans and their allies, the answer is no,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Jano Cabrera said.

…Nader, who was informed of the Democrats’ decision by CNN, said, “Is that what happened? Well, that’s unfortunate.”

He said he wanted to attend the convention “to see the Democrats and how they toe the line to all those corporate hospitality suites, wine and dine them for political favors. You can read about it, but you don’t really see it. You can’t feel it until you’re there. It’s pretty disgusting.”" (Inside Politics, CNN, July 23,2004)

Elsewhere, DNC Chair Terry McAullife has said:

“A vote for Ralph Nader helps George Bush. Let’s be crystal clear about this. In Oregon, Republicans made calls to get people to sign petitions helping get Nader on the ballot. Nader took tens of thousands of signatures from Republicans to get him on the ballot in Michigan. I find this outrageous. Take [former Texas Republican Congressman] Dick Armey. If Dick Armey and Ralph Nader were looking at a digital clock, they would disagree on what it said. There is nothing that Dick Armey and Ralph Nader agree on. For him to be out getting people to sign Nader’s petitions makes it perfectly clear [that the Republicans believe votes for Nader will help Bush], and these Nader voters have to understand that.” (Fred Kuhr, Interview with DNC Chair Terry McAullife, The Advocate, July 23, 2004)

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On Friday, Sam Riddle, a longtime political consultant and friend of Michael Moore, “released to The Flint Journal on Friday portions of an e-mail Moore sent him about the snub.

“Can you believe the Dems are not going to give me credentials?!” Moore said in the e-mail signed “mm.”

Moore, a Davison native, could not be reached for comment at home or through his publicist. Officials for the Democratic National Convention did not return a phone call seeking comment. A woman who answered the phone at the convention press office paused when asked about Moore and said someone would have to call a reporter back.

Moore’s Web site, www.michaelmoore.com, which frequently details his personal and professional clashes, did not mention the convention dispute as of Friday evening.

But the proud liberal figures to be nonetheless popular at the convention.
He will speak and sometimes screen his latest film at receptions for the Congressional Black Caucus, union leaders and a rally dubbed “Take Back America” in Boston next week. Those events are all separate from the actual convention, however.” (Marjory Raymer, The Flint Journal First Edition, July 24, 2004)

Given his viewpoint, one can understand the refusal to give face time to Ralph Nader, but Michael Moore?

More on Ralph Nader below.

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Ralph Nader arrived in Boston on Friday where he spoke at a number of venues, including one sponsored by the Harvard Socialist Alternative to an overflow crowd at Science Center Hall B.

Late arrivers were asked to go to Science Hall C and watch it on a large screen, rather than block the aisles. Few did.

Nader was preceded by a labor union organizer who criticized the use of term employees who work in temporary positions and for layoffs of other employees; a speaker from an anti-war group who described the Republican and Democratic candidates as the “twin-towers of war”; a speaker from the Harvard Socialist Alternative who called upon the audience to vote against corporate interests and to join a party based on the millions not the millionaires — suggesting that “a vote for Kerry is a vote for war”; Carolina Johnson, a member of the Green Rainbow Party, challenging Democratic incumbent Alice K. Wolf in the 25th District of Middlesex County in the Massachusetts legislature; and a representative from the Columbia Trade Unions.

Outside the hall a large banner read: “Free Health Care for All”, “Bring the Troops Home Now,” “Break With the Two Parties of War,” “Support Ralph Nader,” “Socialist Alternative.org.”

As interesting as the warm-up speakers were, however, they were not match for Ralph Nader’s “shock and awe” campaign against the major political parties. Speaking before a crowd of over 500 (predominately students and under 30), Nader attacked voter dependence on the “party duopoly,” their “corporate paymasters,” and the presidential candidates who represent them, accusing voters of supporting “the least worst and demand[ing] nothing of the least worst because we fear the worst” and maintaining that “the two [major] parties [have] become marginalized, so that their similarities tower over the dwindling real differences that they are willing to struggle over.”

“During the question and answer session, Nader fielded several queries concerning his role in the election of 2000 and whether he believes his current campaign weakens that of John F. Kerry, the Democratic candidate.

“How can you sleep at night with the blood of the soldiers who died in Iraq on your hands?” an audience member shouted out.

Nader responded by stating that he is certain that Bush is self-destructing, and that those who live in states where Democrats are expected to win by a wide margin should vote Nader/Camejo.

“Bush is a one-term president,” Nader said. “Kerry is swinging and missing for four months, but Bush is swinging and socking himself.” (Joshua P. Rogers, The Harvard Crimson, July 23, 2004)

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Excerpts from Ralph Nader’s speech at Harvard (recorded by George Loper, July 23, 2004):

“What would you have said to the abolitionists when they were given advice to back off because one of the two parties was not quite as bad on slavery? Or the women’s suffrage party, because one of the two parties was not quite as bad on denying the right to vote? Or the labor party being told to back off because one of the two parties was not quite as bad on denying labor the right to form unions. We know what you would say?”

“There comes a time when we cannot be held prisoner of the two hundred year old electoral college system that rests on a winner take all end game. There comes a time when we broaden our horizons to the fulfillment of human possibilities turning away the myopic greasy spoon that we call the present party monopoly. They are running this country into the ground for a mess of garbage called corporate campaign contributions.”

“And who are the enforcers of this system? Is it the party duopolies? Is it the corporate paymasters? It is our own surrender. It is our own desire to go to the least worst and demand nothing of the least worst because we fear the worst. So the politics of fear takes over against the politics of fortitude.”

“This university [Harvard] is a processing center for giant corporations … Over 95% [of graduates from the law school at Harvard University] represent commercial interests. Only 5% represent civic majority interests. What a [deployment] of the profession. The polluters have the lawyers.”

“The forces of militarism have all kinds of lawyers. The forces of peace they don’t have many lawyers. And I emphasize the lawyers because the lawyers are the brokers, they are the strategists, the tacticians, the shoehorns, the insinuation of power so it manifests its ultimate abuses and cannot be held accountable for them.”

“We live in very strange times. We live in times when our friends say they are against George W. Bush because of the war. Because of the Patriot Act. Because of Corporate Globalization. Because of the Bloated wasteful and corrupt Military Budget that now absorbs one half of our entire … operating expenditures, now that we have no major enemy left in the world.”

“They are opposed to George W. Bush because he is what he is, a giant corporation disguised as a human being presiding in the White House. They are opposed to George W. Bush because he is an administration marinated in oil.
And so who are they for.

Well, they are for a major alternative party candidate [John Kerry], who is also for the war, who voted for the war resolution, who wants to stay in Iraq, who wants to stay in Iraq, who toes the party line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and perpetuates the Washington party structure…

He is for corporate globalization, WTO and NAFTA, he supported all of those arguments about why our financial system should be consolidated under financial modernization in the hands of a few giant banks…

He voted for the Patriot Act, he couldn’t even side with Senator Russell Feingold, the only Senate in the United States to vote against the greatest single assault on our civil liberties in American History and even worse in the hands of John Ashcroft.

Why did the Democrats allow [John Ashcroft] to be confirmed. Why did John Kerry vote for Antonin Scalia, who went through the senate 98 nothing, every Democrat voted for him? Why did the Democrats let Justice Thomas through with 11 Democrats moving across the isle, supporting Justice Thomas through the Senate with a majority that was held by the Democrats? Why did the Democrats speak against Bush’s tax cut to the wealthy and then not stop it in the senate, when they could have in 2001?

Because they are dialing for the same dollars and after a while the two parties become marginalized so that the similarities tower over the dwindling real differences that they are willing to struggle over. And we even know what they are: Choice, School Prayer, Civil Justice, a few contrasts in reality compared to rhetoric on environmental issues. But we don’t judge politicians by their rhetoric. We have to judge them by their record….”

“Now when the civic community, which is the heartbeat and the brain of the Democratic Society, is shut out of their own national capitol and their government by both parties who have for sale signs on their doors in the executive and legislative branch, we must raise the question of what is our breaking point, what is our level of self respect at what point are we going to say enough is enough we are not going to play your game any more we are not going to play the game of least worst…

[Lets' say one side] you have corporate interests pulling [the two parties] twenty-four hours a day in the direction of corporate supremacists, in the direction of saying that everything in our country is for sale. Everything is for sale. Politicians are for sale. Childhood is for sale. Education is for sale. Environment is for Sale. Foreign Policy is for Sale. Defense is for sale. Not to mention government. …

Twenty four hours a day they pull — both parties. One party is a little closer to it than the other. And because they are being pulled, the two parties are pulling our country down. They are dictating to our country what it has to be. Not what it can be, not what it should be, but what it has to be because of the power in the world to do so much good in the world and if it doesn’t so many people suffer.

Now they are pulling. And they are pulled. And on the other side are the people. Whose pulling [for the people]? Whose pulling when all the groups supporting Democrats in this election are so freaked out over George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that they are absolutely making no demands on John Kerry and John Edwards …

The only force pulling … in the direction of the people and their children and their grandchildren is the Nader-Camejo candidacy.”