From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Jerry Brown and 1992: What Can The Left Do?
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 09:24:49 GMT

/** nfd.ifeatures: 28.1 **/
** Written  8:22 pm  Apr 12, 1992 by ihandler in cdp:nfd.ifeatures **
Commentary / 1400 Words

The Third Wave Meets the Rainbow
Jerry Brown and 1992: 
What Can The Left Do?

By Carl Davidson
Insight Features

   The prospects for the left in the 1992 Presidential campaign
are dismal. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble
with an electorate angry about the economy, progressive voters
are having difficulty uniting around a candidate who can mount
an effective challenge.

   The problem is that no candidate has emerged who has yet
proven capable of uniting the most dynamic constituencies around
a progressive platform.  Instead, there has been a sharp
separation between those running on the best platforms--such as
Jerry Brown currently, or Bob Kerrey and Tom Harkin earlier--
and the voting blocs needed to elect them and fight for their
proposals.

   But now that the contest in the Democratic primaries has boiled
down to Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton, the issues are becoming
more focused, even if a dynamic unity remains elusive.  

   From a left perspective, the candidate with the best platform
by far is Jerry Brown.  His proposals for restructuring American
political and economic life not only meet the needs of the moment,
but also open up prospects for more radical change in the future. 


   Brown is essentially the voice of the "third wave" post-
industrial "new class"--an emerging cluster of high-tech
industrialists, "green" investors and socially conscious
intellectuals.  He is running, he says, against the "entrenched
political elite" of both major parties that have gutted the American
economy, corrupted the political process and polluted the global
environment.  

   The former California governor was also at one point the
Democratic party's top fundraiser. Criticizing his own past
practice, Brown exposes how incumbent politicians have raised
huge sums of campaign money from special interests and then
reward those interests with unjust tax breaks and favorable
legislation.  Accordingly, he refuses to take any donations over
$100, raised largely by putting out his 800 number at every
opportunity.

   "The insatiable appetite for campaign dollars," said Brown in
his initial announcement speech, "has turned the government into
a stop-and-shop for every greedy and narrow interest in the
country. The quid pro quo could not be any more straightforward.
The legality of the barter cannot mask its inherent
corruptness....Together, private greed and corrupt power have
launched a deadly assault on our common values.

    "This crisis has been triggered by the collapse of our
two-party system," he added. "There is only one party: It's the
Incumbent Party. There are, of course, two major political
organizations with different names, but at their core they are the
same. They share the same world view and they serve the power
of the same private interests which, in return, finance the
campaigns of both. When there are no substantial differences,
there is no choice to be made. And without choices, there is no
democracy, and when there is no democracy there is no freedom,
only a system which entertains us with illusions....What we need
here is an insurgent movement, that's what I call it.  We need new
candidates, new voters in the system, so that you can come to
Washington with enough force and power that people have to
listen."

   Brown's biggest problem is the narrowness of his core
constituency.  Despite some recent inroads among distressed blue-
collar workers, his base of support rests mostly among white, left-
leaning, socially-conscious college graduates.  Brown has yet to
establish any significant following among the most vital
constituency of any progressive coalition: the masses of Black and
Latino voters in the inner cities.  

   Apart from stressing the problems of the inner city in his
speeches, Brown has attempted to break through this obstacle by
stressing his record as a supporter of the farmworkers and
announcing that Jesse Jackson would be his first choice as a vice
presidential running mate.

   Brown also attended the April 5 pro-choice rally in DC. "I'm
here expressing my solidarity with the women on this march," he
told the press. "Our whole cause is democracy, the economy, the
right of people to decide their own destiny and nothing is more
fundamental to that freedom than a woman controlling her own
body and her own destiny."  

   Earlier Brown told CNN: "I'll say right up front that I would
like Jesse Jackson as my vice president...I believe the gridlock is
so resistant to change that it will take a coalition of every
activist in this country--environmentalists, Ralph Nader, women's
groups, Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition--all of us fighting that
establishment."

   Most Black political and church leaders around the country,
however, have rallied around Bill Clinton.  In Chicago, for
instance, Danny Davis, Joe Gardner and Bobby Rush are in the
Clinton camp. For the most part, this support is pragmatic: these
leaders want to be connected to the candidate they believe has
the best chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

   Clinton is clearly the candidate of his party's right wing, the
Democratic Leadership Conference, which he helped found.  In
Chicago, this means he is closest to the Daley and Madigan
machine forces, despite the efforts of Black reformers.  In fact,
Clinton's campaign manager was also Richard Daley's manager in
the Chicago mayoral campaign.

   Apart from program, a major weakness of the DLC is its refusal
to aggressively mobilize new voters among the young, the poor
and the disenfranchised.  While claiming it does not want to
alienate the "middle class," the DLC is really fearful these voters
would undermine the traditional big city machines.  Instead, the
DLC's main approach has been to snub Jesse Jackson and the
Rainbow Coalition with the aim of winning back the "Reagan
Democrats" from the GOP.

   Most likely, Bush would prefer to run against Clinton.  His
campaign team has been preparing for the prospect well in
advance, scouring Arkansas for every nuance of possible scandal
to use as ammunition.  

   Ironically, Clinton is at once both the strongest and the
weakest candidate among the Democrats.  He is the strongest
because of the money and traditional voting blocs he can put
together; he is the weakest because he is the most vulnerable to
charges of moral hypocrisy and most fearful of insurgent
contituencies.

   In the Republican camp, the crisis has produced two fascist
alternatives to Bush's pragmatic conservatism: Pat Buchanan and
David Duke.  Despite their losses at the polls, both of these
candidates have only become stronger in terms of publicity,
organization and an expanding base among white middle class and
working class voters.  While neither has a program to meet the
needs of these voters, both are effective at racist demagogy
appealing to the frustrations and fears of their constituents. 
Buchanan especially is really waging a war of attrition to be in
the best position to dominate the GOP in 1996.  Even though Bush
is being weakened by this split in the GOP, there is nothing
positive in it for the left.

   Thus a pessimistic forecast for 1992's outcome looks like this:

   --The fascist right gains strength, both as a movement and as
a bloc in the GOP, although without winning an election.

   --The GOP's conservative right retains power in the White
House, but presides over a split in the party and at among its
base of voters.

   --The Democratic neoliberals are defeated and split, but retain
control of the party.

   --The Brown and Jackson progressives remain split,
marginalized and isolated from each other.  This prevents them
from expanding the progressive coalition and winning over
moderates.

   Given this situation, the left has a number of options, which
are not necessarily exclusive:

   1. Go to work for Brown as long as he remains in the race. 
The objectives are mainly to gain experience in developing policy
and building independent organization for 1996 and beyond.

   2. Go to work for local progressive candidates for Congress,
such as Carol Mosley Braun's Senate race in Illinois.  Work to
develop a majority coalition that would hurt Bush by encouraging
a broader progressive turnout.

   3. Organize "Dump Bush" Committees to register voters and get
out the anti-Bush vote for Clinton in November.  Remain
independent of Clinton's machine, since there is little chance for
influencing policy or organization. These levers are firmly in the
hands of the DLC and local regular machines.

   4. Work against Buchanan and Duke by developing nonpartisan
truth squads to expose them on policy issues from within the GOP
campaign, with the aim of shrinking their base among white
workers.

                       -- 30 --

   Carl Davidson is the managing editor of Insight Features, a
progressive monthly news service available on PeaceNet or by
contacting Networking For Democracy, 3411 W Diversey, Suite 5,
Chicago IL 60647. TEL: 312/384-8827 or FAX: 312/384-3904.

** End of text from cdp:nfd.ifeatures **

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