Green Party Watch

One of the most common arguments against the Green Party comes from within the Democratic Party, in the form of the plea that activist energy ought to be focused on reforming the Democrats from within, rather than challenging them from without. The Democratic Party is a powerful organization, it’s said, and if progressive reformers could take over the party, they could change it and create a great deal of positive change.

I’m familiar with this argument, because I used to make it myself. During my time on the New York State Democratic Committee, I would write earnestly to Greens, urging them to join the Democratic Party, to reform it from within. Obviously, I’ve given up on that idea since.

The main problem that progressives encounter within the Democratic Party is a tremendous pressure to conform, to promote the Party in general, and not to speak out when its politicians support antiprogressive policies, with the idea that if the Democrats could just gain control over government, the Democrats would shake off their temporary concessions, and a progressive agenda would finally benefit.

In 2009, we finally have a federal government that is solidly Democratic. So, we can fairly evaluate now whether the strategy of working within the Democratic Party to reform it can work. We can ask, how progressive are the progressive Democrats?

I ask this question in the context of a growing crisis of secrecy and dishonesty from the Obama Administration on the issue of torture. Earlier this year, President Obama argued that he has the right to suppress lawsuits by people who have been tortured as a result of the U.S. government’s practice of extraordinary rendition. Then, Obama insisted upon violating the Freedom of Information Act in order to keep photographic evidence of torture by the military a secret. Last week, the Obama Administration informed Congress that it opposed legislation to prevent torture by requiring the videotaping of of military interrogations.

Yesterday, Obama added to his protection of torture secrets by delaying the release of a CIA memo that purportedly demonstrates that the intelligence agency informed the Bush White House that its use of torture was profoundly illegal. The Obama White House promised to release the memo yesterday, and people waited, and waited, but the memo never came. This is the third Obama postponement of the memo’s release. These delays are taking place, the Obama Administration says, so that officials have the chance to keep portions of the memo redacted – blacked out.

Why, if the Obama Administration truly opposes torture, is it so consistently working to keep America in the dark about the extent of government torture? Where, if the Democratic Party has any progressive potential at all, are the progressive Democrats?

There is a group of Democratic politicians in Congress who are willing to call themselves progressives. They’re called the Progressive Caucus. There isn’t a single Democrat in the Senate that’s willing to join the caucus, although independent Senator Bernard Sanders from Vermont is a member of the group. In the House of Representatives, there are 75 members of the Progressive Caucus. The Clerk of the House lists 255 Democrats in the House. That makes just 29 percent of Democrats in the House who are willing to organize in the name of progressive reform.

That number is just a count of House Democrats who are willing to even go by the name of “progressive”. The number who are actually willing to reliably act to promote progressive reform is even smaller.

This brings us back to Barack Obama’s repeated delays of the release the CIA torture memo. Given the President’s refusal to let the public know the truth about the crimes of the Bush Administration, it’s up to Congress act. Early this year, Congressman John Conyers introduced H.R. 104, a bill that would establish a “national commission on presidential war powers and civil liberties”, investigating the unconstitutional activities of the Bush Administration, identifying particular crimes for the purpose of prosecution. This commission would have subpoena powers to demand documents like the CIA torture memo currently being withheld by the Obama White House.

Unfortunately, H.R. 104 has been buried by the House Democratic leadership. It’s been sitting in the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties for months – and the Progressive Caucus hasn’t been much help in getting the legislation out of committee. Only 34 out of the 75 members of the caucus have gone to the relatively small trouble of cosponsoring H.R. 104. That’s just 45 percent of the caucus, which is just 29 percent of the Democratic membership of the House.

With the Presidency and Legislative Branch firmly in hand, 2009 is the time when the promises of progressive reform of the Democratic Party is most likely to be fulfilled. Yet, we can see that the group that’s supposed to contain the most progressive members of Congress can’t get the majority of its members to support an investigation of the crimes against the Constitution that took place under George W. Bush. Even Lynn Woolsey, one of the chairs of the Progressive Caucus, hasn’t added her cosponsorship.

This remarkable inaction is a clear sign that the Democratic Party isn’t going to be reformed from within. There are some progressives within the Democratic Party who mean well, but the overwhelming majority of Democrats are either not progressive, or have been co-opted by the Democratic leadership’s campaign of promises that it never intends to keep.

If you want progressive action from a politician, don’t vote for a Democrat. Vote for the Green Party candidate whenever you can.

Editor’s note-Jonathan Cook is our newest contributor and I believe this, his first piece, may not have been noticed by many, so I put it back atop the list to be sure others saw it as well.

As the Green Party moves toward the 2010 congressional elections, we should expect most progressives to react with the standard Democratic line of dismissal: “I like what ____ and the Green Party stand for, but they’re just not a credible part of this election.” Of course, credibility in an election is determined by the voters, and if more progressive voters could be convinced to vote for what they actually believe in, rather than what they’ve been duped to believe they must accept in the name of pragmatism, the Green Party and its congressional candidates would be quite credible in many congressional races.

If voters are to consider credibility in an election, we need them to focus on the credibility of ideas first. Voters will be more likely to do so if we can show that Democratic candidates, and the Democratic Party in general, are adopting policy positions that don’t match the Democrats’ progressive promises. In order to accomplish this, we need to become students of the U.S. Congress, keeping close watch on the details of legislative activity on display through the Library of Congress, but rarely reported upon by corporate journalists. Search through the dreck, and you’ll find Democrats in Congress engaging in some truly rotten politics.

For example, last week, 31 Democrats voted against a measure that would prevent torture and other abusive interrogation techniques by requiring the videotaping of all military interrogations, except for tactical interrogations that take place on the battlefield itself, where videotaping equipment is not available. The measure, an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill, was inspired by the Walsh Report issued this January by a Pentagon task force. That task force concluded that video taping interrogations had been successful in civilian law enforcement, would provide more reliable intelligence, and would protect both prisoners and interrogators.

Yet, 31 Democrats in the House of Representatives, listed below, voted against this measure. They followed the right wing argument that any regulation of interrogation is a bad thing that puts us in danger of terrorist attack.

With this one vote, these Democratic U.S. Representatives made themselves vulnerable on many issues to progressive opposition from their own Democratic constituents, as well as from Green Party challengers in 2010. The issues involved include torture, government secrecy, reliable standards of evidence in military tribunals, effective government intelligence, and the dismissal of the military’s own recommendations for reform.

Yet, not one professional journalist has written any article about this legislation, and the 31 Democrats’ votes against it. If the mainstream news media won’t report on antiprogressive Democratic votes like this, how can voters take this behavior into account when they decide how to vote in 2010?

There is an answer to that question: We Greens need to bring them the stories of regressive Democratic acts in Congress that the corporate journalists won’t write about. We can stop accepting the role of victims of the corporate media, and we can challenge it, creating our own media to show why it’s the Democrats, not the Greens, that lack credibility.

It’s this mission that leads me to join the effort here at Green Party Watch, and to offer an independent voice for my own region through Upstate Greens. The elections of 2010 may seem a long time away, but we need to act now to set up the media networks to challenge what surely will be, as before, a roaring silence in the mainstream’s coverage of Green campaigns.

In a press release issued April 29th, the Green Party of the United States called for a full investigation of Bush era officials who provided justification for torture. The press release calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor, and says that any attempt by the Obama Whitehouse to limit the investigation will be an obstruction of justice. The full content of the press release can be found by clicking the “Read more” link or this article’s headline. read more »