Republicans Among Us

It was the largest demonstration in American history ever to greet a national political convention. On Sunday, as the Republicans prepared to launch a week-long media extravaganza in Madison Square Garden, over 400,000 protesters, blanketing two miles of Manhattan's avenues, stole the Party's spotlight. It was a quake whose aftershocks were felt in dozens of smaller actions throughout the following days. As an opening reception it announced that there would be two beats during the week of convention, one covering the speeches made inside the auditorium and one covering the outraged New York that lay beyond.

I had worried in the weeks before, as the police stoked fear and the mayor denied permits, that turnout for Sunday's demonstration would be low. New York residents and visiting counter-delegations alike put my worries at ease. The march's banner, "The World Says No to the Bush Agenda," was broad enough to unite a wide array of anti-Bush voters and activists opposing the continued occupation of Iraq. Walking on that sunny afternoon, I saw marchers' emotions range from angry to hopeful and resolute. I saw demeanors span from irreverent to solemn. "Yee-Haw is not a Foreign Policy," said one sign. "Victims of Terror Are Not Campaign Props," said another. One man carried an "Electoral Map of the World" with a few places like Texas, Saudi Arabia and Australia marked as red states; the remaining globe was covered in a sea of blue.

To my mind, a procession of 1,000 coffins formed the most impressive part of the assembly. Nine hundred and sixty symbolic caskets draped with American flags represented U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, and 40 more in simple black remembered all the others who have died in the occupation. At the end of the march, I sat on a curb and watched for twenty minutes as the pallbearers slowly paced by.

That evening, I flipped through the television news coverage. Stories of the protest led on all of the major networks. NBC's top feature showed the march of coffins and profiled anti-war military families in the demonstration who had lost sons and daughters in Iraq. Following that story, the images in the program's remaining segments seemed to carry new meaning: a shot of Dick Cheney inspecting the staging at Madison Square Garden; scenes of delegates on their way to a Broadway show. Before the march, some had predicted that Republicans would use footage of protests, rarely popular with the electorate, to advance their own agenda. If this was the case, one thousand coffins was clearly not what Karl Rove had in mind.

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On Monday, I went as a journalist to the Garden to interview delegates. The Republicans were generally warm and enthusiastic about speaking with me, even though I forthrightly indicated I was writing for a leftist audience. Butch Davis, a delegate from Houston, Texas, offered this message for progressives: "Reexamine what you believe." He said, "If you do believe in socialism, if you believe in gay marriage, if you believe in higher taxes, then stay a Democrat. If you don't believe in those, you're welcome to come on over."

He then explained to me Hillary Clinton's socialist politics: "She wrote the book, It Takes A Village. So her concept is that mother and father don't raise the child, government raises the child, society raises the child. She's socialistic from the word 'go.'"

He showed such high spirits; I felt sorry to inform Butch Davis that, as much as I might wish otherwise, Hillary Clinton is not a socialist.

I have heard many stories of progressives, even longtime critics of the Democratic Party, being thoroughly charmed upon meeting Bill Clinton. I had never heard a parallel story about George W. Bush's interpersonal powers until Hershelle Kann, an ex-Democrat from Bay Shore, Long Island, told me about meeting the president at a Washington gala. Ms. Kann described the encounter: