Election '04

"Anti-Semitism" today is a genuine problem. It is also an illusory problem. The distinction between the two is one of those contemporary issues that most divide Europe from the United States. The overwhelming majority of Europeans abhors recent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions and takes them very seriously. But it is generally recognized in Europe that these attacks are the product of local circumstances and are closely tied to contemporary political developments in Europe and elsewhere. Thus the increase in anti-Jewish incidents in France or Belgium is correctly attributed to young people, frequently of Muslim or Arab background, the children or grandchildren of immigrants. This is a new and disconcerting social challenge and it is far from clear how it should be addressed, beyond the provision of increased police protection. But it is not, as they say, "your grandfather's anti-Semitism."

As seen from the United States, however, Europe – especially "old," or Western, Europe – is in the grip of recidivism: reverting to type, as it were. Last February Rockwell Schnabel (the U.S. ambassador to the European Union) spoke of anti-Semitism in Europe "getting to a point where it is as bad as it was in the '30s." In May 2002 George Will wrote in the Washington Post that anti-Semitism among Europeans "has become the second – and final? – phase of the struggle for a 'final solution to the Jewish Question.'" These are not isolated, hysterical instances: Among American elites as well as in the population at large, it is widely assumed that Europe, having learned nothing from its past, is once again awash in the old anti-Semitism.

The American view clearly reflects an exaggerated anxiety. The problem of anti-Semitism in Europe today is real, but it needs to be kept in proportion. According to the Stephen Roth Institute at Tel Aviv University, there were 517 anti-Semitic incidents in France in 2002 (503 in 2003) and 51 in Belgium (twenty-nine in 2003). These ranged from anti-Semitic graffiti on Jewish-owned shops to Molotov cocktails thrown into synagogues in Paris, Lyons and elsewhere.

Measured by everything from graffiti to violent assaults, anti-Semitism has indeed been on the increase in some European countries in recent years; but then it has in America as well. The American Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported 60 anti-Semitic incidents on U.S. college campuses alone in 1999, 106 in 2002 and 68 in 2003. The ADL recorded 1,559 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2002 (1,557 in 2003), up from 906 in 1986. Even if anti-Semitic aggression in France, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe has been grievously underreported, there is no evidence to suggest that it is much more widespread in Europe than in the United States.

As for expressions of anti-Semitic opinion: Evidence from the European Union's Eurobarometer surveys, the French polling service SOFRES and the ADL's own surveys all point in the same direction. There is today in many European countries, as in the United States, a continuing tolerance for mild verbal anti-Semitism, as well as a continuing propensity to believe longstanding stereotypes about Jews: e.g., that they have a disproportionate influence in economic life. But the same polls confirm that young people all over Europe are much less tolerant of prejudice than their parents were. Among non-Muslim French youth, especially, anti-Semitic sentiment has steadily declined and is now negligible. A majority of young people questioned in France in January 2002 believed that we should speak more, not less, about the Holocaust; and nearly nine out of 10 of them agreed that attacks on synagogues were "scandalous." These figures are broadly comparable to results from similar surveys taken in the United States.

The one thing on which European and American commentators can agree is that there is a link between hostility to Jews and events in the Middle East. But they draw diametrically opposed conclusions as to the meaning of this link. It is increasingly clear to observers in France, for example, that assaults on Jews in working-class suburbs of big cities are typically driven by frustration and anger at the government of Israel. Jews and Jewish institutions are a convenient and vulnerable local surrogate. Moreover, the rhetorical armory of traditional European anti-Semitism – the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Jews' purported economic power and conspiratorial networks; even blood libels – has been pressed into service by the media in Damascus, Cairo and elsewhere. Thanks to satellite television, anti-Jewish images and myths can now spread with ease across the youthful Arab diaspora.

But whereas most Europeans believe that the problem originates in the Middle East and must therefore be addressed there, the ADL and many American commentators conclude rather that there is no longer any difference between being "against" Israel and "against" Jews: i.e., that in Europe anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have become synonymous. But that is palpably false. Some of the highest levels of pro-Palestinian sympathy in Europe today are recorded in Denmark, a country that also registers as one of the least anti-Semitic by the ADL's own criteria – and the ADL has worked harder than anyone to propagate the image of rampant European anti-Semitism. Another country with a high level of support for the Arabs of Palestine is the Netherlands; yet according to the ADL the Dutch have the lowest anti-Semitic quotient in Europe, and 83 percent of Dutch citizens believe the government should take a role in combating anti-Semitism.

In other words, some of the most widespread pro-Palestinian and even anti-Zionist views are to be found in countries that have long been – and still are – decidedly philo-Semitic. And there is good evidence that Europeans have considerably more balanced views than Americans on the Israel-Palestine conflict in general. Thus, although Europeans are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinians than with Israel, they do so only by a ratio of 24:15, according to the ADL. Americans, by contrast, sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians, by a ratio of 55:18 (Gallup).

Europeans are also better placed to appreciate that old-style European anti-Semites were, and are, frequently quite sympathetic to Israel – and the worse Israel behaves, the fonder they become. Thus the French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, in an interview in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz in April 2002, expressed his "understanding" of Ariel Sharon's harsh policies ("A war on terror is a brutal thing"), comparable in his opinion to France's anti-terrorist practices in Algeria 40 years earlier, which he thought were no less justified.

The source of American anxiety and confusion is the unstinting support given by the United States to Israel ($3 billion per annum and uncritical backing for all its actions), and the ensuing sentiment among many Americans that since criticism of Israel is close to impermissible, anti-Zionist opinions must be anti-Semitic in origin. Indeed, the gap separating Europeans from Americans on the question of Israel and the Palestinians is one of the biggest impediments to transatlantic understanding today.

This gulf is well illustrated in a recent essay by Omer Bartov, a distinguished professor of European history at Brown University. In a lengthy discussion of contemporary anti-Semitism published last February in The New Republic, Bartov argued that just as the world failed to take Hitler at his word in the 1930s, so we are underestimating or even ignoring the revival, today, of similarly virulent anti-Semitism, whose consequences might prove comparably devastating. The message of the essay was that if anti-Zionism is a camouflage for anti-Semitism (and Bartov thinks it often is), then we should call it by its real name and combat it as such. In Europe especially it has become politically correct, Bartov suggests, to ignore – or play down – expressions of anti-Semitic opinion, particularly in the academic community. The time has come, he concludes, to call a spade a spade.

Bartov himself does not make the mistake of tarring any and all criticism of Israel with the brush of anti-Semitism. But by relentlessly drawing comparisons and analogies between contemporary anti-Zionism and the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the 1930s, he ends up conflating past and present. If we were wrong 70 years ago not to take Hitler's exterminationist intentions seriously, he suggests, we are just as wrong to make any allowance for Hamas, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (who said at a 2003 conference that "Jews rule this world by proxy"), renegade German politicians and novelists, misguided American academics, the former French ambassador to Britain (who several years ago referred to Israel as "that shitty little country") and no doubt countless others.

In Bartov's account, people might well have good reasons to criticize the policies of the Israeli government (Bartov himself is no admirer of Ariel Sharon). But those are not the reasons many of them express such criticisms. It is the hatred of Jews – Jews in Israel, Jews in Europe, Jews everywhere and always – that accounts for the virulence of the critique. The trouble with this account of the matter is, as I suggested above, that it does indeed make the relevant link between the Middle East and modern anti-Semitism, but inverts the causality.

It is the policies of Israeli governments, especially in the past two decades, that have provoked widespread anti-Jewish feelings in Europe and elsewhere. This may seem absurd, but there is a certain tragic logic to it. Zionists have always insisted that there is no distinction between the Jewish people and the Jewish state. The latter offers a right of citizenship to Jews anywhere in the world. Israel is not the state of all its citizens, much less all its residents; it is the state of (all) Jews. Its leaders purport to speak for Jews everywhere. They can hardly be surprised when their own behavior provokes a backlash against ... Jews.

Thus Israel itself has made a significant contribution to the resurgence of the anti-Semitism Bartov and others describe. This is an outcome with which many Israeli politicians are far from unhappy: It retroactively justifies their own bad behavior and contributes, as they proudly assert, to a rise in the number of European Jews leaving for Israel. At a time when many Israelis are obsessed with the prospect of becoming a minority in their own enlarged territory, the inflow of Jews fleeing real or imagined persecution is an occasion for self-congratulation.

Bartov concedes a distinction between "soft-core" and "hard-core" anti-Semitism. However, he still insists that there is a single slippery slope leading from misguided academics and intellectuals to pathological murderers. Historically this may be true. But today the implications of such a conflation of different levels of criticism and prejudice are dangerously censorious. No doubt some of Israel's strongest critics do display anti-Semitic propensities. But that doesn't disqualify anti-Zionism as ipso facto anti-Semitic: As Arthur Koestler observed back in 1948, you can't help people being right for the wrong reasons. If those of us who think Israel is behaving shamefully follow Bartov's reasoning, we'll be constrained to silence for fear of being accused of complicity in anti-Semitism ourselves.

What, then, is to be done? Those of us who take seriously the problem of anti-Semitism – but who utterly reject the suggestion that we ourselves are in danger of sympathizing with anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism – must begin by constructing and defending a firewall between the two. Israel does not speak for Jews; but Israel's claim to speak for Jews everywhere is the chief reason that anti-Israel sentiments are transposed into Judeophobia. Jews and others must learn to shed inhibitions and criticize Israel's policies and actions just as they would those of any other established state.

It may be easier for Jews to take their distance from Israel's illegal acts and misguided calculations than it is for non-Jews – the latter are always vulnerable to moral blackmail by Zionists, especially in countries with anti-Semitic pasts. But we shall never be able to think straight about anti-Semitism until this firewall is in place. Once Germans, French and others can comfortably condemn Israel without an uneasy conscience, and can look their Muslim fellow citizens in the face, it will be possible to deal with the real problem. For indeed there is a problem. This is an arena in which legitimate responses shade all too readily into familiar prejudices.

Thus, to take one notorious example: Critics of the foreign policy of the Bush administration who claim that it is directed in many cases by men with close ties to Israel are not mistaken. Contemporary U.S. foreign policy is in certain respects mortgaged to Israel. Several very senior Bush appointees spent the 1990s advising politicians of the Israeli far right. But that does not mean that "Jewish interests" run the American government, as some European and many Arab commentators have inferred and suggested. To say that Israel and its lobbyists have an excessive and disastrous influence on the policies of the world's superpower is a statement of fact. But to say that "the Jews" control America for their own ends is to espouse anti-Semitism.

Moreover, the slippage between criticism of America and dislike for Jews long antedates the founding of the state of Israel. "Anti-Americanism" and anti-Semitism have been closely interwoven at least since the 1920s, when European intellectuals looked with nervous distaste across the Atlantic and saw a rootless, predatory, commercial society, the incarnation of cosmopolitan modernity, threatening the continuity and distinctiveness of their own national cultures. Many critics of America, in Germany or France or Russia, were all too quick to identify the shifting, unfamiliar contours of an Americanizing world with the essential traits of a homeless Jewry. The link with Israel is new, but the image of "Jewish" America is an old story and a troubling one.

Or, to take an even more sensitive instance: The Shoah is frequently exploited in America and Israel to deflect and forbid any criticism of Israel. Indeed, the Holocaust of Europe's Jews is nowadays exploited thrice over: It gives American Jews in particular a unique, retrospective "victim identity"; it allows Israel to trump any other nation's sufferings (and justify its own excesses) with the claim that the Jewish catastrophe was unique and incomparable; and (in contradiction to the first two) it is adduced as an all-purpose metaphor for evil – anywhere, everywhere and always – and taught to schoolchildren all over America and Europe without any reference to context or cause.

This modern instrumentalization of the Holocaust for political advantage is ethically disreputable and politically imprudent. To deplore this abuse of other people's sufferings seems to me an important civic duty. But to conclude that "the Jews" have made too much of what happened in Europe between 1933 and 1945, or that it is now time to move on – that edges us much closer to anti-Semitism.

This brings us to a related and equally sensitive issue. Among European intellectuals and artists – in Germany, for example – anti-Semitism occasionally surfaces in discussions of how to speak openly about the unmanaged past. Why, people ask, after all these years should we not speak of the burning of Germany's cities, or the sinking of refugee boats, or even the uncomfortable fact that life in Hitler's Germany – for Germans – was far from unpleasant, at least until the last years of World War II? Because of what Germany did to the Jews? But we've spoken of this for decades – the Federal Republic is one of the most philo-Semitic nations in the world; for how much longer must we (Germans) look over our shoulder? Will the Jews never just forgive us and let everyone move on? As this last question suggests, what begins as the search for historical honesty risks ending perilously close to resentment at "the Jews."

In formerly communist countries one frequently encounters resentment and perplexity, among well-informed and educated people, at the West's failure to understand the enormity of the crimes of communism. "Why won't you compare Nazism to communism?" they ask. There are a number of answers that one might offer, but the question is not unreasonable, especially when posed by communism's victims. And it must be addressed openly, lest the citizens of eastern Europe tell themselves what a number of intellectuals in Romania, Hungary and elsewhere have already openly suggested: that the reason we in the West reject the comparison is that Nazism persecuted Jews above all, and it is Jews who set the international agenda for remorse, retribution and reparation. Once again, anti-Semitism emerges as the bastard child of otherwise reasonable political preoccupations.

There is no simple answer to the dilemmas raised by such issues. Somehow we need to juggle the need to speak honestly and openly about present politics and past sufferings without either imposing silences or legitimizing the resurrection of prejudices. In my view it is incumbent upon Jews in particular – Jewish writers, Jewish intellectuals, Jewish scholars – to address these contested and disconcerting problems. Because Jewish critics of Israel are less vulnerable to moral blackmail from Israel's defenders, they should be in the forefront of public discussion of the Middle East, in America and Europe alike.

Similarly, Jewish commentators need to take the lead in opening up difficult and uncomfortable conversations about the past – and the present – in Europe. Public discussion in Germany especially, but elsewhere too, is often trapped between politically correct evasions and resentful "taboo-breaking." The majority's fear of offending Jewish sensibilities arouses a growing minority's desire to do just that. We can never "normalize" the European history of anti-Semitism, nor should we. But if the charge of "anti-Semitism" remains suspended like Damocles' sword across the European public space – as it is today across much of America – we shall all fall silent. And between controversial debate and fearful silence we would be well advised to choose the former. Silence is always a mistake.

It's back to the problems.

Recent events have once again proved the truism that it's easy to run for office, it's hard to govern – especially when you're an arrogant fellow pursuing bad policies. For George W. Bush, knocking off John Kerry was a swagger on the beach compared to dealing with the real stuff. All Bush had to do was lie about Kerry, deride him, make promises he can't keep, talk tough, and mount an under-the-radar effort to motivate millions of fundamentalist Christian voters who (for some reason) obsess over gay marriage. That's nada compared to, say, winning the war in Iraq.

Once the election dust settled, the Bush gang looked like country-bumpkin first-termers. It botched the appointment of one of the most important Cabinet members: secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The Bush White House did this by racing ahead with Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner and a Rudy Giuliani crony. It's not only that Bush's vetters missed Kerik's nanny problem. They apparently did not even do a Nexis search on the guy. Had they done so, they would have learned he was a nomination disaster waiting to happen. As New York City prisoner commissioner, he had diverted rebates from cigarette sales in prisons to an obscure foundation he ran. He had been entangled with a New Jersey construction firm with alleged mob ties. His leadership of the NYPD after 9/11 was dubbed "scandalous" by John Lehman, a Republican member of the independent 9/11 commission. He had been in charge of police training in Iraq – hardly a triumph. He had an arrest warrant issued against him in conjunction with a civil legal dispute. He was sued, in separate cases, for retaliating against a corrections official who backed a Democrat and against others who were in disputes with a corrections official with whom he was allegedly having an extramarital affair. He had parlayed his political connections and received millions of dollars from a company that did business with the Department of Homeland Security. And there was more. He was lucky he had a nanny he could hide behind.

The Kerik blunder was not the White House's only Cabinet-level screwup. Bush officials sent clear signals they wanted Treasury Secretary John Snow to hit the road. Then Bush announced Snow was staying put. This was no way for a president to treat the head of his economic team. After all, this is the guy who has to come out before the press and the business community and perform an all-important task: fudge the numbers. Can he do so effectively if he's peeved?

Then Bush got caught tapping the phones of Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Come on. If you're going to play this game, do it well and don't be found out. Worse (for Bush), the taps produced nothing the White House could use to force ElBaradei out of his post. The Bushies consider him too soft on Iran, and some Bush aides have been angling for his ouster. But they are probably also mad at him because ElBaradei showed them up. Before the invasion of Iraq, ElBaradei and his weapons inspectors declared there were no indications that Saddam Hussein had been reviving his nuclear weapons program. Yet Bush, Dick Cheney and their posse had claimed Hussein had been "reconstituting" his nuclear program. Now it's clear the International Atomic Energy Agency was right and Bush was wrong. So the obvious response from Bush is, off with his head!

Bush is facing trouble in Iran. Military experts tell me there are few effective military options for the Bush hawks. The Iranian nuclear weapons program – to the extent it exists – is probably dispersed, based in civilian areas and located deep underground. It is no easy target. And Iran – bigger and stronger than Iraq – is not invasion material, especially when U.S. forces are stretched thin next door. So what's a saber-rattling pre-emptionist to do? Ditto for North Korea.

Meanwhile, Iraq is not getting any easier. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld became the administration's Bonehead Number One when he dismissed a soldier's question about the lack of armor for the troops. Throughout the election, the Bush campaign denied Kerry's charge that Bush had not provided enough armor for the troops. It's not too tough to spin reporters; it's more difficult to spin unprotected soldiers. And on the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein's capture – remember when war backers hailed that development as the beginning of the end of the insurrection? – eight U.S. Marines were killed in different battles in Iraq. In one piece of good news for Bush, this bad news was chronicled by the Washington Post in a brief story on Page A17. (Scott Peterson still rates more media attention than dead American GIs.) As the January elections approach, the security situation in Iraq appears to be worsening. And the six-mile stretch of highway from the Green Zone in Baghdad to the international airport remains too dangerous for U.S. officials to travel. Doom-and-gloom is the official position of the CIA. The agency's station chief in Baghdad sent a cable in late November – which was leaked within two weeks – that offered a bleak view, noting security in Iraq is likely to deteriorate further. Just in time for the elections. The intelligence reform bill passed by Congress will not be of much help.

Then there's Social Security. For some odd reason, Bush seems to be serious about his promise to partially privatize Social Security. That is, he's still talking about it after the election. There appears to be no way for Bush to enact such a scheme without racking up $2 trillion in transition costs. Bush's tax cuts for the rich are projected to yield trillions of dollars in national debt, yet this explosion of red ink never became a hot topic during the presidential campaign. Will another $2 trillion in Bush-created debt finally pose him political trouble? Perhaps. At the same time, the folks around him have started to hint that retirement benefits may have to drop by 6 percent, even after supposed gains from private accounts are added to the picture. So let's see: more debt, lower benefits. Sounds like a winner. No wonder several Senate Republicans have said they won't support any Social Security legislation unless it is also endorsed by Democrats. They want political cover. Yet the conservative House Republicans have expressed no interest in negotiating with their Democratic colleagues. Can Bush navigate the political land mines? I'd rather choke on a pretzel.

During the campaign, I happened to share a long airplane ride with one of Kerry's top advisers. Several hours into our conversation, he told me that every once in a while Kerry would ask him, "What the fuck are we going to do?" Kerry had in mind Iraq and a Kerry victory. Thanks to Ohio, he does not have the burden of devising an answer to his own query. But Bush does – and not merely on Iraq. He's facing a boatload of ugly challenges and dilemmas. Democrats ought not to be too giddy about this, for Bush has demonstrated that when the going gets tough he is perfectly able to commit gigantic blunders with bad consequences for all and no punishment for him. But he is not going to be able to escape his problems by hitting the campaign trail. As an in-over-his-head president once said, "It's hard work."

It's that gift-giving time of year, and once again I'm delivering the goods to people I think are in need of something special as they head into 2005.


Let's start at the top. For George W, I've bottled up something small, but potent. It's an ounce of humility – not enough to make him truly humble, but just enough to wipe that Viagra-size smirk off his face. Even a little touch of the stuff would make him that much better of a president.


For Tom DeLay, the loopy former pest-exterminator who's become a giant-sized pest himself, I sent a big can of Raid. If he'll spritz a bit of it under each arm in the mornings, it'll hold down his offensive arrogance enough to make him almost human.


But, what to get Wal-Mart? You'd think it has everything. Ah, of course, I'll give it the one thing it does not have: A union! This will enable its employees to get a fair wage, decent health care, and maybe even a pension, thus improving the public image and community reputation of the biggest and Scroogiest corporation in the world.


The Democratic party. Now there's a hard-hit outfit in need of lots of help. But I can think of the perfect gift to let it help itself, build its strength, and even flourish again. I'm sending the national party leaders some gumption – specifically, the gumption to be Democrats. Period. That's what people want the the party of Jefferson, FDR, HST, JFK, and LBJ to be. Not the corporate-hugging, mealy-mouthed party its been the last few years, but the unabashed, uncompromised party of working folks, willing to return to its populist roots and go right at the Bushites and their corporate sponsors.


Then there's Donnie Rumsfeld, who's so puffed up on himself that he can't see the mess he's made with his neo-con warmongering. So, I'm sending him a six-month stint as a grunt in Iraq, assigned to drive one of those vehicles that he still hasn't outfitted with life-protecting armor.

Happy holidays to all!

Right now, somewhere in the White House, administration strategists are hatching plans to go to war. Battle plans are being drawn. Timing and tactics are being finalized. A nuclear option is even being openly discussed.

The designated target? Iran? Syria? North Korea?

No, much closer to home: the United States Senate.

Salivating at the chance to radically remake the Supreme Court, the president and his loyal lapdogs in the World's Most Exclusive Club are plotting to obliterate over 200 years of Senate tradition by eliminating the use of filibusters against judicial nominees. The Robert's Rules of Disorder scheme would involve – who else? – Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as presiding Senate officer, ruling that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional and Majority Leader Bill Frist squashing the Democrats' inevitable objection to such an edict by tabling the motion. As long as we're "spreading democracy" abroad, no reason to leave out the home front, right?

This is the so-called "nuclear option," embraced with a wink and a nudge by Frist in November when he told the conservative Federalist Society: "One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end."

Invoking this parliamentary dirty trick would eliminate unlimited debate on judicial nominations and lower the number of votes needed before a nominee can be confirmed from the 60 necessary to break a filibuster to a simple majority of 51, and would drive a stake through the heart of the Senate's longstanding commitment – indeed one of its founding purposes – to defending the rights of the minority.

This scorched-earth approach is entirely in keeping with what Time magazine lauds this week as President Bush's "ten-gallon-hat leadership" style – a my-way-or-the-highway approach rooted in arrogance and laced with an intolerance of dissent that has already delivered him a rubber stamp Cabinet. Now he wants a rubber stamp Senate. Over the course of his first term, 204 of Bush's judicial nominees received Senate approval; just 10 were blocked. This is the highest number of lower-court confirmations any president has had in his first term since 1980 – including President Reagan. But, apparently, the highest is not enough. This president wants total approval of his every wish.

One small problem: That's not the way the Founding Fathers designed things. They had these funny notions about three separate but equal branches of government, free and open debate, and the value of checks and balances to ward off the overreaching for power by those in the majority. They built an entire system of government to counteract the abuse that inevitably goes with overreaching.

Yet that is precisely what the plan to do away with judicial filibusters is: an out-and-out power grab by the president and his Congressional accomplices. An underhanded scheme to kneecap the Constitution and take away the only weapon vanquished Democrats are left with to defend against Bush's "ten-gallon-hat" juggernaut. It would be impossible to overstate the importance of this battle. It is nothing less than a fight for the soul of our democracy – for what kind of country we want to live in. "George W. Bush," Ralph Neas, President of People for the American Way, told me, "has made it clear, both through his public comments and through the judges he has nominated to appellate courts, that he is committed to advancing an ideological agenda that would roll back many of the social and legal gains of the last century."

According to Neas, who has been at the forefront of judicial battles since the fight against Robert Bork in 1987, this is not just about Roe vs. Wade – it's also about turning the clock back to a time when states' rights and property rights trumped the protection of individual liberties and the ability of Congress to act in the common good on issues as far-ranging as civil rights enforcement, environmental protection, and worker health and safety.

This is not overheated partisan rhetoric but a realistic appraisal of the rulings handed down by the federal judges Bush has already appointed – and of the written opinions of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justices the president has cited as his models for future nominees to the High Court. "Courting Disaster 2004," a study by People for the American Way Foundation, found that adding just one or two Scalia/Thomas clones to the Supreme Court would put at risk more than 100 precedents and the legal protections they safeguard.

We're talking about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, worker protections, access to contraceptives and legal abortions, laws protecting our clean air and drinking water, and on and on.

Senate rules regarding filibusters are not something most Americans will find themselves discussing over a glass of eggnog during the holidays. But the impact these rules can have on our lives is staggering. And it must be made clear right now – not when Chief Justice Rehnquist resigns and Cheney and Frist team up to push the nuclear button. By then it will be much too late, and all Harry Reid will be able to do is duck and cover. True leadership is being able to see not just the crisis staring you in the face – but the one lurking just around the corner.

President Bush is pulling on his oversized Stetson and gearing up for battle. And here, unlike Iraq, he's making sure his political troops have all the armor they need. The Democrats need to pre-emptively launch an all-out campaign to educate the American people about what will be at stake during the coming assault on our democratic values. If they succeed, they will have the public with them, even if it becomes necessary to resort to threats of Mutually Assured Legislative Destruction. Let's hope that's not what it will take to protect the Senate, the Constitution, and over 65 years of hard-won social victories from the GOP's looming nuclear winter.

This wintry season, as the faithful continue to receive alarming reports from the news that Republicans are all that stand between them and the outlawing of Christmas itself by hordes of secular humanists, the two presidents Bush have endorsed a powerful conservative interest group specializing in removing the cross – not from schools or courthouses, but from churches.

Rather than the traditional egg hunt, this group, calling itself the American Clergy Leadership Conference, sponsored a nationwide "Tear Down The Cross" day for Easter, 2003. Last week, leaders in this radical cause presided over a Washington prayer breakfast featuring messages of thanks from the presidents. Former Sen. Bob Dole came in person.

Mostly African American, pastors who joined in 2003's ACLC-sponsored "Tear Down The Cross" won gold watches from the wealthy group, which unabashedly claims in its publications to have stripped churches of over a hundred crosses over the Easter holiday alone. This, movement leaders said, cleared the way for a new age and second messiah.

Speaking of messiahs, make a quick stop at the Web site of the ACLC, and it's clear there's more to it than the "rapidly growing movement of clergy committed to the endeavor of making this nation the best that it can be," as the ACLC described itself in a Dec. 8 Washington Times op-ed. It's actually a vehicle for Sun Myung Moon, the billionaire conservative donor who calls himself the True Father.

Though the breakfast boasted two other "co-sponsors," both are easily identifiable as projects of the self-declared Messiah: the International and Interreligious Federation of World Peace and the American Family Coalition, which Moon founded in 1984. How much more eminent these names sound than "the Moonies"! In the 1970s, that was the shorthand on the evening news for Moon's followers, whose frank call for crushing Western democracy, combined with success in recruiting teenagers, made them a popular nightmare on the evening news.

On Wednesday, a video file containing the elder President Bush's message to the ACLC disappeared from the movement's web site, though both Bush endorsements were reported in the Washington Times. Neither the White House nor the ACLC returned requests for comment on the breakfast and President Bush's participation.

Taking out the Trash

One series of photos found on Moon's Web site, but purged after receiving unfavorable attention earlier this year from evangelicals, shows Massachusetts preacher John Kingara taking down the cross from his church, hauling it behind the old brick building and hoisting it into a dumpster. Another shows a ritual in Israel disposing of the cross in the earth.

Kingara, embracing the ACLC's new gospel, declared in remarks found in the Unification News, "The fact that the cross is a symbol of division, shame, suffering and bloodshed prove that it is not of God but Satan." He continued, "On this 18th day of April 2003, we are beginning a new history. Pastors, please, help me to bring the cross down, because it is not of God but the devil."

Cheerfully pitched to pastors as "trade your cross for a crown," Moon's rebate plan takes its name from a 1913 hymn with a somewhat different slant. Whereas "The Old Rugged Cross" pines for salvation in heaven, Moon offered the pastors the possibility to cash in here on earth, at a taxpayer-funded Senate building. At a secret March 23, 2004 ceremony, he declared he was erecting heaven on earth. That evening, the elderly Korean eminence behind the ACLC was brought the twinkling crown by bowing Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.).

Moon was no accidental VIP that night. Far from being on the fringes of Washington, he's the supermogul behind a political and media empire that includes the Washington Times and United Press International, as well as being a longtime friend of the Bush family.

In Moon's teachings, God himself is shedding tears over mankind's obsession with the cross, which prevents us from recognizing the real "returning lord": Moon himself. It's no secret. This is something he's patiently explained to many audiences of congressmen and former Republican presidents over the years, in Washington pageants that hardly ever make the news.

Moon was keynote speaker last week, declaring in remarks reprinted by the Times that "God's heart is under confinement." In some ways it was a repeat performance of the Senate coronation ceremony, which The New York Times editorial page compared to an act of the mad emperor Caligula.

You may remember that Sen. John Warner and other congressmen unloaded on Moon's entourage for "deceiving" them into sponsoring a ceremony where America "surrendered to [Moon] in the king's role," according to an internal church memo. "America is saying to Father, 'please become my king,'" claimed Moon minister Chung Kwak. The versatile Kwak is currently wearing a second hat as head of the UPI news agency, added to Moon's collection of media properties in 2000.

Strangely enough, last week the hosts of the "surrender" ceremony weren't blasted but blessed by two presidents of the United States. The same faces were there: George Stallings, Jr., the flamboyant ex-archbishop who bellowed at the March dinner for America to open up its heart to Moon; Michael Jenkins and Chang Shik Yang, hosts of past "Tear Down The Cross" rituals; and former Democratic D.C. representative Walter Fauntroy, who shares the Moonies' opposition to gay civil unions (Moon calls gays "dung-eating dogs"; Fauntroy calls same-sex marriage "an abomination"). Congressman Davis did not attend.

Like the Senate party, this conference climaxed with a new Crown of Peace awarded to Moon by his own organization, though in this case they held off on the royal treatment until the following evening. The award was reported by UPI.

According to a report in the Washington Times as well as video found on the Moon-affiliated Web site FamilyFed.org, the elder Bush made a taped appearance before the ACLC's 3,000-strong crowd, which he thanked for their work. "I thought about parachuting into the building," he joked about wishing he could make it. And he paid lip service to Moon's unwieldy religious jargon, using phrases like "peace centered on God," a goal that he called "right on target."

His son, George W. Bush, wrote a warm letter of support presented at the event by a state senator, in which the president and his wife Laura sent his best wishes to the sponsors – and thanked them for rallying his "armies of compassion." It is unclear what the ACLC has done for society's problems, though its Web site is selling a video called "Beyond The Cross," and an affiliated Moon front group, Free Teens USA, has received almost half a million dollars under Bush's abstinence-only program.

Last year, as word seeped out of a movement with billions in the bank, exchanging gifts and promises of financial security for the rejection of Protestant beliefs, more mainstream, born-again Christians, like radio host Vic Eliason, were horrified. He warned on his nationally-syndicated program CrossTalk that the ACLC was ushering a false teacher into the houses of belief. Others speculated Moon was the Antichrist. But how many listeners knew that the false teacher's phone number might as well be programmed into George H.W. Bush's mobile phone?

Wouldn't Be Prudent

The elder Bush once explained his cooperation with Moon's Unification Church to the Washington Post, through a spokesman, as follows: "this group is about strengthening the family and that's what President and Mrs. Bush are deeply focused on." Well, after a fashion. Moon preaches that Jesus failed to start a family, which is why God is "confined," as he said Tuesday – grieved by his son's having blown it for mankind, with the Nazi Holocaust a punishment for the Jews' failure to unite behind the King of the Jews.

And so Moon says he's building a new kingdom centered on "absolute family-ism," referring to his True Family of sworn followers. In the past, his new sons and daughters have rejected their own families to join Moon, who handpicks mates for them to marry at his mass weddings. One ex-member is Cathryn Mazer, whose grieving family was filmed in 1993 by the "Today Show" as they tried without success to enter a Moon dormitory where Cathryn was staying. She says photos of Moon with Bush played a major role in the seminar that indoctrinated her into the cult – used to sell potential converts on the legitimacy of Moon.

"If someone told you about it, it would seem too far-fetched to be plausible," she says.

Yet the friendship is well-documented. Reuters reported in the mid-'90s that the elder Bush trekked to Argentina as a paid spokesman for Moon, whom he introduced as "the man with the vision." During the Clinton years, Bush also tagged along with Moon's speaking tour in Japan, where the former president had kind words for his strange bedfellow, an ex-convict. Bush is estimated to have received upwards of $1 million for these appearances. Moon also gave $1 million to Bush's presidential library. And when Bush was vice president, it was a generous check from Moon that opened Oliver North's Contra Freedom Fund.

But Washington conservatives are most thankful to Moon for lavishing more than $2 billion on the money-losing Washington Times. The paper was an important building block in the construction of the alternative, Republican media machine as we know it today. But many conservatives were quietly uneasy – fretting that a pact was being made with the devil. At a 1997 Washington Times anniversary dinner, the elder Bush made a video appearance similar to Monday's, crediting the paper with winning the Cold War, and similarly sharing a stage with Moon, who claimed then that he had founded the Times to save the world.

In Monday's video, Bush declared: "I want to salute a man I respect: Wes Pruden," referring to the Times editor, whose paper frequently publicizes Moon projects that most newspapers would ignore. On December 7 he ran a piece by ACLC Rev. Donnie McLeod, who has argued for the removal of the cross in sermons covered by Unification Church publications.

The cross-disposal theologian wrote: "as the president is now free from the election concerns and can never be reelected, he can now build a legacy for America and the world." ACLC leaders, he said, "are ready to see the president as I see him, a man to God who is truly ready to make the sacrifices and commitments to create a legacy of faith and family that will guide our nation for the next 200 years."

The Washington Times Foundation is slippery to define, an organization with multiple public faces that morphs when convenient into the ACLC and other religious organizations. The Senate coronation, for example, was booked under the name of the foundation, though it was treated as a photo opportunity for the South Korean religious arm of the church, which trumpeted it as the U.S. government's official stamp of approval on plans for the future of Christianity.

A former Times editor, James Whalen, told me that the protean nature of the group makes it easy to involve national-level figures in "showcasing" Moon – yet conveniently allows politicians to claim, for example, that they only dropped by to lift a glass to the awesome investigative reporting of Times reporter Bill Gertz.

And meanwhile, at the other end of the invisible line between mainstream and eldrich, there is the ACLC and its persistence in seeing the Christian cross disposed of like nuclear waste. A month after Easter last year, the group flew holy men from all over the world to a graveside in Israel, where undertakers had draped a cross beneath the blue and yellow flag of Reverend Moon, and buried the cross forever – another casualty at the hands of the armies of compassion.

Spurred on by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, conservatives are outraged at the war against Christianity supposedly declared in department stores' "Happy Holidays" signs. But secularism is one thing, and sacrilege is something else, especially coming from Sun Myung Moon's cult, which indulges dreams of becoming the state religion. The president has built his reputation on being a good Methodist, but he rarely attends church, come to think of it. And he has cozied up to a desecration spree that Tim LaHaye couldn't make up in his "Left Behind" books. Is he what he pretends to be?

Just my luck: I finally get to be a senior citizen only to discover that the president considers my longevity a grave threat to the nation. Apparently, my collecting Social Security checks for as long as I have left on this Earth is going to help bankrupt the economy and/or be an unbearable burden on young Americans.

That's why, after seven decades of unmitigated success in protecting seniors from the vagaries of market forces, the White House now wants to turn Social Security itself over to the vagaries of market forces. The conservative mantra, whether it comes to energy policy, war in Iraq or education, is to siphon public money into the private sector whenever and wherever possible, through such gimmicks as agribusiness subsidies, school vouchers and the hiring of private mercenaries.

Greed perfectly meshes with ideology in the Republican Party, and the attempted sabotage of Social Security is just another example. While the followers of Milton Friedman talk about the free market in religious terms, Wall Street is slavering at the possibility of one of the biggest potential windfalls in human history if the Social Security spigot is turned its way. The attendant investment fees alone would be enormous – certainly higher than the minimal 1% overhead costs the current Social Security system consumes.

What's astonishing is that despite the recent spate of abrupt corporate bankruptcies and Wall Street corruption scandals, the president would have us believe only stockbrokers can save Social Security, and the stability of the entire fund would be tied to a stock market that has been known to tank now and again. Further, even the president's key advisors admit that the short-run cost of "privatizing" Social Security would add trillions of dollars to the Bush legacy of federal government red ink.

While I am all for expanding opportunities to invest in tax- deferred retirement accounts (like 401k's), it does not follow that Social Security should be exposed to the same risks. Social Security is the safety net for the elderly that has since its inception protected millions from facing abject poverty upon retirement – even if their pensions should evaporate, as they did for the employees of Enron.

Along with Medicare, Social Security is the key reason seniors are no longer the most impoverished class in our society or a crushing burden on their children. This last needs to be mentioned to counter the argument that ensuring the security of baby boom seniors would impose an intolerable burden on younger workers. For who is going to replace those Social Security checks, should they stop coming because Grandpa picked the wrong stock? The kids and grandkids, that's who, if they have any real family values.

I speak out of an experience I'm sure many of you share. My mother retired after 40 years as a garment worker, after which she lived with me until she died at the thankfully old age of 88. Her presence was of great emotional value to our family, but because of her two-decade bout with Parkinson's, it would have represented a serious financial burden on my wife and me had it not been for government support.

The president says the system that has served us well in the past is no longer sustainable. He, or rather those cooking the books for him, attempts to scare us with projections that the Social Security trust fund will begin to run deficits 38 years from now.

But those numbers assume no dramatic change in the increasing ability of seniors to retire later and otherwise continue to earn income that is taxable. The anti-Social Security crowd is trying to make this a young-versus-old generational fight, even though seniors still pay taxes like anybody else. We even pay taxes on most of our Social Security earnings, if our household income rises above a pittance.

If the president is truly worried about the federal coffers running dry he should stop cutting taxes for us better-off folk and stop spending so much money on boondoggles like the occupation of Iraq. However, if it turns out that we need additional taxes to cover the obligations of the Social Security trust fund four decades from now, so be it. After all, money distributed to the elderly through Social Security is poured right back into the economy.

For three-quarters of a century, Social Security has guaranteed us all a life of modest dignity as we live out the end of this mortal coil.

So – if you'll pardon this senior's use of a curmudgeonly truism – I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The day following Election 2004, retiring NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw indicated the need for strong national standards in how we count the votes. In an unusually serious interview with David Letterman, Brokaw said point blank, "We've gotta fix the election system in this country."

In a message to supporters, former presidential candidate John Kerry echoed this sentiment, calling for new "national standards" for elections and saying "It's unacceptable that people still don't have full confidence in the integrity of the voting process." In Ohio, Reverend Jesse Jackson also called for reform, emphasizing the need for a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote, a right guaranteed by most established democracies. Every returning member of the Congressional Black Caucus has signed onto Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr's HJR 28 to provide a constitutional right to vote.

The 2004 elections underscore the urgent demand to modernize our elections and bring them in line with international norms. Without such modernization, we will fail to establish a vital democracy and remain vulnerable to electoral breakdowns.

Consider these reforms:

1) Non-partisan election officials. At the top of the list must be nonpartisan election officials. It hardly matters whether the method of voting is with paper and pen or open-source computerized equipment if election administrators are not trustworthy. The secretaries of state overseeing elections in three battleground states – Ohio, Missouri, and Michigan – were co-chairs of their state's George Bush reelection campaigns. In Missouri, that Secretary of State was running for governor – he oversaw elections for his own race! A highly partisan Republican Secretary of State ran elections in Florida, as did a partisan Democrat in New Mexico. A Mexican observer of the 2004 election commented, "That looks an awful lot like the old Mexican PRI to me." Election administrators should be civil servants who have a demonstrated proficiency with technology, running elections, and making the electoral process transparent and secure.

2) National elections commission. The U.S. leaves election administration to administrators in over 3000 counties scattered across the nation with too few standards or uniformity. This is a formula for unfair elections. Most established democracies use national elections commissions to establish minimum national standards and uniformity, and to partner with state and local election officials to ensure pre-election and post-election accountability for their election plans. The Elections Assistance Commission established recently by the Help America Vote Act is a pale version of this and should be strengthened greatly.

3) Universal voter registration. We lack a system of universal voter registration in which citizens who turn 18 years of age automatically are registered to vote by election authorities. This is the practice used by most established democracies, giving them voter rolls far more complete and clean than ours – in fact, a higher percentage of Iraqi adults are registered to vote than American adults. Universal voter registration in the U.S. is now possible as result of the Help America Vote Act which mandated that all states must establish statewide voter databases by 2006. It would add 50 million voters to the rolls, a disproportionate share being young people and people of color.

4) "Public Interest" voting equipment. Currently voting equipment is suspect, undermining confidence in our elections. The proprietary software and hardware are created by shadowy companies with partisan ties who sell equipment by wining and dining election administrators with little knowledge of voting technology. The government should oversee the development of publicly-owned software and hardware, contracting with the sharpest minds in the private sector. And then that open-source voting equipment should be deployed throughout the nation to ensure that every county – and every voter – is using the best equipment. Other nations already do this with positive results.

5) Holiday/weekend elections. We vote on a busy workday instead of on a national holiday or weekend (like most other nations do), creating a barrier for 9 to 5 workers and also leading to a shortage of poll workers and polling places. Puerto Rico typically has the highest voter turnout in the United States, and makes Election Day a holiday.

6) Ending redistricting shenanigans by adopting full representation. Most legislators choose their voters during the redistricting process, long before those voters get to choose them. 98% of U.S. House incumbents again won re-election, and 95% of all races were won by noncompetitive margins. The driving factor is not campaign finance inequities but winner-take-all elections compounded by rigged legislative district lines. As a start, redistricting must be non-partisan, driven by nonpolitical criteria. But by far the best solution is full representation electoral systems which make voters far more important than district lines.

7) Abolish the Electoral College. The Electoral College enables presidential campaigns to almost completely ignore most states. It allows a shift of a handful of votes in one or two states to decide the presidency, inviting corruption and partisan election administration. It can deny the presidency to the candidate with the most votes. We need to support Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr's HR 109, to institute direct election of the president with a majority victory threshold.

8) Pry open our democracy. Our "highest vote-getter wins" method of electing executive offices creates incentives to keep third-party candidates off the ballot as potential spoilers. Battles over Ralph Nader's ballot access demonstrated that our system is not designed to accommodate three or more choices, yet important policy areas can be completely ignored by major party candidates. Most modern democracies accommodate voter choice through two-round runoff or instant runoff elections for executive offices, and full representation electoral systems for legislatures. Instant runoff voting had a great first election in San Francisco this November and passed in other places like Burlington, Vermont and Ferndale, Michigan.

A number of organizations are highlighting reform packages, among them Progressive Democrats of America and Common Cause. We can't win all these reforms at once, but we can make advances if we keep our eye on the prize and pursue opportunities that emerge. We urge people to visit FairVote's website at fairvote.org to find out how to get involved. Whether you're a Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian or independent, you can be part of one big party: the "Better Democracy" party.

The recent election spawned a thousand postmortems. Most attributed the Democratic loss to an incoherent message and a refusal to relate to America's deeply felt religious longings. The Democratic Party is probably guilty on both counts. But that is not why liberals – in the traditional sense of the term – lose elections. They lose because they approach politics differently from conservatives, at least conservatives circa 2004.

Conservatives view politics as war. In war, one tries to demoralize and destroy the enemy, seize his territory and gain unconditional surrender. And as Alberto Gonzales, our next Attorney General, has argued in an international context, in war there are no rules.

Liberals engage in politics as a contact sport. In politics, like football, people get injured. But even violent sports have rules. Rule-breakers receive penalties, including being thrown out of the game. And in sports, when the game ends, people shake hands, and differences are set aside.

This difference in approach results in a telling and visible difference in tactics and strategy. At the Democratic convention, word went out that it was to be a positive affair, pro-Kerry, not anti-Bush. The Republican Convention, on the other hand, accentuated the negative. It was a savage affair. Contrast the content and style of the keynote address of Barack Obama at the Democratic convention with that of Zell Miller at the Republican convention. When Reverend Al Sharpton went off-script in a speech that energized everyone at the Convention, Democratic leaders and commentators quickly distanced themselves from his comments.

Kerry was extremely reluctant to focus on George W. Bush's absence in the National Guard. Republicans, on the other hand, gave tens of millions of dollars to fund a 7-month no-holds-barred vicious effort by Swift Boat veterans accusing Kerry of being a traitor who prolonged the war and shot himself to gain a Purple Heart. The Democratic Party's response? No fair.

In the days following the 2002 election, House Majority Leader Tom Delay and other Republican leaders sent thugs into Florida's election offices to physically stop the manual recount. The morning after the 2004 election, with clear evidence of thousands of instances of voter fraud and malfeasance coming in across the country and specifically, in closely contested Ohio, John Kerry conceded.

Conservatives understand the nature of power and they are willing, even eager, to exercise it. When Ronald Reagan assumed office, Republicans adopted a conservative litmus test for those coming into civil service. They reassigned or forced out civil servants who did not accept the party's new ideology. James Watt, Secretary of the Interior, put contractors on notice that they'd better be Republicans.

Before the 1984 election I asked several leading Democratic Party officials whether they would engage in the same tactics if they regained control of the Executive Branch. I argued that if they did not, they would be saddled with an obstructionist bureaucracy hostile to their objectives. They were horrified at my suggestion. "What they did was wrong," they insisted.

When Republicans gained control of the House in the mid-1990s they made it clear that any trade association with a lobbyist with Democratic credentials would have a difficult time gaining access. In this election, for the first time in U.S. history, the Republican Party declared that no one could see the president speak unless they supported his re-election. They spread the word that those who volunteered to work for his re-election would be given a priority.

In 1989, Newt Gingrich filed charges against Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright. Gingrich argued that Wright had used bulk purchases of a vanity book, "Reflections of a Public Man," to earn speaking fees in excess of the allowed maximum. At the time the Democratic Party held as large a majority in the House as the Republican Party does now. But Democrats did not defend Wright. After all, they sheepishly maintained, he did engage in unethical conduct. In May, Wright resigned as Speaker. In June he resigned his office.

Fast forward to 2004. Republican Speaker of the House Tom Delay has been censured twice for unethical conduct. He may soon be indicted. The Republican response? They changed the rules to allow him to continue as speaker even if indicted!

When the Senate was deliberating about whether to support John Ashcroft's nomination as Attorney General, Democrat Russell Feingold insisted, "A Republican president ought to be able to appoint people of strong conservative ideology." Can you imagine a Republican senator uttering those words if a Democratic president were in power and he nominated someone with strong liberal credentials? Remember Lani Guinier?

Conservatives are driven by rage. Liberals are driven by guilt. Conservatives suffer no moral qualms when they engage in dirty tactics. The ends justify the means. Civilization is at stake. Liberals worry that if they do evil they will become evil.

Consider the very language that Republicans use. When conservative Republicans gained control of the House in 1994 Gingrich's political action committee, GOPAC, circulated to all Republican members a memo. Entitled, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," the memo declared, "Language matters." It contained a list of words that should be "Appl(ied) to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party. ...Memorize as many as possible," it urged. Among the words listed were, "decay, failure, sick, pathetic, liberal, traitors, threaten, devour, destructive, corrupt, steal, cheat, bizarre."

Ten years later such vocabulary has become standard fare in Republican campaigns.

In this campaign, Democrats were reluctant to attack George W. Bush for his violations of religious doctrine (e.g. supporting the death penalty, slashing help to the needy). Republicans focused on John Kerry's violation of a single Catholic tenet (abortion) and throughout the campaign accused him of blasphemy and worse. Here in Minnesota, conservatives carried signs branding John Kerry the anti-Christ.

Which leads to the key question: Can we fight fair and win? Can we talk about issues while refusing to engage in character assassination and gain a political victory at the national level? Or, on the flip side, if we adopt conservative tactics will we lose the very soul of liberalism? If we engage in politics as war, and win, will the same brutalizing values guide our exercise of power once in office?

I read with interest, and perhaps a bit of bemusement, outgoing Colorado Senate President John Andrews� explanation in the Weekly Standard for why the Republican Party of Colorado suffered major losses � a U.S. Senate seat, a Congressional seat, and both the State Senate and House � in November. �Why did a state so reliably red for so long – a state that's gone Republican in seven of eight presidential races since I came here from the Nixon White House in 1974,� Andrews asks, �vote deep blue all down the ticket below Bush-Cheney?� Andrews rightly ascribes the Democratic success to the failure of the Republican Party to offer a positive agenda and the extraordinary funding capabilities of the Democrats. But those two elements were only a small part of the reason for the Democratic success.

So what did State Sen. Andrews miss? Statewide victories for the Democrats in traditionally Republican states were not the norm in this election, so it makes sense for everyone to take a look at what happened in Colorado. Here are some reasons for why the Democrats did so well:

1.) Change vs. stay the same � The past two years there has been little more than bad news coming forth from the State Capitol. Insufficient education funding, torpid job growth, on-going state budget fiscal crises, rising health care costs and reductions in benefits all led to an environment where voters were seeking a change.

2.) Salazar � Ken Salazar exemplified the attributes voters sought. His Senate campaign stressed his personal values � hard work, commitment to family and Western roots and ethics � and successes as attorney general on local and state issues. These provided an overarching thematic for the Colorado Democratic Party. In contrast to John Kerry, Salazar, in large part because of his background as attorney general, was perceived as the candidate who was better on issues related to terrorism and personal safety. In suburban counties Salazar outpaced Kerry by significant margins and based on the exit polling data ran eight percent ahead of Kerry among women; �security moms� voted for Ken Salazar but not John Kerry. The Democrat was the safe choice.

3.) Coordination � Many groups participated in the effort to elect Democrats, among them the Colorado NARAL, Colorado AFL-CIO, Colorado Education Association, Colorado Trial Lawyers, and the Environmental and GLBT communities. This time their commitment to win galvanized them. From a tactical standpoint, the limited overlap in activities brought an efficiency and breadth in resource allocation. The result was the ability to target broader audiences with greater communications. In the past, due to limited communication budgets, Republicans were rarely targeted, but in Colorado, due to hefty Republican registration advantages, a Democratic candidate generally needs support from at least 15 percent of the Republicans to win. The cooperation of the groups and the funders assured that targets were broadened to include younger Republicans and areas outside Democratic and Independent precincts, and that the full spectrum (radio, cable TV, direct mail, door-to-door and telephones) of communications vehicles were employed.

4.) Initiatives � By no means planned by Democratic strategists, initiatives and referenda played a critical role in the molding of the political environment and the mobilization of activists. Additionally, they served as a diversion for the Republican leadership. Just as the gay marriage initiatives in most battleground states were instrumental in the dialogue on a presidential level, four initiatives in Colorado played a similar role. Amendment 37, an initiative to mandate the use of renewable energy forced discussions of energy and environmental policy, mobilizing thousands of progressive activists. A major funding measure increase for light rail, FasTracks, passed with the help of significant members of the Republican business community, creating an intra-party rift with opponent GOP Governor Bill Owens. In tandem with Amendment 35, a tobacco tax initiative, which passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote, FasTracks mitigated GOP traditional attacks on tax increases: how could the GOP attack Democrats for tax increases supported by members of the GOP? Finally, Amendment 36, the Electoral College Reform initiative, forced Republicans, and Owens in particular, to put time, energy and resources fighting an issue with limited state impact.

5.) Community Counts �The reason local and personal issue messages resonated with the electorate was that the candidates who delivered the messages were entrenched in their communities. Many of the Democratic candidates had limited Democratic Party connections but were well-known for their non-political civic and community activism. As one Republican state senator put it, �I don�t know how you did it, but you�ve got all the �go-to guys and gals� in every community running for office as a Democrat.� Of course, it helped that many of the Republicans, particularly those who emerged from primaries, were simply too wacko for Colorado, thus giving credence to a messages that Democrats were �mainstream� while Republicans were �too extreme.�

6.) Engagement � In some part because of the mood for change, and in some part because of the nature of candidates like Salazar, the 2004 electorate was extraordinarily engaged. Voters considered the issues and the candidates, and voted. Turnout was high across the state, particularly in areas where there were competitive State Senate and House races. Many of the voters were new to the system and they tended to be younger and to vote for the Democrats. Based on the outcome of the down ballot CU Board of Regents race � the traditional indicator of party support in a state election because of its low visibility � Democratic results generally were four to six percent better than in 2000.

7.) Message � The messages of the Democratic campaigns were highly focused on real alternatives to the current situation. They made significant efforts to present policy alternatives and responses in a positive light. Importantly, these alternatives reflected local and personal concerns that mattered to voters. Local water worries, regional transportation difficulties, huge funding problems for specific educational institutions (CSU), and loss of individual health care benefits dominated the issue agenda and supported the notion that Democrats had answers to these problems while Republicans were directionless, too ideological, or flummoxed.

8. ) Stay focused on the message � Democrats did not insert guns, gays or abortion in their agenda unless it was to signal that a Republican was ideologically intransient, and symbolic of Republican willingness to put ideology above getting things done for the state and for the local community. Moreover, in contrast to national Democrats, there were no attempts to craft a message around the funders, the operatives, or the organizations themselves. The focus was on policy and issues, not the legislative and campaign process.

Much of Democratic success in Colorado this election can be ascribed to research, planning, forethought, and the spontaneous convergence of unexpected attitudes and activities that created a political �perfect storm.� The challenge for Democrats in Colorado is to do it again in two years. With an open Governor�s seat and slim majorities in both houses of the legislature, the opportunity exists. To stay in the majority, Democrats must deliver accomplishments on the issues that matter to voters: education, healthcare, and transportation. Another session dominated by partisanship, ideological intransigence, and limited results will jeopardize the gains Democrats made in this election.

Bill Condon's new movie, "Kinsey" may have reawakened America's interest in the largely forgotten but influential post-War era sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey, but for Judith Reisman, he has been a singular obsession for decades. Reisman has cast herself as the anti-Kinsey, a self-styled moral monger in an existential – and admittedly personal – battle with the forces of cultural decay and sexual permissiveness. In her writings and lectures, Reisman conjures a dark world in which Playboy magazine insidiously pushes kiddie-porn, where homosexuals crusade for the hearts and behinds of America's youth and "erotoxins" as powerful as crack cocaine fill the somatasensory cortexes of porn watchers. From Reisman's writings and lectures, one could get the impression that this world is entirely the creation of Kinsey, the Master of Perverts.

While Reisman's ideas have naturally endeared her to a Who's Who of ornery theocrats and survivalist militia types, in recent years she has found herself kibitzing with the likes of GOP senators and Bush administration officials. Though the "Dr." that precedes her name on her book and her web site is practically cosmetic, earned with a degree in communications, this November she provided expert testimony on Capitol Hill for Republican Sen. Sam Brownback on the scientific perils of pornography. There, she also lobbied for the reintroduction of a bill that would mandate an investigation into her claim that Kinsey sexually abused children during his research. Through friends in the Justice Department, Reisman has helped push for an increased focus on prosecuting porn. And she is a favorite speaker at conferences of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a federally funded non-profit which provides technical assistance to controversial abstinence-only programs in public schools. As Reisman gathers influence in Republican-dominated Washington, her work is bearing an increasingly apparent mark on the Christian right's political agenda and by extension, on the White House's social policy.

"As president and founder of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, Judith Reisman has affected my life personally through the enormous amount of scientific research she's done – and without Judith's impact on my life, I don't believe the abstinence community would have been impacted," Abstinence Clearinghouse founder, Leslee Unruh, told me. The Abstinence Clearinghouse, advised by members of conservative Christian groups like Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and Coral Ridge Ministries, is funded in part by the Department of Health and Human Services. As the spearhead of the abstinence-only movement, its primary task is to design and disseminate curricula to public schools which administer abstinence-only courses.

Unruh is a retired businesswoman and anti-abortion activist who says she "has a common sense background" in the sexual health field. Thanks to her friend Reisman, she says, she has come to understand that "Kinsey is very responsible for the destruction of my parents' generation." Through Abstinence Clearinghouse, Unruh sells Reisman's book, "Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences," which accuses Kinsey of everything from pedophilia to Nazism, and publishes a pamphlet, "Casualties of Kinsey," supporting the theory that Kinsey molested child research volunteers. Reisman is also a featured speaker at Clearinghouse conferences.

"I think Judith Reisman is starting to have an impact with people in the abstinence community because I've pushed to have her at our conferences, and they just love her," said Unruh.

So how did a little old Jewish lady like Reisman earn rock-star status on the right? How did a red diaper baby active in the Labor Youth League in the 1940's come to blame Kinsey for all of America's social ills? And how did the daughter of Yiddish-speaking immigrants begin equating Kinsey with the Nazis who liquidated much of her extended family in Europe? The answer, or at least, hints of it, lies in her personal history, a story with no shortage of startling twists, turns and tragedies. Though she refused to tell her tale to me, rejecting e-mail and phone requests for an interview, Reisman has recorded it in a self-published 1998 essay, "A Personal Odyssey to the Truth."

Her story begins in pre-World War II Newark, N.J., a haven for Jewish immigrants that also serves as the setting for Phillip Roth's best selling novel about a covert Nazi conspiracy to seize control of the United States, "The Plot Against America." Like Roth, Reisman portrays Newark as a garden of innocence, a redoubt from the storm of cultural tumult gathering around her. Her mother was a Yiddish theatre actress and her father, a folk singer; both passed their musical talents on to her. "I lived at a wonderful time," Reisman recalled. "I felt safe with neighbors, uncles or cousins as was the custom of that time." It was morning in America.

Even when the 1960s arrived, Reisman claimed she was still a naif. "I married, and the hedge of protection about my life was not breached until 1966 when my 10-year-old daughter was molested by a 13-year-old adored and trusted family friend," she wrote. "He knew she would like it, he said, he knew from his father's magazines." According to Reisman, the boy slipped out of the country with his family while her daughter slipped into a deep depression which Reisman suggested may have contributed to her death from a brain aneurysm 15 years later.

After the incident, Reisman sought solace in a college friend living in the liberal mecca, Berkeley. She claims her friend told her that "children are sexual from birth." "I did not know it then," Reisman recounted, "but as a young mother, I had entered the world according to Kinsey." But before Reisman set her sights on Kinsey, her career as a songwriter would have to collapse under the weight of the liberal media.

In 1973, after earning a name as a pioneering music video producer for various local children's shows, her talents were recognized by the producer of "Captain Kangaroo." Soon after he hired her, however, she says he informed her that she would need to adapt her songwriting style to the changing tastes of American kids, who were tuning into cartoons at increasing rates. "I would have to speed up my tempo to compete with the fast-action and the increasing violence of the cartoons on other stations ... I found myself unwilling or unable to write for children that way," Reisman recalled.

Reisman spent her royalties from "Kangaroo" to put herself through graduate school at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, where she says she studied mass media's effects on the minds of children. She emerged from her studies convinced that images of Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse and other cuddly characters that appeared "in Playboy/Penthouse would cause sexual acting out on children." After she delivered a lecture on the Playboy/kiddie porn conspiracy at a conference on "Love and Attraction" at Swansea University in Wales in 1977, Reisman claims she was taken aside by a "Canadian professor" who informed her there was only one man responsible for the "global child sex abuse epidemic": Alfred Kinsey.

"Now I finally knew there was a source authority for children increasingly being viewed sexually," Reisman wrote. "... [M]y friend Carole had ... gotten the idea that 'children were sexual from birth' from Kinsey." Suddenly, the boy who molested Reisman's daughter became a mere extension of Kinsey. And while the boy had dissapeared, Reisman saw Kinsey living on in the mounting women's liberation and gay rights movements.

Interestingly, in her "Personal Odyssey," Reisman cites nearly everyone who influenced her ideological formation, from her father to her enemies in the "international academic pedophile movement" – everyone, that is, except her husband. In a 1996 profile of Reisman by Miss Poppy Dixon (on her web site, AdultChristianity.com), wrote that Reisman was, "Intimidated by her husband, a university professor ..." One wonders why Reisman omitted him from her tale.

The onset of the Reagan Revolution presented Reisman with a wealth of opportunities. In 1984, Justice Department official Alfred Regnery, now a prominent conservative publisher, granted Reisman $734,371 to analyze the content of Playboy magazines between 1954 and 1984. When she turned in her findings at American University, where she was based, the university refused to publish them. Even Regnery confessed the grant was a mistake. "This is not science, it's vigilantism: paranoid, pseudoscientific hyperbole with a thinly veiled, hidden agenda. This kind of thing doesn't help children at all," Dr. Loretta Haroian, a leading expert on childhood sexuality, said of Reisman's report.

Ostracized by mainstream academia, within 10 years, Reisman had found a more receptive audience for her ideas. At a May, 1994 conference of Christian right leadership in Colorado Springs described by the Washington Times as "top secret," Reisman introduced her theory of a proselytizing homosexual movement. "I would suggest to you," she told the conference, "that while the homosexual population may right now be one to two percent, hold your breath, people, because the recruitment is loud; it is clear; it is everywhere. You'll be seeing, I would say, 20 percent or more, probably 30 percent, or even more than that, of the young population will be moving into homosexual activity." The notion of a surreptitious homosexual recruitment campaign is now casually advanced by conservative Christian leaders as they rally for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

While winning friends among the Christian right, Reisman was also seeking to influence people on Capitol Hill in her push for an investigation into whether Kinsey had sexually abused children during his research. She presented this accusation in her essay, �Kinsey and The Homosexual Revolution." As Poppy Dixon wrote of the essay, "The bulk of [Reisman's] tirade is comprised of 31 complex and leading questions designed to prejudice the reader." Indeed, Reisman does not offer any conclusive answer to her question, "What if [Kinsey's work] reflects unethical scientists committing unprosecuted criminal acts?" or anything else she asks. She simply posits Kinsey's alleged criminality as a "possibility," one which none of Kinsey's four biographers have found any evidence to entertain.

Nevertheless, Reisman's work caught the attention of Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman, a former drifter with well-established ties to right-wing, anti-government militias. In 1995, Stockman introduced HR 2749, "The Child Protection and Ethics in Education Act," a bill Reisman helped author which proposed "to determine if Alfred Kinsey's [books] 'Sexual Behavior in the Human Male' and/or 'Sexual Behavior in the Human Female' are the result of any fraud or criminal wrongdoing." Even in the House's predominately conservative atmosphere, the bill went nowhere. A year later, Stockman lost his re-election campaign and Reisman once again lost her terra firma on Capitol Hill.

Yet the Bush administration's entry into the White House in 2000 was a rising tide that promised to lift the boats of Reisman and her fellow culture warriors. Reisman's anti-porn crusade gained steam with the February, 2003 appointment of her longtime friend Bruce Taylor to senior counsel to the assistant attorney general. Taylor has prosecuted over 700 obscenity cases in his career, including the famed 1981 Ohio vs. Larry Flynt trial. With a $5 million budget earmarked for 2005, Taylor is in charge of a beefed-up FBI task force dedicated to cracking down on porn. And like Unruh, his work is inspired by Reisman. "We should probably call her Detective Reisman for finding the hidden clue to Kinsey's crimes against children and families," Taylor said in a quote Reisman published on her personal web site. "'Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences' is a blueprint for justice for victims of sexual exploitation and abuse."

This November, Reisman spent a week on the Hill at the invitation of Sen. Brownback, the Catholic Kansas Republican, to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space on "The Science Behind Pornography Addiction." In her testimony, Reisman presented her discredited Playboy/kiddie-porn report to reinforce her contention that, "Pornography triggers myriad kinds of internal, natural drugs that mimic the 'high' from a street drug. Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub 'erotoxins' – mind-altering drugs produced by the viewer's own brain." She added, "A basic science research team employing a cautiously protective methodology should study 'erotoxins' and the brain/body." Her call for a research team was both a tacit admission that her presentation was bereft of any scientific evidence, and yet another plea for federal grant money for her studies.

Though Reisman has cultivated a wealth of connections within government, her deepest wellspring of influence remains the Christian right, which is certain to enjoy unprecendented access to the White House in a second Bush term. Reisman is a longtime consultant to Washington-based lobbying powerhouses like Concerned Women for America and the American Family Association. And she has enlisted her friend Eunice Ray, founder of Restoring Social Virtue and Purity to America (RSVP America) to campaign full time for the reintroduction of HR 2749.

Ray is the founder and director of Camp American, a Christian summer camp where kids can play volleyball, go canoeing and participate in political workshops led by the likes of Gary DeMar, an avowed theocrat who advocates the death penalty for gays, abortion doctors and adulterers, and Larry Pratt, the Gun Owners of America president who has argued that militias should assume law enforcement responsibilities. According to Abstinence Clearinghouse president Unruh, her longtime friend Ray first introduced her to Reisman.

Reisman's research on Kinsey isn't the only thing that makes her an asset to the Christian right. She also plays a critical PR role as its House Hebrew. In 1995, when leaders of the right-wing Catholic anti-abortion group, Human Life International (HLI), came under fire for fingering Jews as the primary promoters of abortion, Reisman stepped in as the group's spokesperson to declare, "Everyone knows Jews do lead the abortion industry, and I'll thank B'nai B'rith from the bottom of my heart if they can prove otherwise." Similarly, when Concerned Women's Family and Culture Institute director Robert Knight was lambasted for comparing Kinsey to the sinister Nazi doctor, Joseph Mengele, he defended himself by penning an op-ed quoting Reisman – "the Jewish woman who first exposed Kinsey's vile 'reseach'" – making the same comparison.

In fact, equating homosexuals, abortion doctors and secular humanists with the Nazis who massacred so much of her family in Europe is a staple of Reisman's rhetoric. "Idealistic 'gay youth' groups are being formed and staffed in classrooms nationwide by recruiters too similar to those who formed the original 'Hitler youth,'" Reisman was quoted as saying in the New Yorker last month. And her book, "Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences," is replete with comparisons of Kinsey to Nazi scientists, including insinuations that his involvement in the Boy Scouts as a teenager was on par with membership in the Hitler Youth.

Last June, Reisman was a guest at the Abstinence Clearinghouse's annual leadership conference in Nashville, Tenn. There, she rubbed shoulders with White House public liaison Tim Goeglein before taking the stage alongside Eunice Ray to declare, "pornography is training all your sex educators." According to Unruh, Reisman received several standing ovations and "everyone just loved her."

Later in the evening, conference attendees were addressed on a video link-up by Bush, who pledged to double federal funding for abstinence-only programs – $168 million is allocated for 2005 – and stated, "Through your educational programs, you reach out to countless young people to give them the support they need to make that responsible choice." Finally, Reisman was honored with an "Abstie Lifetime Achievement Award."

Given the impact of Reisman's agenda-driven research on the abstinence-only movement, it's perhaps no surprise that the credibility of abstinence-only curricula has been widely questioned. A recent report by California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman revealed that Abstinence Clearinghouse-reviewed programs teach teens that, for instance, genital touching can cause pregnancy and that HIV can be transmitted through tears and sweat. Another Clearinghouse-reviewed textbook informs them, "Women gauge their happiness and judge their success on their relationships. Men's happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments." According to Waxman's report, 80 percent of data about reproductive health in abstinence-only programs is false, misleading or distorted.

In a retort to Waxman, Unruh borrowed Reisman's signature strawman tactic, comparing the pointy-headed Waxman not to a Nazi, but to the oversexed basketball legend, Wilt "the Stilt" Chamberlain. "It can all be summed up with Wilt Chamberlain," Unruh said. "He wrote a book and said he had thousands of sex partners, and he said, 'I never had one true intimate relationship.' What a tragedy. And that can sum up Waxman and every other person that's out there teaching the mechanics of sex."

Unruh added that, if there were any errors in the material her Abstinence Clearinghouse devised and reviewed, they were purely "typographical."

Like Unruh, Reisman has declared war on the liberal order that rebuked her. She is an invaluable asset to the Christian right both as an expert to end all experts and as an enlightened Jew fluent in the populist language of backlash politics. So whether or not she is able to reap another federal grant or resucitate her anti-Kinsey legislation, in Republican-dominated Washington, Reisman is certain to enjoy an unprecendented degree of influence through surrogates like Taylor, Brownback and Unruh. As Unruh said, "Planned Parenthood has been getting federal dollars for years to build an empire. But this [Bush] adminstration is very supportive of 'abstinence until marriage' education and you will see over the next five years, our empire will definitely be growing."

The problem with Gonzales is that he has been deeply involved in developing some of the most sweeping claims of near-dictatorial presidential power in our nation's history. These claims put President George W. Bush literally above the law, allowing him to imprison and even (at least in theory) torture anyone in the world, at any time, for any reason that Bush associates with national security ...

� Stuart Taylor Jr., former New York Times Supreme Court reporter, "America's Best Choice?," Legal Times, Nov. 15, 2004

On election day, Milwaukee County Labor Council president John Goldstein, wearing a black T-shirt proclaiming, "We're Taking Back America," was juggling a CB radio, walkie-talkie and cell phone simultaneously, helping to deploy 400 union volunteers. They were out in neighborhoods, knocking on doors and dragging voters to the polls; monitoring polling irregularities; urging voters to have patience with long lines; and working for other organizations, such as the Democratic Party and America Coming Together (ACT). But this frenzied activity simply capped at least a year's organizing by unions reaching members by telephone, mail and visits at home and work. Union swing voters got around thirty contacts, including mailings on issues "sandwiched" between reinforcing calls and visits. Union-backed programs greatly increased registration of both members and nonmembers.

Across the country, especially in battleground states, the labor effort was similarly intense, with more unions working harder and longer than ever. "There was more – underlined five times – of everything," said AFSCME (public employees) president Gerald McEntee. This year's mobilization coordinated by the AFL-CIO was more than three times larger than in 2000, with 5,000 staff and members paid to work full time on politics and more than 225,000 volunteers. Unions contacted 92 percent of members by mail at home, doubling the 2000 effort, and 31 percent personally at work, an increase by half in their most effective tactic. Unions spent massively, more on voter education than on campaign contributions. The total isn't available, but the SEIU (service employees) spent $65 million, AFSCME $50 million and the AFL-CIO $45 million.

In the end, of course, it didn't do the trick, either nationally or in a key labor stronghold, Ohio. But both directly and acting indirectly through other groups, unions proved again to be the cornerstone of Democratic politics, especially in personal contact with voters, where the war was fought most intensely. Union members turned out in greater numbers than average: They are 8 percent of eligible voters but were 14 percent of voters in the presidential election, and another 10 percent of voters came from a household with a union member.

They also voted disproportionately for Kerry. A post-election poll by Hart Research for the AFL-CIO found that union members voted for Kerry over Bush by 65 percent to 33 percent. In the battleground states, where labor's effort was most intense, Hart found that AFL-CIO members voted for Kerry 68 percent to 31 percent. Other exit and postelection polls showed a slightly smaller majority – ranging from 61 to 63 percent – of union members voting for Kerry nationally.

Labor's political operation, which has steadily improved since John Sweeney became president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, was technically more sophisticated this year, and there were more ways in which everyone, from union presidents to local organizers, was held accountable. Unions also did more to get members active, as when the SEIU paid 2,038 members to take leave from their jobs to be "Heroes" doing full-time political organizing. This grassroots push built "a level of member activity and skill" that will strengthen unions in organizing and other work, argues SEIU international secretary treasurer Anna Burger. Even in losing, many members were excited by the work. "I'm part of the process," Harvey, Illinois, street departmentworker Brian Boyd said as he volunteered in Milwaukee. "I can look in the mirror and say, 'I did fight the man.'"

But labor's work is important far beyond its ranks. If Democrats hope to win in the future, it's important that they learn at least two lessons from the union effort. First, ongoing organization and direct, personal contact with voters are crucial. Both Democratic Party organization and voter party identification have slipped drastically in recent decades. This year new groups, like ACT, inspired by labor's success in recent elections, took on some traditional party tasks of registering, educating and mobilizing voters. But Bush won partly because Republicans, learning as well from labor, mounted a massive volunteer mobilization effort that was complemented by conservative churches, the GOP's counterpart to organized labor.

It's been hard for unions struggling to maintain their numbers to expand their clout at the ballot box. Although union membership has declined as a percentage of the workforce, the number of union-household voters did increase this year. At the same time, overall turnout was up, and the union-household share of the electorate slipped two percent from 2002. Unions also boosted members' support for Kerry a couple of points above Gore's vote. There will always be conservative union members who vote Republican, but the diverse nature of membership gives unions a better chance than many progressive groups to sway swing voters.

Because unions can use dues money only for political work among members, the challenge for labor – and the Democrats – is straightforward: "We don't have enough union members," says AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman. If unions represented the same share of the workforce that they did 20 years ago, Kerry would almost certainly have won.

The AFL-CIO tried to expand its political universe this year with a new organization, Working America. Organizers in Ohio – as well as smaller projects in Florida, Washington and Missouri – knocked on doors in working-class neighborhoods, finding people who were not union members but supported a lowest-common-denominator union agenda about jobs, healthcare and overtime pay. In less than a year they signed up 750,000 members, who then received mailings and visits about the election. Ultimately, they voted as strongly for Kerry as union members themselves. But unions are also reaching out beyond their ranks in other innovative ways. AFSCME, for example, tried an appeal targeted at single working women, a joint political and union organizing effort to register 200,000 home childcare providers and outreach to Puerto Ricans in Florida and Hmong in Minneapolis.

While Republicans nurture sympathetic groups, like conservative evangelical churches, CWA (communications workers) political director Michael Grace argues, "Democrats do a terrible job" and fail to recognize how their fate is tied to that of organized labor. "Progressives and Democrats have to own the fact that the future of the movement for social justice depends on the vitality and health of the labor movement," says AFL organizing director Stewart Acuff. "That's not to say we're enough by ourselves, but there's no hope if we don't rebuild the labor movement." That's why there's a big political stake in fighting little-noticed GOP initiatives to make it harder for unions to organize, like a recent National Labor Relations Board decision that will make it even tougher to unionize the growing ranks of temporary workers.

Most labor leaders agree on the need to ratchet up organizing – but many disagree about how to make that happen. The debate about organizing strategy and internal restructuring that is currently roiling the labor movement was triggered immediately after the election, when SEIU president Andrew Stern presented proposals for consolidation of unions around well-defined industrial jurisdictions and massive new coordinated organizing efforts, including an initiative to take on Wal-Mart. Sweeney has supported some similar reforms, but it remains to be seen how the federation will respond to Stern's specific proposals, which have provoked both institutional resistance to change and legitimate disagreement about what reforms are needed and how they should be implemented.

Another lesson from labor's political mobilization is about what Democrats' political message should be. After the election, some strategists urged Democrats to be more religious and culturally conservative. But the unions' political work argues instead for focusing on social and economic morality. To the extent unions found success in this election, they found it by emphasizing the need for affordable healthcare, job creation and fairer trade agreements, retirement security, protection of overtime pay and other bread-and-butter issues, such as the successful initiatives to raise the minimum wage in Nevada and Florida.

The second most important issue for the Democratic electorate and for union members was the war in Iraq. Perhaps because it was tied to Kerry's muddled position, however, the labor movement did not vigorously oppose the war during the campaign. Some unions didn't mention Iraq; the AFL-CIO produced one leaflet criticizing spending $200 billion on Iraq while needs are unmet at home. At least labor did not actively support the war (in sharp contrast with the Vietnam War), and several big unions, including AFSCME, SEIU and CWA, advocated withdrawing US troops now. Yet in the end, even though union members were primed to make their presidential decision in terms of a troubled economy and a misguided war, only 51 percent who ranked the war as the first or second most important issue (40 percent of union voters) voted for Kerry.

The results of labor's strong economic message were dramatic, nevertheless, with union members supporting Kerry even when they were part of demographic groups that were generally stalwart Bush backers. While white men overall favored Bush by 18 points, white male union members favored Kerry by 21 points. Gun owners in the general public favored Bush by 20 points; unionist gun owners favored Kerry by 12 points. Kerry lost seniors overall narrowly, but won by a margin of 41 points among seniors in unions. Weekly churchgoers gave Bush a margin of 21 points, but if they were union members, regular churchgoers voted for Kerry by 12 points. Economic issues, argues UNITE HERE (textile workers, hotel and restaurant employees) political director Chris Chafe, "can bring out your values messages. Healthcare is a moral issue for us. Social Security and retirement with dignity are moral issues with us." It's a morality, wedded to self-interest, that resonates far beyond labor's ranks.

But there are hard lessons for the unions as well. Many union members are rightly cynical about how seriously top Democratic politicians are committed to the economic issues that unions emphasize, especially trade and corporate power. Unions must work with their progressive allies to push the Democrats in a more populist direction, even as they stake out their political independence. To do that, their political work must be ongoing, not intermittent spurts around election time. The education work must also be more thoughtful than a series of election-year leaflets, not only promoting deeper understanding of the core economic issues but also critically analyzing America's role in the world. There must be more effort to get members to reach out to each other in their workplaces and communities: The flood of union staff and members from blue to battleground states showed great solidarity, but it's ultimately no subsitute for home-grown networks. Most of all, there's an urgent need to make the right to organize freely at work the new civil rights movement – and to reform internally to make such organizing possible.

There's no magic solution for the Democrats, but writing off organized labor would be a colossal error. The shrunken labor movement is certainly not a sufficient foundation for victory now, given its weakness through large swaths of the country (not surprisingly, the "red" states). But there's a strong argument that the long-range prospects for progressive Democratic politics hinge on efforts to expand the labor movement – both through traditional organizing and through strengthening organizations like Working America. And this requires making the core message of the Democratic Party the promise of economic and social justice.

Relatively recent writings on Social Security, both to reform and not reform, convince me of two things. One is that we should be looking for maximum skepticism in our sources on this subject. And the second is that anybody who starts with dismissive, condescending and absolutist views isn't worth reading or listening to on this subject. So that leaves out politicians.

There's a lot of fake objectivity out there, too. I personally think the Bush proposal for privatizing Social Security is loony, radical and unnecessary, but that's not an argument, it's a conclusion. It's the people who aren't willing to make the case that you have to watch out for.

Also, beware hidden assumptions – as in, "Everybody knows Social Security is (a) in trouble, (b) bankrupt or (c) will expire next week." In fact, "everybody knows" very little on this subject because the arguments about the system's future are built on complex, long-term economic models that can easily be thrown off by a single year. And if there's one thing the economy does with some regularity, it is confound expert predictions. Demographic changes, population growth and many other variables also influence how the models are drawn.

A second problem is that reporters of all kinds and stripes are notoriously weak on math. The Nation's Calvin Trillin says his trouble stems from his failure to convince his math teachers that many of his answers were meant in an ironic sense. I sometimes have to call John Pope of the New Orleans Times-Picayune just to make sure that going from 40 percent to 60 percent is still an improvement of 20 percentage points, and also a 50 percent improvement.

This debate is landmined with Phony Fun Facts. One notorious scare tactic is to note that when Social Security began, there were 42 workers for each retiree. Now, there are three workers per retiree. And in 25 years, there will be only two. Ergo, we're doomed. Actually, at the "frightening" current rate of three workers per retiree, the system is producing a surplus and being skimmed to finance the rest of the federal budget. Alas, Al Gore's famous "lockbox" got lost along with a lot of hanging chads in Florida.

Q: Can we at least agree that we have a problem? A: No.

The argument in favor of "no" has two parts. One involves the incredible shrinking doom date. As Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly points out, the Social Security trustees, always operating on a properly gloomy forecast, have been predicting disaster for the system for years, but the projected point at which it will go bust keeps moving.

In 1994, the system was supposed to go bust in 2029, a mere 35 years from the date of prediction. Now, it's supposed to go bust in 2042, 38 years down the road.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, using a more realistic model, the trust fund will run out in 2052, and even then it will cover 81 percent of the promised benefits. To fully fund this shortfall would require additional revenue of 0.54 percent of GDP, less than we are currently spending in Iraq. Or, as Paul Krugman noted in The New York Times, about one quarter of the revenue lost each year by President Bush's tax cuts, "roughly equal to the fraction of those cuts that goes to people with incomes of $500,000 a year."

The second argument involves the motives of those who are arguing for privatization. If there is a problem with Social Security, the obvious solution would be to raise taxes, cut benefits or some combination of both. Of course, I'm in favor of cutting benefits to the wealthy – Ross Perot doesn't need the payout, and he's such a patriot, he's probably giving it back already.

Or, we could have a peppy discussion of how to raise what kind of taxes, if necessary – especially since the tax as it is structured is a terrible burden on the poor and middle class. It actually cuts OFF at $87,900 a year.

But that's not the Bush scheme here. The Bushies don't want to mend it, they want to end it – and they are quite upfront about it.

This is not some leftist conspiracy theory: Grover Norquist of The Club for Growth has been open about it for years. What we have here is a happy convergence of ideology (the Market Can Solve All Problems) and greed. The greed is from the financial industry, which stands to pick up an incalculable sum in profits – and, of course, the financial industry contributes generously to Guess Who. Just the Bush plan of partial privatization would cost about $1.5 trillion in transition costs over 10 years, and Bush wants to borrow that money.

Next week, the White House will launch a giant public relations campaign, just as it did with the campaign to sell us on the Iraq war, with a lot of phony information to convince us all this lunacy is good for us. Social Security is of particular concern to women, since we live longer and have fewer earnings to rely on in retirement.

It's kind of hard not to be stunned by the irresponsibility of this scheme. To just blithely borrow the money to destroy a successful social program is, well, loony, bizarre and irresponsible.

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy – the Reagan-Bush administration�s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.

For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Journalism Review and even the Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor Jerry Ceppos sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News. Even Webb�s marriage broke up.

On Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head.

Whatever the details of Webb�s death, American history owes him a huge debt. Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb�s contra-cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of contra units and contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade. The probes also showed that the Reagan-Bush administration frustrated investigations into those crimes for geopolitical reasons.

Failed Media

Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s. The big news outlets were always hot on the trail of some titillating scandal – the O.J. Simpson case or the Monica Lewinsky scandal – but the major media could no longer grapple with serious crimes of state.

Even after the CIA�s inspector general issued his findings in 1998, the major newspapers could not muster the talent or the courage to explain those extraordinary government admissions to the American people. Nor did the big newspapers apologize for their unfair treatment of Gary Webb. Foreshadowing the media incompetence that would fail to challenge George W. Bush�s case for war with Iraq five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the CIA�s confession from the American people.

The New York Times and the Washington Post never got much past the CIA�s �executive summary,� which tried to put the best spin on Inspector General Frederick Hitz�s findings. The Los Angeles Times never even wrote a story after the final volume of the CIA�s report was published, though Webb�s initial story had focused on contra-connected cocaine shipments to South-Central Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Times� cover-up has now continued after Webb�s death. In a harsh obituary about Webb, the Times reporter, who called to interview me, ignored my comments about the debt the nation owed Webb and the importance of the CIA�s inspector general findings. Instead of using Webb�s death as an opportunity to finally get the story straight, the Times acted as if there never had been an official investigation confirming many of Webb�s allegations. [Los Angeles Times, Dec. 12, 2004.]

By maintaining the contra-cocaine cover-up – even after the CIA�s had admitted the facts – the big newspapers seemed to have understood that they could avoid any consequences for their egregious behavior in the 1990s or for their negligence toward the contra-cocaine issue when it first surfaced in the 1980s. After all, the conservative news media – the chief competitor to the mainstream press – isn�t going to demand a reexamination of the crimes of the Reagan-Bush years.

That means that only a few minor media outlets, like our own Consortiumnews.com, will go back over the facts now, just as only a few of us addressed the significance of the government admissions in the late 1990s. I compiled and explained the findings of the CIA/Justice investigations in my 1999 book, �Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & �Project Truth.�

Contra-Cocaine Case

�Lost History,� which took its name from a series at News Consortium also describes how the contra-cocaine story first reached the public in a story that Brian Barger and I wrote for the Associated Press in December 1985. Though the big newspapers pooh-poohed our discovery, Sen. John Kerry followed up our story with his own groundbreaking investigation. For his efforts, Kerry also encountered media ridicule. Newsweek dubbed the Massachusetts senator a �randy conspiracy buff.� [For details, see Consortium News� �Kerry�s Contra-Cocaine Chapter.�]

So when Gary Webb revived the contra-cocaine issue in August 1996 with a 20,000-word three-part series entitled �Dark Alliance,� editors at major newspapers already had a powerful self-interest to slap down a story that they had disparaged for the past decade.

The challenge to their earlier judgments was doubly painful because the Mercury-News� sophisticated Web site ensured that Webb�s series made a big splash on the Internet, which was just emerging as a threat to the traditional news media. Also, the African American community was furious at the possibility that U.S. government policies had contributed to the crack-cocaine epidemic.

In other words, the mostly white, male editors at the major newspapers saw their preeminence in judging news challenged by an upstart regional newspaper, the Internet and common American citizens who also happened to be black. So, even as the CIA was prepared to conduct a relatively thorough and honest investigation, the major newspapers seemed more eager to protect their reputations and their turf.

Without doubt, Webb�s series had its limitations. It primarily tracked one West Coast network of contra-cocaine traffickers from the early-to-mid 1980s. Webb connected that cocaine to an early �crack� production network that supplied Los Angeles street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, leading to Webb�s conclusion that contra cocaine fueled the early crack epidemic that devastated Los Angeles and other U.S. cities.

Counterattack

When black leaders began demanding a full investigation of these charges, the Washington media joined the political Establishment in circling the wagons. It fell to Rev. Sun Myung Moon�s right-wing Washington Times to begin the counterattack against Webb�s series. The Washington Times turned to some former CIA officials, who participated in the contra war, to refute the drug charges.

But � in a pattern that would repeat itself on other issues in the following years � the Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers quickly lined up behind the conservative news media. On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page article knocking down Webb�s story.

The Post�s approach was twofold: first, it presented the contra-cocaine allegations as old news � �even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers,� the Post reported � and second, the Post minimized the importance of the one contra smuggling channel that Webb had highlighted � that it had not �played a major role in the emergence of crack.� A Post sidebar story dismissed African Americans as prone to �conspiracy fears.�

Soon, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times joined in the piling on of Gary Webb. The big newspapers made much of the CIA�s internal reviews in 1987 and 1988 that supposedly cleared the spy agency of a role in contra-cocaine smuggling.

But the CIA's decade-old cover-up began to crack on Oct. 24, 1996, when CIA Inspector General Hitz conceded before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the first CIA probe had lasted only 12 days, the second only three days. He promised a more thorough review.

Mocking Webb

Meanwhile, however, Gary Webb became the target of outright media ridicule. Influential Post media critic Howard Kurtz mocked Webb for saying in a book proposal that he would explore the possibility that the contra war was primarily a business to its participants. �Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,� Kurtz chortled. [Washington Post, Oct. 28, 1996]

Webb�s suspicion was not unfounded, however. Indeed, White House aide Oliver North�s emissary Rob Owen had made the same point a decade earlier, in a March 17, 1986, message about the contra leadership. �Few of the so-called leaders of the movement� really care about the boys in the field,� Owen wrote. �THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.� [Capitalization in the original.]

Nevertheless, the pillorying of Gary Webb was on, in earnest. The ridicule also had a predictable effect on the executives of the Mercury-News. By early 1997, executive editor Jerry Ceppos was in retreat.

On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a front-page column saying the series �fell short of my standards.� He criticized the stories because they �strongly implied CIA knowledge� of contra connections to U.S. drug dealers who were manufacturing crack-cocaine. �We did not have proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship.�

The big newspapers celebrated Ceppos�s retreat as vindication of their own dismissal of the contra-cocaine stories. Ceppos next pulled the plug on the Mercury-News� continuing contra-cocaine investigation and reassigned Webb to a small office in Cupertino, Calif., far from his family. Webb resigned the paper in disgrace.

For undercutting Webb and the other reporters working on the contra investigation, Ceppos was lauded by the American Journalism Review and was given the 1997 national �Ethics in Journalism Award� by the Society of Professional Journalists. While Ceppos won raves, Webb watched his career collapse and his marriage break up.

Probes Advance

Still, Gary Webb had set in motion internal government investigations that would bring to the surface long-hidden facts about how the Reagan-Bush administration had conducted the contra war. The CIA�s defensive line against the contra-cocaine allegations began to break when the spy agency published Volume One of Hitz�s findings on Jan. 29, 1998.

Despite a largely exculpatory press release, Hitz�s Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb�s allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the contra-drug crimes and the CIA�s knowledge. Hitz acknowledged that cocaine smugglers played a significant early role in the Nicaraguan contra movement and that the CIA intervened to block an image-threatening 1984 federal investigation into a San Francisco-based drug ring with suspected ties to the contras. [For details, see Robert Parry�s �Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & �Project Truth.�]

On May 7, 1998, another disclosure from the government investigation shook the CIA�s weakening defenses. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, introduced into the Congressional Record a Feb. 11, 1982, letter of understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department. The letter, which had been sought by CIA Director William Casey, freed the CIA from legal requirements that it must report drug smuggling by CIA assets, a provision that covered both the Nicaraguan contras and Afghan rebels who were fighting a Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan.

Justice Report

Another crack in the defensive wall opened when the Justice Department released a report by its inspector general, Michael Bromwich. Given the hostile climate surrounding Webb�s series, Bromwich�s report opened with criticism of Webb. But, like the CIA�s Volume One, the contents revealed new details about government wrongdoing.

According to evidence cited by the report, the Reagan-Bush administration knew almost from the outset of the contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the paramilitary operation. The administration also did next to nothing to expose or stop the criminal activities. The report revealed example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers.

The Bromwich report showed that the contras and their supporters ran several parallel drug-smuggling operations, not just the one at the center of Webb�s series. The report also found that the CIA shared little of its information about contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened the contras.

Though depicting a more widespread contra-drug operation than Webb had understood, the Justice report also provided some important corroboration about a Nicaraguan drug smuggler, Norwin Meneses, who was a key figure in Webb�s series. Bromwich cited U.S. government informants who supplied detailed information about Meneses�s operation and his financial assistance to the contras.

For instance, Renato Pena, a money-and-drug courier for Meneses, said that in the early 1980s, the CIA allowed the contras to fly drugs into the United States, sell them and keep the proceeds. Pena, who also was the northern California representative for the CIA-backed FDN contra army, said the drug trafficking was forced on the contras by the inadequate levels of U.S. government assistance.

The Justice report also disclosed repeated examples of the CIA and U.S. embassies in Central America discouraging Drug Enforcement Administration investigations, including one into alleged contra-cocaine shipments moving through the airport in El Salvador. In an understated conclusion, Inspector General Bromwich wrote: �We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were not anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport.�

CIA's Volume Two

Despite the remarkable admissions in the body of these reports, the big newspapers showed no inclination to read beyond the press releases and executive summaries. By fall 1998, official Washington was obsessed with the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, which made it easier to ignore even more stunning disclosures in the CIA's Volume Two.

In Volume Two, published Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 contras and contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan-Bush administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations, which had threatened to expose the crimes in the mid-1980s. Hitz even published evidence that drug trafficking and money laundering tracked into Reagan�s National Security Council where Oliver North oversaw the contra operations.

Hitz revealed, too, that the CIA placed an admitted drug money launderer in charge of the Southern Front contras in Costa Rica. Also, according to Hitz�s evidence, the second-in-command of contra forces on the Northern Front in Honduras had escaped from a Colombian prison where he was serving time for drug trafficking

In Volume Two, the CIA�s defense against Webb�s series had shrunk to a tiny fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire with the contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of contra crimes from the Justice Department, the Congress and even the CIA�s own analytical division.

Hitz found in CIA files evidence that the spy agency knew from the first days of the contra war that its new clients were involved in the cocaine trade. According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, one of the early contra groups, known as ADREN, had decided to use drug trafficking as a financing mechanism. Two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981, the CIA cable reported.

ADREN�s leaders included Enrique Bermudez, who emerged as the top contra military commander in the 1980s. Webb�s series had identified Bermudez as giving the green light to contra fundraising by drug trafficker Meneses. Hitz�s report added that that the CIA had another Nicaraguan witness who implicated Bermudez in the drug trade in 1988.

Priorities

Besides tracing the evidence of contra-drug trafficking through the decade-long contra war, the inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the contra-drug problem but didn�t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government.

According to Hitz, the CIA had �one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government.� [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the contra program.� One CIA field officer explained, �The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.�

Hitz also recounted complaints from CIA analysts that CIA operations officers handling the contra war hid evidence of contra-drug trafficking even from the CIA�s analytical division. Because of the withheld evidence, the CIA analysts incorrectly concluded in the mid-1980s that �only a handful of contras might have been involved in drug trafficking.� That false assessment was passed on to Congress and the major news organizations � serving as an important basis for denouncing Gary Webb and his series in 1996.

Though Hitz�s report was an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA, it passed almost unnoticed by the big newspapers.

Two days after Hitz�s report was posted at the CIA�s Internet site, the New York Times did a brief article that continued to deride Webb�s work, while acknowledging that the contra-drug problem may indeed have been worse than earlier understood. Several weeks later, the Washington Post weighed in with a similarly superficial article. The Los Angeles Times never published a story on the release of the CIA�s Volume Two.

Consequences

To this day, no editor or reporter who missed the contra-drug story has been punished for his or her negligence. Indeed, many of them are now top executives at their news organizations. On the other hand, Gary Webb�s career never recovered.

At Webb�s death, however, it should be noted that his great gift to American history was that he – along with angry African American citizens – forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any American administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans.

The truth was ugly. Certainly the major news organizations would have come under criticism themselves if they had done their job and laid out this troubling story to the American people. Conservative defenders of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush would have been sure to howl in protest.

But the real tragedy of Webb�s historic gift – and of his life cut short – is that because of the major news media�s callowness and cowardice, this dark chapter of the Reagan-Bush era remains largely unknown to the American people.

In his best-selling �What�s the Matter with Kansas,� Thomas Frank argues that conservatives have perfected the trick of selling a �social backlash� to voters while trampling their economic interests:  �Vote to stop abortion, receive a rollback in capital gains taxes.� 

Playing to form, the Republican-led Congress convened in Washington immediately after the election in which they benefited from peddling guns and gays, flag and family.  Immediately, they voted down the constitutional amendment on gay marriage, happily dispatching it without much fuss.  Then they rolled 13 appropriations bills that they had failed to pass before the election into one large omnibus $388 billion bill � numbering more than 1,000 pages and weighing 14 pounds � which no one had time to read.

Buried in the midst of that monstrosity was a provision that gives the education secretary the authority to cut Pell grants, the government�s leading scholarship program for deserving sons and daughters of America�s middle- and low-income families.  The education department plans to change the expected financial contribution formula for families, with 90,000 students likely to lose grants completely aid and another 1.2 million suffering cuts. 

Those endangered are children of families that make less than $50,000 a year and sacrifice to be able to send their children to college.  These families tighten their belts, and their children scrape together loans, grants and part- time work to pay their way through college.  Pell grants have failed to keep up with soaring college tuitions, but they are often vital to give students a chance to stay in school.  Frank had it right:  Republicans seduced �Kansas� with the faux populism on guns and shafted them with cuts in the Pell grants that their kids depend on. 

In an economy that depends on an ever more educated populace, this poison pill makes no sense from policy grounds.  It saves about $300 million � even as the Republican majority is intent on extending tax breaks that put about $30 billion a year into the pockets of millionaires.  It forces kids to leave college, even as the president plans to ask for another $70 billion for Iraq.  (Perhaps this is one way the Pentagon expects to solve its recruiting problems).  And, with White House insisting on the measure, it mocks the president�s campaign promise to raise the level of Pell grants. 

The congressional action has received almost no attention in the press.  Republicans have perfected the ways to shaft Kansas without anyone noticing. Pass the bill on Friday afternoon. Bury the provision in a 1,000-page bill that no one reads.  Don�t make the cuts directly, just delegate the authority to the education secretary.  When the cuts come, Republican legislators will line up to express their shock to outraged constituents. 

But we�re about to test just how long they can continue this scam.  Next spring, the president�s budget will call for cuts in education and health care across the boards � even while seeking a supplemental of about $70 billion more for Iraq, and demanding that the top end tax cuts be made permanent.

The voters who elected Mr. Bush and expanded the Republican majorities in the House and Senate didn�t vote for these priorities.  In an election day poll undertaken by Stan Greenberg for the Institute for America�s Future, voters by 54 to 40 said investing in education and health care and energy independence takes priority over deficit reduction. 

When asked how to cut the deficit, closing corporate tax havens was the top choice, followed closely by rolling back tax cuts for the top one percent.  �Scaling back further spending� on education and health care was the least popular choice. 

Of course, without a loud, extended battle � with extensive press coverage � most people won�t hear about the choices being made.  Here, Democrats too often aren�t much help.  Democrats in the House are aroused, but they are literally locked out of legislating by House Boss Tom DeLay.  Amendments aren�t allowed; drafting sessions are closed; debate is limited; alternatives aren�t allowed to come to a vote.  

In the Senate, the Democratic minority has greater power, but the Senate Democratic barons are scattered and scared.  Tom Daschle�s defeat has many scurrying to find common ground with conservatives. 

This time, however, conservative bait-and-switch won�t go unnoticed.  As the election showed, progressives are building an independent capacity to inform and mobilize people.  Last fall, for example, a coalition led by the Campaign for America�s Future, the National Education Association, Moveon.org  and others organized over 4,000 house parties on education in every state of the union.  That was just a warm-up for what�s likely to take place in the coming months. 

No doubt, Republicans will continue to posture on guns and gays.  They�ll keep wrapping themselves in the flag and peddling piety, even as they lard benefits on the wealthy and cater to their corporate cronies.  But this time, Kansas may just hear about the gulf between rhetoric and reality, and begin to get a sense of how the shift gives them the shaft. 

Nov. 2 was just the beginning of the bad news. Two days after the election, before most of us had even recovered, President Bush told the country that he would use his �political capital� to privatize Social Security.

This declaration of war was smart strategy. Social Security is by far the country�s most important and successful social program. Over the last seven decades it has provided a decent retirement to tens of millions of workers and their spouses. It also provides disability and survivor insurance to almost the entire working population – nearly two million children are currently receiving survivors� benefits. For these reasons, Social Security enjoys enormous public support, regularly getting approval ratings of close to 90 percent in public opinion surveys.

If Bush is going to privatize Social Security, he must move hard and fast – as he has. And if we are going to save it, progressive forces will have to mobilize quickly.

Fact vs. Fear

The key to stopping this drive for privatization will be to educate the public about the basic facts on Social Security. For two decades, the right has been working overtime to undermine confidence in the program. Groups like the Concord Coalition have been telling the country that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that will inevitably collapse once the baby boomers retire.

The fearmongers have been largely successful. Many workers, especially those under 40, are convinced that Social Security will be bankrupt before they see a dime in benefits. For these people, the promise of a private account sounds pretty good, since they don�t believe they will ever get anything from Social Security anyhow.

Progressives must use every means available to tell people that they have been lied to about Social Security. The program is unambiguously healthy. The Social Security trustees� report (available on the Social Security Administration�s Web site) shows that the program can pay every penny of benefits through the year 2042, with no changes whatsoever.

Even after 2042, the trustees� projections show that while the program won�t have enough to pay currently scheduled benefits – which are approximately 40 percent higher than current benefits – it will still have enough money to pay benefits higher than those that current retirees receive, even when indexed for inflation. The changes necessary to allow full scheduled benefits to be paid throughout Social Security�s 75-year planning period are smaller than the changes to Social Security – increased Social Security taxes and benefit cuts – that were made in each of the decades from the 1950s through the �80s.

Last June, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made an independent assessment of Social Security�s finances and concluded that the program could pay all benefits even longer – until 2052 – with no changes whatsoever. According to the CBO, the changes needed to keep the program fully funded through its 75-year planning period are less than half as large as the Social Security tax increases put in place in the 1980s.

Just to be clear, neither of these projections is based on a rosy scenario about the future. In fact, the Social Security trustees assume that over the next 75 years the economy will experience the slowest pace of productivity growth in its history – there�s no �new economy� in this story.

In short, the claims that Social Security is in imminent danger of bankruptcy are just like the claims about Saddam Hussein�s weapons of mass destruction – politically motivated lies.

One such claim that gets frequently repeated is that the Social Security trust fund has been �raided,� �spent,� or is just worthless pieces of paper. In fact, the Social Security trust fund holds almost $2 trillion of government bonds. Under the law, the government must repay these bonds to Social Security from general revenue – this means it will be repaid primarily from progressive personal and corporate income taxes, because workers have already paid for their Social Security benefits. In other words, the government is obligated to tax wealthy people like Donald Trump and Peter Peterson (the founder of the Concord Coalition) to pay for the Social Security benefits that the rest of us have already earned.

The Social Security system lent money to the government to buy these bonds. (This is by design – the trust fund was built up to help pay for the retirement of the baby boomers.) The fact that the government spent the money is meaningless – just as it is meaningless if the government spends the money it borrows by issuing any other bond. The government is still legally obligated to repay the bond. In short, the people who say �there is no trust fund� are misleading the public. There is a trust fund with $2 trillion (growing at the rate of $200 billion a year) unless we let Congress eliminate it.

Privatized Pipe Dreams

Are private accounts a remedy?

The Bush privatization plan proposes to couple newly created private accounts with large cuts in current basic Social Security benefits. Under this scheme each retiree will get benefits from both these sources.

First, it is important to realize that the privatizers are making implausible claims about the potential returns available from investing in the stock market. Remember, these are exactly the same people who at the peak of the Internet bubble in 2000 promised that workers would get great returns from investing their Social Security money in the stock market.

No privatizer has yet been able to document in numbers how the privatizers will get their projected stock returns (showing annual dividend payouts and capital gains). When it comes to simple arithmetic, involving trillions of dollars of workers� Social Security money, the privatizers flunk the test.

While private accounts won�t do much to increase returns, they will certainly increase risk and add hugely to administrative costs. A worker who happens to retire during a market slump will see much of their benefit disappear. In countries that already have private accounts, like England and Chile, the administrative fees are between 15 and 20 percent of annual benefits. By comparison, the administrative costs of Social Security are less than 0.6 percent of annual benefits. In addition, retirees who want to buy an annuity (an inflation-protected life-long annual payout, like that provided by Social Security) will typically have to pay a fee of at least 10 percent of their private account to convert their account to an annuity.

The bottom line is that under Bush�s proposal, workers can expect to see considerably reduced benefits, since private accounts will not come close to making up for the accompanying benefit cuts. Under the plan that would provide the basis for Bush�s privatization scheme, an average 15-year-old today who retires in 2055 will lose more than 35 percent ($160,000) of his currently scheduled benefit over the course of his retirement. He stands to gain back less than one-third of this $160,000 loss from a private account.

Social Security privatization does not look good for most workers because they can expect large benefit cuts, but it is likely to be especially bad for those in lower-income brackets. While Bush�s privatization plan actually provides modest benefit increases for low-end workers, it also puts in place a structure that will force the middle class to depend less on the traditionally defined Social Security benefits and more on private retirement accounts.

Bush�s plan gradually reduces the size of the traditional benefit received by middle-class workers, while increasing the size of private accounts until finally the defined Social Security benefit will become almost irrelevant to anyone but the poor. Under the Bush plan, a child born today who earns an average wage during his working lifetime would get a defined benefit equal to just 10 percent of his wage when he retires. As the middle class depends less and less on Social Security, the benefits pledged to the poor would enjoy about as much political support as welfare does today. Now that would really be a �Mission Accomplished�!

The privatization of Social Security can be stopped. Bush may no longer have to worry about re-election, but members of Congress do. There can be no more important battle. If Bush is stopped on Social Security, then his political capital will have been spent, and he will be the lamest of lame ducks. On the other hand, if he wins ... well, that�s not going to happen.