Source: Fraser, C. (1998). "Beware of the Arkansas Traveler" in Revolution, She Wrote (pp. 173-176). Seattle, WA: Red Letter Press.
First Published: Freedom Socialist, August 1992
Transcription/Markup: Philip Davis and Glenn Kirkindall
Copyleft: Internet Archive (marxists.org)
2015. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
SLICK WILLIE and the Democratic Leadership Council of plutocrats and militarists pose a more sinister threat than the punctured Perotians could ever hope to. Billy Boy and his blood-and- Gore running mate should scare the blinders off every alleged radical who compulsively endorses the Democrazies on the demented grounds that independent left politics are "sectarian."
The Hollywood extravaganza that entertained us in the Madison Square Garden parody of a convention was a rude wake-up call to all populists, humanitarians, progressives, and social justice advocates, not to mention—er, ah—radicals.
Never since the halcyon days of Rooseveltian demagogy have the Democrats so blatantly telegraphed their essential nature, to wit: They are owned lock, stock, and howitzer by giant corporations and imperial special interests. The party chauffeurs are contemptuous of and insulting to the disenfranchised, the disinherited, the disenchanted, and the validly dyspeptic challengers of the world according to George and Barbara and Danny and Marilyn and Bill and Hillary and Al and Tipper and Ron and Nancy and the Kennedys and all such sainted family-values exemplars.
Oi gevalt, what a crew!
Clinton and his handlers brassly and crassly shlepped a menagerie of bemused, confused, and euphoria-suffused delegates right over into the ideological camp of the Republican "enemy" without so much as a perfunctory, "Sorry, kid—this hurts me more than it hurts you."
THE CONVENTION CIRCUS, was an excruciating exercise in routing the radicals and liberals and making them hail their oppressors. One flamboyant ethnic militant of the '60s dreamily told the press that everyone was happy because "victory" was in sight.
One can only gasp in disbelief. A victory for whom?
For Jesse Jackson and his rainbow of the disaffected, who were humiliated and rebuked by Deacon Clinton for fraternizing with a brilliant, dynamic, honest, courageous, stunningly articulate and talented young Black female artist, Sister Souljah, one of the new leadership voices to emerge from the flames of Los Angeles?
For the feminists who were powerful enough eight years ago to place Geraldine Ferraro on the ticket but have now sacrificed a qualitative program for women's rights to the false glamor of an expanded quantity of women running for office? These congressional candidates are fated to turn out little better than their male partners in legislative crime. And even the ballyhooed pro-choice plank is but another dabble in wishy-washy moderation.
A victory for the lesbian and gay politicos who had to be satisfied with a couple of impassioned pleas by people with AIDS for enlarged research-and-treatment funding, while not one word was heard in four endless days and nights about the terror perpetrated against sexual minorities by homophobists of both parties?
A victory for the trade-union movement, unseen and unheard at the festivities? Franklin Roosevelt at least had to "clear everything with Sidney" (Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers). Clinton clears things only with the engorged employers and global industrialists whose ill-gotten gains boosted him to front-runner status so early in the game.
Would a Democratic triumph bring relief to students, seniors, physical minorities, the homeless, Chicanos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Jews? Or respite to the earth? Gore claims that his vaunted "salvage of the environment" is an investment that will make money—which can only mean that every cleanup will generate even more exploited and injured workers.
WITH SUCH A VICTORY, who needs defeats? Friends, trust me—this is the best time of all to desert the Democratic ship, when it has a chance to win. The shelf life of the working class grows shorter in direct proportion to the opportunities beckoning for Democratic Party chicanery.
A party that has drifted hook, line, and sinker into the still waters of suburbia has no moral or logical right to claim to represent the dispossessed. It cannot hear, much less express, the wrenching cries of pain from the volatile ghettoes and workplace pressure chambers of the inner-city tinderboxes overrun by the violent, the drugged, and the hysterical human output of a society where the decisive input into government is reserved for mercenary monsters and their opportunist or naive hangers-on.
SOUTHERN-FRIED BILLY WANTS a new pact between the Democrats and the "Uhmurican peepul." But one definition of "covenant" is a suit to recover damages for violation of a contract — and that's the kind of covenant that workers should lodge against the deceitful, duplicitous, and depraved Democrats, who have promised reform for 10 these 60 years but contrived instead to entrench a vicious private-profit system.
Instead of selling its soul to the Democrat devils, the working class, which is not middle class, has to form its own massive coven — an extended Labor Party whose goal is to hurl the moneylenders and their bias-mongering media groupies from our seats of government and opinion molding and our job sites and our lives. A vote for the Democrats is a vote for self-extinction, and if that isn't sectarian, you can have my very own recipe for chocolate chip cookies (acclaimed by the popular masses as superior to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s notorious recipe).