Abstract

Victory in 2004--and Beyond

The article offers a strategy for a Democratic victory over Republican President George W. Bush in the 2004 United States election. The threat posed by George W. Bush's right-wing reaction has organized the left for presidential candidate John Kerry. For progressives, this election has revealed the growing power of their arguments and the sophistication of their activism. That energy, at the base of the Democratic Party, provides hope that victory in 2004 may mark the beginning of a movement that can transform U.S. politics. Pre-emptive war and an arrogant unilateralism produced the debacle in Iraq, which has left the U.S. more isolated, more reviled and more vulnerable. Pre-emptive top-bracket tax cuts have run up record deficits as far as the eye can see, while generating the worst jobs record of any President since the Great Depression. Though Kerry voted to give Bush the authority to make war in Iraq, and has failed to call for an end to the U.S. occupation, he challenges the pre-emptive war doctrine of the Bush Administration and promises a foreign policy that will be tempered by alliances, international cooperation and the rule of law. In the primaries, progressives provided the ideas that candidates had to embrace: the Apollo project for jobs and energy independence, the challenge to No Child Left Behind and demand for larger investment in education, opposition to the shameless giveaway to drug companies, affordable healthcare, indictment of Bush's war in Iraq, support for labor rights and environmental protections in trade accords, reaffirmation of the right to organize. These mainstream progressive positions defined the Democratic debate.