THIS WEEK YOU NEED TO KNOW
LaRouche Called It! Lieberman Caused Dems' Nosedive
Precisely as Lyndon LaRouche warned, persistently, from the beginning of the year, unless the Democratic Party dumped Joe Lieberman, Michael Steinhardt's organized-crime-contaminated right-wing Democratic Leadership Council, and every personality and policy associated with what Sen. Ted Kennedy once called the "second Republican Party," the Democratic Party would self-destruct. On Nov. 5, Sen. Joe Lieberman and the DLC self-destructed.
The election results were no mandate for President George W. Bush and his Iraq war policy. The American electorate is opposed to an Iraq war, particularly a unilateral American military adventure, and the opposition is growing by the day. Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the Bush Administration's non-handling of the deepening economic crisis. Far from being a vote of confidence in Bush, the election results were a no-confidence vote in the Democratic Party's current leadership and policy, which offered voters no alternative to the Bush folly.
In a period of national crisis, including the still-lingering effects of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the American people will tend to give the President, even a pathetically unqualified President, the benefit of the doubtunless offered a viable alternative. When Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Dick Gephardt jumped in bed with President Bush, by surrendering to the President Congress's Constitutional authority to declare war, the Democratic Party mis-leadership wrote its own political epitaph.
Some honest Democrats, around the party leadership circles, responded to the Nov. 5 debacle by congratulating Lyndon LaRouche for having launched the drive to bring down Lieberman and set the stage for a long-overdue party shakeup. Indeed, Nov. 5 marked the political destruction of Lieberman, as the Hartford Courant publicly announced 48 hours after the election: Every Democratic candidate for whom Lieberman aggressively campaigned, lost their elections Nov. 5! Four of the five incumbent Democratic House of Representatives members who lost on Nov. 5 were members of the Lieberman-Steinhardt DLC.
On Nov. 1, Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche had forecast the consequences of the Democratic leadership failures, in a reply to an Oct. 30 query:
"What the Democratic Party has done to this nation and its people is a crime against our people and their posterity. Either the party abandons its presently continuing habits of the recent quarter-century, or it is soon dead. It can no longer get by with the swindle the leadership of the party has been running over these decades to date. The worst thing is not that the party leadership has policies which are either evil, such as those of Lieberman, or practically impotent; some of the leaders could be changed, under appropriate top-down changes in policy and leadership, but the present crew is not capable of doing anything relevant of its own volition. Without new leadership, top down, the party has no moral relevance. If the Democratic Party were not, now, to reverse its policies of the past quarter-century to date, and specifically adopt my FDR-style remedies, the nation would not survive.... Otherwise neither that party nor the nation 'have a snowball's chance in Hell' during the several years immediately ahead.... Why should anyone waste their support of the Democratic Party if that party does not now openly entertain my Presidential candidacy for 2004?"
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
While most of the Congressional candidates appeared blithely ignorant of the crippling economic crisis, its effects have been more keenly felt at the state level, where at least 47 of the 50 states face serious budget deficits, and all 50 states are, in fact, bankrupt. Since George W. Bush was sworn in as President in January 2001, the real level of unemployment in the nation, as measured by EIRin contrast to the fraudulent figures released each month by the Bureau of Labor Statisticshas skyrocketed, especially in the manufacturing industries. This decline in the physical economy, when combined with the crash of the "tech sector" and its associated stock-market bubble, caused the dramatic collapse in all government revenuesthe "telltale heart" of the economic depression. On the Federal level, the deficit could easily hit $250 billion in fiscal year 2003. The collapse in state revenues has produced record deficits.
California, which had a $24-billion budget deficit in 2001-02, faces a deficit in 2003-04, which could top $20 billion under the most optimistic circumstances. Texas is facing a deficit of more than $10 billion, and New York, $10 billion, with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg admitting this week that the city is facing an $8 billion budget shortfall in the next fiscal year. The list goes on. Governors and legislatures have foolishly responded with savage austerity, slashing necessary spending in infrastructure, leading to dangerous crises in transport, water, energy, health care, and education. This approach sacrifices the future, while adding to the downward spiral of revenue collapse.
In California, cuts in expenditures have added to already serious problems in transportation and in the ports; in water management, where both cities and farmers face shortfalls; in electricity production, in a state that has not yet recovered from the devastation wrought by Enron, and where consumers face soaring prices and shortages; and in health care, where the City of Los Angeles has already lost half of its trauma centers, and may still lose two of its four major public hospitals. That these issues were avoided, as if by agreement, by Gov. Gray Davis (D) and his Republican opponent, explains why Davis's margin of victory was only 5%, with voter turnout hitting a record low. A top Davis campaign activist conceded to EIR, before Nov. 5, "[We have] blown itwe could have smashed the Republicans, but we have adopted a play-it-safe strategy."
Because of these state disasters, the exceptions to the Democrats losses occurred where they won governorships from Republicans, including several incumbents. Among these were the formerly industrial Midwestern states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin; and the traditionally Republican states of Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma.
The LaRouche Vote
The Democratic Party's evident national leadership vacuum has left Democrats, and sane Republicans, no place to turn but to the economic recovery policies of Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, the leader of the "FDR" tradition internationally. His political influence within the United States has risen during 2002 as the candidate has deployed supporters, led by a rapidly growing LaRouche Youth Movement, "on the streets," to engage the population in a blunt debate of the alternative to depression and war. Beside his infrastructure-centered recovery program, the candidate's exposes of the "Chickenhawk" faction pushing the war, and of the corruption of the Joe Lieberman-John McCain duo, have flooded Washington and every major urban center in America.
LaRouche's Presidential campaign, though hated and fearedand blacked out by the Establishment mediaplayed a vital role in this year's mid-term election contests. Over the course of the primaries and the general election, more than 215,000 citizens voted for a handful of avowed LaRouche Democratic candidatesagainst the Democratic Party leadership's active opposition! LaRouche's proposals have been all over the airwaves in the Washington area as well. And he played a decisive role in bringing about the defeat of a pro-drug referendum in Nevada.
The Spannaus Campaign
Longtime LaRouche associate Nancy Spannaus launched the most prominent of the LaRouche Democratic candidacies, running for U.S. Senate in Virginia as an Independent, when the Party leadership refused to oppose incumbent Republican John Warner and refused to accept a LaRouche Democrat as a candidate. Through Spannaus's campaign, LaRouche's voice was heard frequently on WTOP, the most-listened-to radio station in Washington, for the eight-week period leading up to Nov. 5, spreading, in the last weekend, to the major Virginia cities of Norfolk and Richmond. In some ads, LaRouche chided the insanity of the Chickenhawk warriors; in others, he spoke about the solution to the economic breakdown crisis. These one-minute spots created such a stir, that both the Virginia Democratic Party, and the leading national rag of the neo-conservatives, the Weekly Standard, put out ridiculous diatribes against Spannaus and LaRouche.
LaRouche Democrat Spannaus garnered nearly 150,000 votes on Nov. 5, with the most significant support coming in Alexandria City and Arlington County in Northern Virginiaprecisely the areas saturated with the LaRouche-Spannaus radio and TV ads and millions of pieces of LaRouche-in-2004 campaign literature.
The State Campaigns
The other LaRouche Democrats on the Nov. 5 ballots had won the Democratic nominations for State Representative, in Connecticut and Michigan. Despite flagrant Democratic Party sabotage of their candidacies, both got vote totals comparable to or surpassing those of the most successful Democratic candidates running in their areas.
In Connecticut's 141st District, in the Darien-Rowayton area, LaRouche Democrat Laurie Dobson won 24% of the vote, against the incumbent Republicanmore than the Democratic Party's candidate got in 2000and has now become a prominent spokesperson for the LaRouche perspective on national reconstruction. She immediately announced, on election night, that she would be leading a drive in Connecticut for LaRouche's "Super-TVA" proposal. The local press, on Nov. 6, noted that the most significant campaign news was not that the Republican incumbent had won; but that Dobson had scored such an impressive vote, on the basis of her attacks on Sen. Lieberman and her open affiliation with LaRouche.
In Livonia, Michigan, LaRouche Democrat Kerry Lowry won the Democratic primary on LaRouche's platform, with over 60% of the vote, and faced the incumbent Republican in the general election. On Nov. 5, Lowry won 36% of the voted, in a bedrock Republican district.
Fighting Drugs
The LaRouche Presidential campaign factor also came into prominent play in Nevada, where George Soros's drug gang had put a marijuana-legalization referendum on the ballot. Following the circulation of LaRouche's exposé of Soros, by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joe Neal, the referendumconsidered a sure winner earlierwas buried by a margin of 61% to 39%. Had the massively-funded referendum passed, the government of Nevada would have been mandated to grow and distribute marijuana in the state. Nevada would have become a national beachhead for the international drug cartels, with horrific consequences for the nation as a whole.
LaRouche broke up the game, starting with a Sept. 8 press release which denounced Soros as the primary source of funding for the entire drug-legalization drive worldwide. "How can the United States expect to press Colombia and Peru to crack down on the drug cartels when the same cartels are now attempting to establish a major beachhead inside the United States?" he asked.
LaRouche's release unmasking Soros was sent to all media in the state, and used by a LaRouche Democrat on the state party central committee to block an otherwise expected endorsement of legalization. On Oct. 4, the Democratic nominee for Governor, State Sen. Joe Neal, used EIR's exposé to persuade the state Board of Health to oppose the initiative. The Las Vegas Review-Journal ran the story as its lead on Oct. 5. Soros and company reacted with a strategic blunder. They launched a barrage of slanders against LaRouche, and demanded that Neal and Las Vegas prosecutor Gary Booker "apologize" for having linked the Marijuana Policy Project, the Soros-bankrolled front group behind the Nevada legalization initiative, to "the cartel." Neal stood his ground and vouched for the high quality of EIR's research. The Review-Journal and Time magazine hounded Booker. In the process, LaRouche's and EIR's responses were reported daily in the Review-Journal.
On Oct. 9-10, White House "drug czar" John P. Walters spent two days in Nevada, echoing LaRouche. At every stop, he nailed Soros and insisted he wanted to debate only him and the two other moneybags named in EIR on Sept. 20. "Any time, any place. I'm here; where are you?" Walters asked. Soros, of the "Open Society," hid. After the Election Day victory, Reno-area District Attorney Dick Gammick told Soros's lackeys, "Pack your baggies and go home. We don't need this stuff in Nevada."
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