For the second time in as many months Beinart starts with a premise, that followers of Henry “Scoop” Jackson need to purge the Democrats of peaceniks, Commie-sympathisers all, and then spins-a-tale around it.
I don’t recognise the Iowa that Peter Beinart describes in Rethinking Iowa. I’d be surprised if even one percent of the 10 to 20 percent he says attended the Iowa caucuses were found to be well acquainted with Henry Wallace’s history in the Democratic party or would agree with Beinart’s obsessive lament that he’s the state’s most famous politician. Most would likely respond to any such inquiry, Who Was Henry A. Wallace?, since as Schlesinger observes in this review, Wallace died in 1965 “a nearly forgotten man.”
Beinart enlists peripheral vision and attempts to sink his claws into other evil forces afoot in the country’s heartland. “Historically, the “peace churches” — Quakers, Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren — have thrived in the state. Few states receive as few defense dollars as Iowa, and few have as great a skepticism toward military force.”
Presently, only one state, if that, can match Iowa in their National Guard recruitment and readiness standing, ranking No.1 in November and No. 2 in December, against other states that are struggling to meet their quotas. As of December 21, 2004, more than half of Iowa’s 13,000 guard and reserves had been mobilised over the past three years, and “about 2,900 guardsmen and reservists” were on active duty.
These same churches have historically settled in farming communities and in greater numbers elsewhere, yet the young people of those states continue to enlist and die in Iraq, too. Iowa drifted into the Bush column this election thanks to tax cuts and the extremely generous farm subsidies George threw our beseiged farmers’ way, and in response to a torrent of last minute phone calls from moral values sirens warning that Kerry was going to take our guns and bibles away. Defense dollars are hardly the only form of bribery engaged in by coercive thieves in office, and it is a tactic that doesn’t work very well in the state of Washington, “Scoop” Jackson’s turf, does it.
Iowa Democrats didn’t send Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton into battle with George. They did the party machine’s bidding, a rusty behemoth that in its disjointed, dissembling manner decided the electorate was too stupid to discern troubling security concerns from illegal occupations and would conflate the two. As for Dean, he pushed too hard and overstayed his welcome, his bus loads of orange-hatted organisers seemed too cultish, and those negative attacks he and Gephardt engaged in sealed their fate, but he was never perceived as anything more than another party hack. If Clark took a pass on Iowa due our subversive peace advocacy then why did he align himself with Michael Moore? But what is truly astonishing in Beinart’s fantasy is his thinking that Joe Lieberman could be elected dog catcher in his home town, let alone president, since he’s as appealing on a physical and political level as the annoying uncle you avoid at family gatherings. His selection was the reason 2000 was so close, in retrospect, yet another failed DLC manoeuvre.
Think charisma and appealing to the greed factor, Peter. That’s all it takes to win elections in this country, not security issues, as anyone with an abacus can easily determine. The people care mostly about gathering any crumbs brushed from the tables of the shills, and you all look, sound and smell the same to us.
And the caucuses are an event of participatory democracy there should be more of, not less, unlike the endless campaigning for our votes. Same day primaries for all states would go a long way towards curbing that offensive process.