At this week?s conference of the progressive Campaign for America?s Future, prospective Democratic presidential candidates presented their credentials in a testimony of how the organization?s influence and clout have grown in the party.
The headliners included the current frontrunner in the polls, Sen. Hillary Clinton, 2004 nominee Sen. John Kerry and the emotional favorite on the Democratic left, Sen. Russ Feingold, as well as a who?s who of the progressive activist community.
After five years, the organization has established itself as the umbrella that covers protest against the Bush administration on every issue from the war in Iraq and allegations of an executive power grab to alternative energy development and environmental protection.
Because the participants at the conference, called Take Back America, like their progressivism undiluted, Clinton was treated to some boos along with applause for declining to set a date certain for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, as many of them advocate.
Kerry, whose ambivalence on Iraq may have cost him the presidency in 2004, flatly told the conference “I was wrong” to vote for the 2002 resolution authorizing the invasion. He drew cheers for embracing the timetable from which Clinton pulled back.
Feingold, on the other hand, had nothing to apologize for, having voted against the Iraq war from the start, and he won a standing ovation for his effort to have the Senate censure the president. He defended the move, rejected by nearly all other Democrats, “to make sure the pages of history are not blank” on Bush?s role in invading Iraq on the false rationale that it had weapons of mass destruction.
Though saying he was not advocating Bush?s impeachment, Feingold drew roars of approval by charging that what the president did was “right in the strike zone of what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote of high crimes and misdemeanors.”
While he was at it, Feingold took Bush to task for his contention that Article II of the Constitution, identifying the president as commander in chief of the armed forces, gives him virtually a free hand in wartime. The allegation also brought enthusiastic support fromthe progresssives.
The burden of the message from most speakers was that if Democrats hope to win control of Congress in November, and the White House in 2008, they have to stop trimming their sails on opposing the war and attack Bush and Company across the board.
Roger Hickey, co-founder and co-director the organization, says that since last year?s conference “the fundamental change is that the people have turned against George Bush and against what he stands for.” He credits the progressive movement for defeating Bush?s campaign to change Social Security, “which made him a lame duck domestically.”
But it?s the war, Hickey says, that has made the difference, because the country sees him as “throwing us irresponsibly into a war that has gone very badly, and they see him as not on their side” on a range of other issues. Every Republican candidate this fall, he says, “is going to have to deal with the question, ?Are you with Bush or against him on the war?? And it?s people like those who attended this conference who are going to be asking the question.”
Hickey says he expects the Republicans again in November to feed American fears of future terrorism, arguing that the war in Iraq makes them safer at home. But, he says, “most people are already thinking this war is making us more unsafe. This war is stirring up the hornet?s nest of terrorists, and I think most Democratic challengers are smart enough to say, ?I wouldn?t have voted for this war. Vote for me and I?ll end it.?”
At the same time, Hickey says, the prospective Democratic candidates saw in 2004 how progressive activists effectively mobilized voters and raised money through innovations in the use of new technology, and they want to tap into this growing resource. Their presence at the conference suggests that if the progressives have not yet not regained their old position in the party?s mainstream, they are making considerable strides in that direction.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
