Anybody but butch

Like
everybody tuned in to the presidential race, I’ve been hearing
“drumbeats” lately. One of them has my head pounding: the post-Super
Tuesday demand that all join hands in backing presumptive Democratic nominee
John Kerry.

            Up-front disclosure: If Kerry’s the
One, as seems inevitable, he’ll get my vote. It won’t be the first time I’ve
held my nose and voted strategically.

            If I were a Dem, I’d be flipping
several coins. (By the way, a Bronx cheer to New York’s historical
bipartisanship for negating Green registrations.) On one hand, it’s smart to
unite around a candidate ASAP. On the other hand, why hand the Bushies a stationary
target for their attack ads so soon?

            Either way, lefties should flock
together, too. The Democratic Party power structure has massaged us all. Kerry
was anointed as frontrunner even before the starter’s pistol was loaded. Then
he dipped in the polls under an assault from Howard Dean. The Dean campaign was
refreshingly populist — more so than the good doctor himself.

            Actual populist Dennis Kucinich is
still running, thankfully. The guy’s great on the issues, with minor
exceptions. He’d stop creeping Greenspanism, for example. And he opposes the
war and occupation, truly and deeply. (For quite another war story, read
Stephen Zunes’ March 5 essay on Kerry’s foreign policy, at
www.commondreams.org.)

These thoughts
dogged
me when I covered a February 28 Kerry rally here.

            Though Kerry was a no-show, the
local media thronged the Laborers Hall. That’s because the rally featured some
high-profile personalities: med student Vanessa Kerry, the candidate’s
daughter; educator Diana Kerry, his sister; and Ted Kennedy, the other US
senator from Massachusetts.

            For me, Kennedy was the top
attraction. He’s known for energizing the troops, and I think he was in top
form that day. He gave specifics, too. He promised, for example, that Democrats
in Congress “have just begun to fight” for extending unemployment benefits,
a measure the White House has ignored. A $13 billion fund is available for
this, he said.

            He also made a strong appeal for
John Kerry’s health plan. And there’s where Ted and I part company.

            Kerry’s plan is supposed to cover 99
percent of children and 95 percent of Americans overall. Ah yes, in today’s
America, leaving five percent uninsured is known as “universal
coverage.” Compare this to the Kucinich plan — a Medicare-type system
covering everyone at lower cost. (Note to Democrat
and Chronicle critic Jack Garner, who while reviewing The Barbarian Invasions referred to a mythological beast,
“Canada’s haphazard socialized health system”: I don’t know what the
film said, and I do know the system has been stressed by government cutbacks.
But Canadian single-payer clearly produces superior health outcomes, and it’s
highly popular. Though publicly financed, it relies on private delivery of
services, and thus is barely more “socialized” than what we’ve got
down here.)

            Back to universality, Kerry-style:
The frontrunner’s plan would retain the current system of private insurance; it
promises to keep premiums down by subsidizing very-high-cost insurance claims
and by allowing people who can’t get affordable coverage to buy into the
federal employees’ system in a “separate pool.”

            In short, it’s Band-Aids all over
again, with stronger adhesive. The fatal flaw survives: tying most coverage to
employment.

            How sad. The leading candidate would
make a national disgrace — call it “America’s haphazard profiteering
system” — only a little less disgraceful.

Almost forgot:
Health chat got me a moment with Ted Kennedy.

            OK, it’s not such a big deal in
retrospect. But even for lefty radicals like me who are wary of liberalism,
it’s a pleasure to meet someone who’s consistently fought the good fight
against America’s rightwing barbarians.

            Here’s what came down: I asked
Kennedy why Kerry isn’t supporting single-payer. Realpolitik, he said, in
effect. Then he let his guard down. Check out the news from Taiwan, he said:
They just adopted single-payer. The subject made his eyes brighten — brighter
than when he was pushing the Kerry scheme.

            It wasn’t the only time I saw an
Enthusiasm Gap.

            The medium turnout at the
Kerry-Kennedy rally made an impression, for example. Organizers chose a spot
— Railroad and Fourth streets, down from the Public Market — that’s
bustling on a Saturday morning. And here we have a front-running campaign
poised for another leap forward. And the troops don’t even pack a meeting hall?

            Intra-party politics may play a
role. I heard from some Deaniacs, Edwardians, and a Kucinich organizer. Some
assumed the rally was a general Democratic campaign event. But when they got
visually frisked at the door, they found otherwise. I went through the routine
myself, thinking it was only about hometown security. Turned out it was about
message control.

            “I was kicked right out of the
rally” for wearing a Dean T-shirt, says Andrea DiGiorgio, a Henrietta
Democrat. She explains: A guy at the door said she couldn’t come in unless she
changed clothes. Refusing to do so, she went out to the parking lot and stood
with others — until somebody told her she and her shirt weren’t welcome
there, either. “It definitely wasn’t the rejuvenating experience I thought
it would be,” she says.

            Some rally volunteers got “a
little overzealous,” says county Democratic chair Molly Clifford.
“It’s not something that was condoned by the party,” she says. She
adds she sent people a written apology.

            It all may have been a
misunderstanding. Still, the party’s got to watch its step.

            Literally. Disabled activists
complained about poor access to the Kerry rally — a portable ramp didn’t do
the trick — and similar problems at an Edwards rally at UNITE headquarters.

            “At the Laborers Hall, they at
least had an interpreter,” says Chris Hilderbrant of the Center for
Disability Rights. He faults candidates Kucinich and Sharpton, as well, for not
mentioning disability issues in recent debates. “President Bush talks
about us,” says Hilderbrant. But he adds a large caveat: Some Bush
appointees oppose the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act.

            I’ll bet the local access problems
get ironed out. They have to be. The Dems are going to be a Party of the
People, or nothing. Such a party must accommodate everyone.

            The bottom 96 to 99 percent of us,
anyway.

This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2004.