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Stooping to New
Lows to Sabotage the Antiwar Movement
MoveOn
Rigs Its Own Vote; Betrays Its Membership
By JOHN WALSH
The first email.
On May 17, I received an email
from MoveOn.org signed by Ben Bradzel, Matt and Eli (Pariser)
inviting me to a "trial" house party to begin creation
of a "positive agenda" for 2006. The house party was
the very next day, May 18. According to the email, the "positive
agenda" to be created had to come "from the grass roots."
While the email suggested that we could decide on anything that
we liked ("The sky's the limit."), it named three possible
elements in the "positive agenda": "universal
health care" (not specified as single-payer), "clean
energy," "publicly financed elections." (Remember
these three.) Later in the email it was made clear that there
should be 3 points to the new agenda."
It was striking to me that
there was no mention of the war on Iraq or Iran in this email--striking
but not surprising in light of MoveOn's long-standing failure
to call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Moreover, at the
end of the missive the reasons for developing the "positive
agenda" was made clear. Not only were MoveOn members asking
for it, but the MoveOn bosses considered it crucial to "getting
people to the polls" and "winning in November"
which meant that "Democrats" would "gain seats
in November. There was no question about whether the Democrats
deserved to win seats in November. This was a goal slipped into
the "p.s." of the email to be taken as a given. We
were also told in passing that the "conversation" at
the house party would be "guided," which meant directed
by a script which as we shall see also failed to mention the
war.
The second email.
I was curious but unable to
attend that "trial" house party, but the following
week the real thing emerged. The next week on May 22 another
email appeared, announcing a series of nationwide house parties
on May 24. I decided to go. But I was disappointed that once
again there was no mention of the war in the email. So I decided
to call a staff contact that we were given. She was young, enthusiastic
and dedicated but inexperienced. I asked her why there was no
mention of the war. I pointed out that a clear and ever growing
majority of voters were for that. And I informed her that Karl
Rove essentially conceded that the war was Bush's Achilles heel.
So if MoveOn wanted to defeat the Bushies, why not raise the
war? Silence came over her. She then said, as if recalling something,
that opposition to the war was "negative" and we had
to have a "positive" agenda. I asked whether "Bring
all the troops home now. Peace now." would amount to a "positive
agenda." Silence. She did call the national office for me,
but they had nothing to say in response.
At the house party itself,
there were but a handful of people, less than ten, smaller than
previous MoveOn events and this in Cambridge, Mass. We
were given a list of "positive goals" to decide upon,
but the war was not mentioned. I piped up at once, asking why
not. Most people had not seemed to consider that the war was
missing from the list of possible agenda items, so taken were
they with thoughts of national health care and a clean environment.
We agreed to add the war to our agenda, and when we took the
final vote on our positive agenda, the results were as follows.
"Bring the troops home from Iraq in 2006" was number
one by a wide margin. "Develop alternative energy sources
for everyone" and "Decent medical care for everyone"
were number two and three, respectively.
The third email.
On May 30 came another email,
giving the top 10 choices from the house parties from which 3
were to be chosen by an online ballot. Again there was no mention
of Iraq. The choices were "the top 10 most popular ideas
from last week's house parties." Apparently other house
parties did not think to bring up Iraq, because it was not offered
as an alternative, or else the MoveOn bosses did feel inclined
to include it. Of course MoveOn is far from transparent, so we
cannot know. What we do know is that the number one issue on
the minds of Americans did not emerge in the top 10! Quite amazing!
(The 10 "most popular" choices were: "A living
wage for all; Global leadership through diplomacy: Verifiable,
accurate elections; High quality education for all; Balanced
federal budget; Health care for all, Publicly funded elections;
Preserve our natural resources; Energy independence: clean, renewable
sources; Restored constitutional rights". The second of
these is noteworthy, "verifiable, accurate elections";
MoveOn would do well to take careful note of this.)
The final email.
Finally, the results of all
this emerged in the last email on June 1 in which "the whole
MoveOn.org Political Action team" triumphantly announced
the top 3! And the winners were: "Health care for all. Energy
independence through clean, renewable sources. Democracy restored."
Damned close to the three suggested at the outset in the very
first email - before any voting at all - as you remember from
the first paragraph above: "universal health care"
"clean energy," "publicly financed elections."
The MoveOn bosses turned out to be remarkable seers.
In this final email MoveOn
said that this agenda was chosen by "more than 100,000 people
in local house parties and then online." But in a previous
email the MoveOn bosses claimed only 10,000 in attendance for
the house parties so most of the voting was done on line when
the final 10 choices "on the ballot" excluded Iraq
and the online voters were in no position to add it in. The ballot
choices were fixed. More than that, its base is catching on to
MoveOn. It is pretty pathetic for an organization of 3 million
members (as claimed in the email of June 1) to get only 100,000
votes online. That is less than 4% of the members voting! And
100,000 hits on a well-financed and established web site is no
big deal.
How did the MoveOn bosses engineer
this? It is unclear. Did they simply exclude results like those
of our house party? Did they actually falsify the voting? Or
did they simply exclude choices with their "guided conversations,"
restricted choices and demands for the members to be "positive."
We cannot know, for MoveOn is as opaque as the higher reaches
of its parent organization, the Democratic Party. But we do know
that the MoveOn bosses are not to be trusted. They are one element
in a wider strategy of the Dem establishment and its accessories
to sabotage and cripple the antiwar movement.
John Walsh keeps up with MoveOn in an attempt
to bring the war to the forefront of its agenda and in an increasingly
deseperate hope that something will change there. He can be reached
at John.Endwar @gmail.com
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