Wal-Mart Nailed

Kudos to the coalition filing an FEC complaint against Wal-Mart for coercing their employees. At best this ends up with a pittance of a fine, but anything that puts their illegal practices in a national spotlight is positive. Plus, the intimidation that Wal-Mart is engaged in with respect to the Presidential election is the same intimidation they routinely engage in during union elections. They threaten to shut down stores, fire union activists, tell employees that their jobs are at stake, and generally do whatever they can to keep unions out. Coordinating with low-level managers on what Presidential candidate to vote for is a symptom of the same disease.

Speaking of which, what's with George McGovern sucking up to the corporate crowd and rejecting the Employee Free Choice Act? I know that labor torpedoed him in the 1972 elections, but surely he understands the importance of unions as an anti-poverty instrument. Apparently, this is nothing new for him; he's been tied in to anti-union lobbyists for a number of years now. Sad.

UPDATE: American Rights At Work has a full report.

Exit Polling

There's been some early exit poll numbers floating about. Aside from the turnout and the high numbers of independents voting in both parties, the key number for me is this:

FEELINGS ABOUT PRESIDENT BUSH: Democratic primary voters felt a lot more negative about Bush than Republican voters felt positive:

-- Fully two-thirds of Democratic primary voters said they feel angry about the Bush administration and nearly all the rest said they were dissatisfied, but not angry.

-- Among Republican primary voters, fewer than one in 10 were enthusiastic and four in 10 were satisfied but not enthusiastic. About a third were dissatisfied and two in 10 GOP primary voters were angry about the Bush administration.

People can't stand this President. George McGovern was right.

The Huck-a-boom

Digby writes an excellent post about Huckabee's victory in Iowa, and how he's the only candidate that manages to be inspiring to any segment of the Republican base. The establishment is raging against him, but it might not work this time. At the end she mentions "This might be their 1972." I think that's an extremely apt comparison.

It's important to understand why McGovern got destroyed that year. It certainly wasn't because he was such a dirty fucking hippie. It's because the establishment, having proven unable to stop him with their lame cast of characters, knee-capped him. I wrote about this during the Lieberman-Lamont primary.

FACT: The McGovern campaign of 1972 had its most vociferous opponents on his own side of the aisle. Ed Muskie was the favorite going into that year's election. The DLC's Al From was running a subcommittee for him at the time. Henry "Scoop" Jackson was one of his opponents that year. Jackson's top campaign advisor was Richard Perle. It was Jackson, not the Republicans, who used the phrase "acid, amnesty and abortion" to describe the McGovern platform. His people-powered campaign represented a major threat to the institutional forces of the party (sound familiar?). After winning the Wisconsin Primary, the powers that be drafted Hubert Humphrey and sent him into the race as the "Anyone But McGovern" candidate. In a famous debate, Humphrey suggested very directly that McGovern's plan to reduce defense spending would "sweep the Army and Navy off the table." ALL of these smears and slurs were used by the Nixon campaign in the fall. They ALL came from inside the party, from the wing that is now largely the modern neoconservative movement.

Establishment Democrats never came on board with McGovern's campaign, fighting him at the convention tooth and nail. The reason McGovern's amazing "Come Home, America" nominating speech happened at 3am ET was because of the massive floor fight engaged to knock him out of the race. Humphrey supporters tried to change the rules with respect to California's delegates after agreeing to the rules in the first place. This futile attempt took up weeks leading up to the convention, and lasted all night on the floor. Party rules mandated that a Vice Presidential candidate come out of the convention, and honestly the McGovern campaign was too busy securing the nomination to even consider it. They went through many choices because establishment figures were pressured not to join up with him. Boston Mayor Kevin White was on the verge of receiving the nod, but the Kennedy clan found him unacceptable. This chaos led to the choice of Maryland Senator Tom Eagleton, who had a history of mental illness and was eventually dumped from the ticket. More than anything, this stalled any momentum they could have gained. Intra-party squabbling was a major part of all of this. George Meany, an old lion of the establishment, refused to let the AFL-CIO endorse McGovern. Labor was a far bigger factor in elections at the time.

The Democratic Party had a vested interest in sandbagging the McGovern campaign then, as surely as its offspring today have a vested interest in using McGovern as an example of a liberal hippie counterculture that would destroy the party. It was done to protect little fiefdoms, to ensure corporate dominance and to keep intact the warmaking machine.

Despite all that, there was no stopping McGovern from getting the nomination because the people decided in the primaries, and they dismissed the establishment figures cautioning against him. They were mad and tired of being taken for granted. It's perfectly analogous to Huckabee today. I don't care how much Swift Boat money John McCain gets, that won't change the mind of a Southern evangelical. As Digby says:

They've been voting for religious phonies for a couple of decades now in the hopes that he would advance their religious agenda and represent their values. This time they have the real thing and they know it. And they could not care less what moneyed elites like Chris Matthews and Joe Klein --- or Rush Limbaugh --- think about it.

Huckabee's not losing. I'm telling you.

Go Go George

This amazing op-ed by George McGovern probably won't get much notice, but I'll happily link to it. I've written before about McGovern, and how punditry always gets it wrong about his 1972 candidacy. It's great that he's taking the lead at fighting back, and taking aim at Dick Cheney.

VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed "the Windy City." Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.

Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.

He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat — a record matched by President Bush.

Cheney charged that today's Democrats don't appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.

Read the whole thing. And understand that George McGovern was as honorable a man who's ever ran for the White House. The irrational belief that he "destroyed" the Democratic Party, when within 4 years Democrats held the White House and greatly increased majorities in Congress, is absurd. He ran against a cheat who had to resign for his crimes, and his own party leaders (particularly labor) refused to back him. His loss was inevitable, but does not diminish his achievement. McGovern is the kind of man we should be URGING to get into government, not a symbol for what we should run from.