Advice for the peace movement

“I have been thinking for a while now that the Democrats really should sit down and consider changing their mascot from a donkey to a marmot,” writes Joshua Frank, author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush. “A rodent really is more emblematic of their provincial habits than a donkey could ever be. Think about it. Just this past weekend antiwar rallies were held across the country and the Democratic leadership was nowhere in sight. They had high-tailed it out there. They hid in their holes and were afraid to be seen.”

At Counterpunch.org today, Frank asks why anti-war activists are so loyal to a Democratic Party that supported Bush’s war and still refuses to oppose it. Frank blames much of this undeserved loyalty on Howard Dean, who’s “been able to corral anti-war Democrats into the fold, making sure they don’t flee en masse over the war issue even though they should.” Frank says that “Dean’s early criticism of the Iraq war earned him significant street-cred with party advocates.

“It was un-deserved. Dean, like the rest of the Democratic leadership, is pro-war and pro-occupation, and it couldn’t be more damaging for the peace movement to continue putting faith into this futile party.”