Youth Regained: Democratic Party
Begins To Come Alive
by Nancy Spannaus
The scene was Boston, July 2004, outside the Democratic National Convention. Over 100 young people, representatives of the LaRouche in 2004 election campaign, lined the walkway where the delegates were walking into the convention center, and sang. Beautiful bel canto counterpoint filled the air, bringing smiles to the faces of the delegates, who cheerfully took the copies of the LaRouche-authored A Real Democratic Platform for November 2004. Over the several days of the Convention, members of the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) fanned out around the city—on subways, buses, street corners, and hotels—ultimately circulating 50,000 copies of LaRouche's platform.
The Democratic Party was changed, for good.
In fact, it is only by understanding the impact which the deployment of the LaRouche Youth Movement had on the Democratic Party, starting from that "shock" deployment, up to today, that you can understand the revolutionary ferment which is erupting in the Party today, in an insurgency against the British-backed attempt to impose an Obama Presidential nomination on the Party. On the one hand, LaRouche's intervention hammered home the principles of Franklin Roosevelt, as the only viable approach for the Democratic Party to take in addressing the deepening economic and strategic crises facing the nation. On the other, LaRouche's ability to inspire a youth movement, committed to the highest standard of Classical culture and scientific/political ideas, conveyed a profound sense of optimism to a party which had adapted to Baby Boomer pessimism, and worse.
In his press conference of June 30, where he announced the formation of the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC), Lyndon LaRouche identified precisely how he intended to direct the activities of the Youth Movement, in the period leading up to the election, and beyond. First, LaRouche emphasized, LPAC will concentrate on organizing among the lower 80% of income brackets, with an FDR-style program that addresses the way in which the physical collapse of the U.S. economy can be reversed. This constituency has been increasingly ignored, LaRouche noted, over recent years, and that has been a primary deficiency in the Party's ability to win elections. The younger age stratum (18-25 years of age) within this lower 80% will be a major focus, he added.
Second, LaRouche said, LPAC will continue to emphasize its Classical music program, specifically centered around Johann Sebastian Bach. Organizing with Classical music, including Classically arranged Negro Spirituals, has the power to reach the soul in a way that no other political organizing can, bringing beauty to a population that is impoverished spiritually, as well as economically, LaRouche said.
Coming out of the Convention, LPAC did precisely what LaRouche said it would. Unfortunately, the leadership of the Democratic Party did not adequately respond. Thus we have now reached the proverbial "hour of decision," where the consequences of not listening to LaRouche may be fatal to the nation, including the Party, within the next weeks and months.
The Initial LYM-LPAC Offensive
Over the three months between the Convention and the 2004 election, LaRouche's political action committee went on an offensive unlike any other the United States had seen before. A dozen youth or so would deploy to Congress, street corners around the country, and political meetings, to sing some of the most beautiful Classical music ever written, especially sections from Bach's motet, Jesu, meine Freude, and ironic canons taking on the Beastman Dick Cheney and his puppet Bush. In this context, hundreds of thousands of pieces of political literature were circulated, laying out the pathway to an FDR-style recovery, as well as the case for Cheney's removal, which LaRouche had first called for back in September 2002.
One of the major areas of LYM-LPAC concentration was Ohio, a crucial battleground state between Democratic nominee John Kerry and incumbent George W. Bush. Given the vote suppression carried out by the Republican machine in that state, it is impossible to know whether the LYM were successful in bringing about a Kerry victory. But the impact on the Democratic Party there, and on crucial circles in the Party nationally, was definitely felt.
The 2004 election was Kerry's to lose, and he did—by moving too slowly and defensively, especially on the economic issue. Even more obvious is the fact that only the LaRouche-led section of the Party was prepared to rally for a fight after the electoral loss. LaRouche took charge, with amazing results.
The "issues" were the voter suppression, which called the entire electoral result into question, and Social Security privatization, which the re-elected George W. Bush had declared he planned to proceed with. LaRouche addressed the first in his Nov. 9 post-election webcast, which led with a full performance of the Jesu, meine Freude, and featured a heavy emphasis on the role that the LYM's revitalization of Classical culture must play in saving the nation from the disaster it had just chosen. On Dec. 6, LaRouche broadened the assault, identifying Bush's intent to implement the Chilean fascist Augusto Pinochet's Social Security privatization, as the second leading point of the mobilization. Before the end of December, LPAC had produced its first pamphlet, "Bush's Social Security Privatization, Foot in the Door for Fascism."
The results of LaRouche's leadership, buttressed by the LYM mass deployment, were stunningly successful. The certification of Bush's election was challenged publicly in the Congress, putting a blot on the legitimacy of the election. And the Democratic Party was goaded into action against the Social Security privatization, specifically around the idea of defending the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Bush's attempt to bail out Wall Street with Social Security funds went down in flames, and everyone knew that LPAC had led the offensive. LaRouche moved on to demand a mobilization to save the auto industry, then clearly marked by the financial oligarchy for destruction.
At that point, the Anglo-Dutch financiers set their Democratic Party assets into motion, especially those associated with fascist Felix Rohatyn. Deploying political pressure and ample funds, they insisted on what Rohatyn said explicitly: LaRouche represents a new FDR principle, and he must be stopped.
The 'New Politics': Mass Effect
A pitched battle for the soul of the Democratic Party ensued over 2005-08. The LYM-LPAC forces organized nationally around LaRouche's recovery program, and targetted the fascist schemes which Rohatyn and company had put up against them. The LYM fought in state houses around the country to build support for saving the auto industry, as the center of U.S. machine-tool capacity. In-depth support for LaRouche's "Economic Recovery Act of 2006," an emergency piece of legislation to launch in-depth infrastructure development, was generated among labor unions, city councils, and state legislatures as well.
Despite the groundswell of support, leading Democrats in Congress continued to say that they could not act, because the Republicans still held control over both the House and the Senate.
The Congressional election of 2006 was to change all that, and here again the LPAC-LYM forces played the crucial role. In October of that year, LPAC organizers unearthed a major dirty operation at work on the nation's college campuses, centered around the combination of Tory banker and intelligence spook John Train, and the apparatus of Lynne Cheney, wife (and suspected controller) of Vice President Dick. On learning of this, LaRouche commissioned a pamphlet exposing the apparatus. The pamphlet, "Is Joseph Goebbels on Your Campus? John Train and the Bankers' Secret Government," hit the streets and campuses in hundreds of thousands of copies in the month before the election—with a devastating effect on the fascist apparatus. It was combined, of course, with LYM-LPAC interventions on the alternative to this degradation, emphasizing the universal Classical principles of science, economics, and song.
When the election concluded, the Democratic Party found itself in control of the House of Representatives once again, the result of a virtual landslide, and with technical, if not very reliable, superiority in the Senate. Official election analysis showed that the victory had come with a sharp increase in the participation of the 18-to-25-year-old generation, who had been broken out of their doldrums to participate in the voting.
This result was lawful, commented LaRouche, in a political analysis piece entitled, "The New Politics," dated Nov. 26. Quotes from the opening section identify the thesis:
Even the leadership of the Democratic Party's national campaign organization is still bemused by its surprise at the way in which a landslide victory was won in the mid-term election's vote for the U.S. House of Representatives. That is the most crucial lesson which the Democratic Party's national organization, has yet to learn, for the sake of the future of both that party, and of our republic.
The lesson is, that, under relevant circumstances, what is otherwise viewed as an innovation in tactical method, may also be strategically decisive in conflict, whether in warfare, or as illustrated, in principle, by the contribution of a relatively small number of young adults, when they are deployed in a certain way, in producing a potentially decisive, strategic margin of victory in political conflicts such as the recent mid-term election-campaigns. The case in hand which illustrates that point, is the historically significant role of the LaRouche Youth Movement's (LYM's) strategic approach to LPAC (LaRouche Political Action Committee) tactics in the recent U.S. mid-term elections....
The case illustrates the relevant meaning which must be assigned to today's use of the term 'New Politics.'
Looking, post-election, at both the Senate victory and the actually landslide victory in the House of Representatives, certain Democratic Party circles were astonished by what the post-election audit showed. They are still wondering: How did an elite group of young adult members of my LPAC youth movement, turn the tide in sufficient key places to set off a marginal avalanche for victory among a crucial, relatively much larger stratum of voters in the 18-35 age-range?
The answer to that question is elementary, as I shall show over the course of this present report; but, like all valid, truly elementary discoveries of principle, the process of getting to the essential truth of a matter of principle is never really simple. As in what became, ultimately, the successful performance of a great contrapuntal choral work of Johann Sebastian Bach, the simplicity of the truth appears only after the sensuous actuality of the true principle has finally been discovered.
In several earlier reports, delivered in the U.S.A. and abroad, I have classified the method by which this was orchestrated as a "mass effect" set off by the well-crafted actions of a relatively small number of young adults....
It is most notable, in attempts to define that 'mass effect,' to contrast the relevant surge which erupted in the two to three weeks prior to the casting of the vote, with the absence of any comparable degree of surge reported in the 18-35 age-range as generated by the programs of the official Democratic Party organization.
This use of the term 'mass effect,' is interchangeable with the physical-science term, dynamics, a term introduced to European science by Gottfried Leibniz. This is a term which Leibniz derived, explicitly, from the Classical Greek dynamis which Leibniz adopted, explicitly from the usages of the Pythagoreans, Plato, et al. This usage is explicitly contrasted with the notion of mechanics, as "mechanics" is associated with the scientifically failed method of Descartes. It is contrasted to the currently popular, but usually failed, mechanistic-statistical method, as the latter is represented by the widely employed, intrinsically incompetent methods, which are commonly used for the failed practice of commonly accepted economic forecasting today.
It is now time, the present time of an already onrushing, global financial-breakdown crisis, for bringing on a new, strategically crucial, tactical factor in politics, a certain kind of return to the political style of President Franklin D. Roosevelt....
The Battle Into the Presidency
As every honest and committed Democrat knows by now, the official leadership of the Democratic Party, especially in Washington, but also elsewhere, "blew it." Nancy Pelosi's "leadership" has been "Msleadership." She has refused to act on the mandate the party received, on the question of the war, on the need to impeach Cheney, and, most importantly, on the urgent economic recovery measures required. The party has been effectively controlled, through her, by British agent George Soros, and fascist banker Felix Rohatyn—leading to disgust among the electorate that translates into a lower approval rating for the Democratic Congress than for the Beastman Cheney himself.
LaRouche continued to deploy his Youth Movement for the solutions to the crisis, but, in Congress, they ran up against a stone wall.
By 2007, of course, the opening of the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination began to dominate the nation's political life. For the first time in almost 30 years, LaRouche declared that he would not run for the nation's highest office—although there was no other obviously qualified candidate in sight. Rather, LaRouche emphasized, his youth movement and political action committee were committed to shaping the political environment to create a candidate, or, more precisely, candidacy, which would carry out the tradition of FDR, the American System of Economics.
With the dramatic intensification of the economic/financial breakdown crisis in the Summer of 2007, LaRouche and LPAC found a new receptivity to their initiatives among the citizenry outside the Washington, D.C. Beltway. Hundreds of local political institutions have been debating, and more than 100 have passed, LaRouche's call for emergency measures to protect homeowners and the banks (HBPA).
As frustrating as this process was—because Congress refused to act—there were clear signs that the political climate was shifting in the right direction. The clearest sign came with the political developments around the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign in February 2008, when, faced with the emergence of a British-backed battering-ram effort to knock her out of the race, Clinton began to make proposals for dealing with the economic crisis which went in the same direction as LaRouche's. She not only called for a moratorium on home foreclosures, but began to orient her campaign overall to the economic concerns of the lower 80% of income brackets, denouncing the travesty of free-trade deals, taking on the oil pirates, and the like. Inadequate as her proposals may have been, Clinton was showing a commitment to move in response to reality, toward taking up the challenge of becoming a new FDR.
But the British controllers in the Party were not going to sit back and let the process proceed. They decided Clinton's candidacy must be destroyed.
The Lessons of 1932
The attempt by the de facto British agents in the Democratic Party, to knock out the FDR potential in the party by destroying Hillary Clinton, was in full swing, when Jeffrey Steinberg wrote the history of Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 victory over London's Wall Street fascist, John Jacob Raskob, for the April 4 edition of EIR. And, despite Clinton's stunning series of victories in the April-June primaries, the British operation appeared to succeed in mounting sufficient pressure to get Clinton, and her supporters, to concede to the crowning of Barack Obama.
The first reaction among many of the 18 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries, to Clinton's suspension of her campaign June 6, was heavy demoralization. "I had to pick them up off the floor," LaRouche said. In effect, with Clinton no longer actively campaigning, LaRouche became the rallying point for those who were finally ready to demand a new FDR.
LaRouche knew it was crucial to fight the tendency of Hillary supporters to react with fanatical rage, and get them, as well as Obama supporters, to understand the historic political period they were in. Without an understanding of Britain's war against the United States, and the decisive economic and political turning point which has been reached, there was no way that any effective counterattack could be made against the British tools in the Democratic Party. The issue is not Hillary Clinton's campaign, but whether the nation will survive.
LaRouche's intervention came in three ways. First, he emphasized that, in reality, the nominee of neither political party was knowable at the present time. Not only did both John McCain and Obama have serious weaknesses, which could be used to knock either or both of them out, but the nation and the world were entering a period of political and economic turmoil, the equal of which no one alive today has ever seen. Puppets could be discarded.
Second, LaRouche PAC released a documented exposé of the key British agent destroying the Democratic Party, namely, megaspeculator George Soros. LaRouche introduced the pamphlet, titled, "Your Enemy, George Soros," with a statement dated June 16, that put the matter this way: "George Soros does not actually own Senator Barack Obama; some other people do; but, Soros is a key controller, and seemingly the virtual owner of both Democratic Party Chairman Howard 'Scream' Dean, that Party, perhaps your political party, and, in fact, your nation, which are both what political-economic hit-man George Soros is aiming to destroy." This dossier is now circulating in several hundred thousand copies, with the inclusion of Steinberg's article on the 1932 convention.
Third, LPAC released a new 100-minute DVD on its website, entitled "1932: Speak Not of Parties, But of Universal Principles," which presents Roosevelt's 1932 election in the context of the sweep of the American System's battle against the British Empire, from the time of Abraham Lincoln to FDR's death. This documentary was the product of a Youth Movement team which had been steeped in LaRouche's curriculum of Classical music and science, and it has had an extraordinary impact through the website already, with sections being reproduced by dozens of groups which comprise the growing insurgency for the American System in the Democratic Party.
The Denver Group
Overall, more than 40 organizations have been formed across the country, that are supporting the nomination of Hillary Clinton, or, at minimum, demanding a full nominating process and roll call vote at the convention.
The most visible campaign is being waged by The Denver Group, an unaffiliated political action committee. One of the group's spokespersons is Georgetown University law professor Heidi Li Feldman, who, in an interview with Fox-TV news reporter Neil Cavuto, on July 14, referenced the history of the 1932 convention, and insisted that things could change by August, so that Clinton could conceivably still win the Democratic Party nomination.
For this to happen, of course, Clinton would have to be nominated officially at Denver, and there would have to be a roll call vote. Thus, The Denver Group is raising the alarm that none other than Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi are attempting to prevent Clinton's name from being placed in nomination. The group ran a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune July 11, and followed it up with another on July 23. It has announced that it intends to put on television ads as well, to keep up the pressure to make sure that Clinton is nominated.
In the July 17 edition of CQToday, the legislative news daily from Congressional Quarterly, The Denver Group published a striking ad as well (see illustration). Under a large photo of FDR, the title reads: "Would Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi have kept his name off the ballot?" The text then reads as follows:
Franklin Roosevelt went into the 1932 Democratic Convention 90 delegates short of the 2/3 majority needed to win the nomination. He finally won on the 4th ballot in a contentious convention. The Democratic Party survived.
Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both go to the convention without the necessary majority needed to secure the nomination. Yet there is talk that Howard Dean, Nancy Pelsoi and some elements of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] want to subvert the democratic process by keeping Senator Clinton's name from being placed in nomination.
Senator Clinton is still a candidate. She is the popular vote winner who won more votes than any Democratic primary candidate in history. Democratic processes demand that Senator Clinton's name be officially placed in nomination. There must be an open convention with an honest roll call vote so super delegates who will decide this nomination can vote according to their judgment and conscience for either candidate as Democratic Party rules provide.
And if some in the DNC are afraid that a democratic process could produce a result different from the preconceived set of expectations, as someone once said, 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'
Keep the Democratic Party democratic."
A Broader Mobilization
Another of the groups fighting for an open convention is PUMA PAC, which will have a pre-convention conference in Washington, D.C., on the weekend of Aug. 8-10. Among its announced goals are, "to see that our votes are counted, our primary results are respected, and [that] what is important to us is recognized and included in the party platforms."
PUMA is also holding local meetings, and sending representatives to address other groups. For example, a PUMA representative spoke at an LPAC town meeting in Seattle, Washington.
While the understanding of the nature of the fight within the group varies, one of its founders, Will Bower, who appeared on the Blog radio show "Let's Get Real" on July 15, showed acute understanding by characterizing Clinton as "a new FDR." Bower took the opportunity of the broadcast to clarify reports that he had endorsed McCain, saying that he is fighting to see Clinton's name placed in nomination, and to see that she wins the Democratic nomination. Only if this effort fails, Bower said, would he vote for McCain.
In this, of course, Bower is by no means alone, as polls taken by various insurgent groups in the Democratic Party indicate that anywhere from 20% to 30% of Democrats who voted for Clinton, would either vote for McCain, or stay home, were Obama the nominee.
Acting in History
While Barack Obama continues his move to the right, the Democratic Party's prospects in the coming election appear more and more problematic. There is considerable demoralization among the Obama ranks, which rah-rah rallies are not likely to reverse.
With the acceleration of the financial breakdown crisis, however, and the ideas of the LaRouche PAC on the scene, the potential for an upheaval in the current situation is only growing. Most important, is the growth in historical understanding within the ranks of some grassroots Democratic Party leaders, an understanding that still evades the majority of top party officials.
In a widely circulating memo, a leading Clinton activist from the West Coast provided an account of the massive operation directed against the Clinton candidacy by the DNC. The memo, which has the ring of truth, began with the fact that DNC chairman and Soros creature Howard Dean spelled out a Presidential strategy in late 2004, following John Kerry's defeat in the Presidential election that year. Dean insisted that the Democratic nominee had to be selected by the beginning of March 2008, at the latest, to give the Party the maximum time to organize the campaign.
According to the memo, Dean, Soros, Pelosi, and other self-proclaimed party fixers met right after the Super Tuesday primaires (Feb. 5) and decided—backroom style—that Obama, not Clinton, would be the nominee. They fanned out to the national media, and made their decision known, encouraging a flood of pro-Obama propaganda.
Then, beginning in early March 2008, Clinton began winning a string of primary elections in battleground states, by wide margins, as she fine-tuned her message to the lower 80% income brackets, who were already reeling from the economic collapse.
As the memo noted,
"Hillary ... is a true Roosevelt liberal. She believes in markets provided they are properly regulated and are not distorted by speculation. She thinks government has a role to play in building infrastructure and extending favorable credit terms to certain sectors. She favors reindustrialization to restore balance to our economy, tariffs to prevent dumping, job growth. She supports public service to restore a sense of citizenship and national purpose. She believes that government has an obligation to provide education, health care and safety nets. She supports the nation state and the protection of national borders. These are the solutions which appeal to the middle class in its struggle to survive and prosper as the forces of globalization intensify.
These views are anathema to the free market advocates who support Obama. Those people trace their roots back to the House of Morgan and the imperialistic doctrines of the British Empire. To them the world is not a collection of nation states each with its own unique identity, history and destiny, but a global marketplace where capital is fluid, entrepreneurs are free to move production to the lowest cost venues and goods and services flow freely across national borders. The EU and NAFTA are paradigmatic examples of this. An economic system of this nature favors capital over labor, low cost venues over high cost venues, and thus works to the detriment of our middle class. It subordinates national sovereignty to international bodies like WTO and GATT. It insulates globalists from the will of the people.
I have racked my brain to discover the reason why so much public hatred has been directed toward Hillary Clinton over the years, but especially now in context of this election.... But I believe the overriding reason for this national pathology is the fact that Hillary advocates an agenda based on the theories of Roosevelt as opposed to Milton Friedman. In that sense she presents a serious challenge to the globalists and their new world order...."
With a little less than a month to go before the national convention in Denver, the situation within the Democratic Party is still totally up for grabs. As the CQToday Denver Group advertisement emphasized, drawing upon the LPAC account of the 1932 Democratic Convention, Franklin Roosevelt went into Chicago 90 votes short of the nomination. He won, on the fourth ballot, after a ferocious fight against the London/Wall Street apparatus, represented then, at the DNC, by J.P. Morgan asset John Raskob. Today, Soros and Felix Rohatyn agents Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi represent that same London-centered faction, out to destroy the party and bring fascism to the United States. The question today, is whether the Democratic Party will have the guts to beat back the London-steered wrecking operation.
