By Diane Wittner
January 10, 2008

With the presidential season heating up like so many unseasonably warm communities across the country, I offer newly active progressives a word of caution; let's not get too caught up in the hype.

Sure, choose a progressive candidate who either has a chance of winning or whose voting record matches your values (Dennis is the obvious choice for me). And, sure, adjust your tactics to elect the best candidate as president, notwithstanding obscenely high campaign expenditures, misleading corporate media coverage, and unreliable electronic voting machines.

But, let's not focus our attention too much on this unpleasant and poorly managed circus. Overall, presidents from both parties have been more alike than different in the last generations.

I admit that a Democratic president like Gore or Kerry would have made a world of difference in these last seven years on global warming, and a Democratic president might have been less racist in addressing ongoing domestic tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina, public education, and health care. And unlike the Bush/Cheney Group, a Democratic president might not have caused the deaths of more than a million people by invading Iraq.

But let's not forget that Kennedy got us big time into Vietnam in the early 60's, then Johnson kept increasing troop numbers, and only reluctantly enacted civil rights legislation (African American activists deserve the lion's share of credit). And in the '90's, Clinton gave us SUV's, welfare 'reform,' and NAFTA.

Let's face it; we've had a rapidly expanding, worst-excesses-of-capitalism war economy since World War II. Most Democratic and Republican presidents are dependent on the Military Industrial Complex (Eisenhower's term). And now most Congressional Democrats and Republicans are too. Military expert Chalmers Johnson even has a name for this new phenomenon: the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

The path to creating a nation-state(s) we can be proud of will be long. Just as progressives learned after '06 not to rely on a Democratic Congress to bring our troops home from Iraq or to impeach Bush and Cheney, so, too, let's not count on a Democratic president to adequately address our country's crises.

No matter who lives in the White House after Bush, progressives need to build uplifting and solid transpartisan alliances, so we can develop lasting solutions to the urgent issues that will remain with us well beyond this hyped-up election cycle.

©2007, Diane Wittner, All Rights Reserved