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Thursday, July 22, 2004

Flipping Bergers

The WSWS thinks the Berger affair has been blown way out of proportion, with the willing help of the Kerry campaign:
Despite the flimsiness of the charges against Berger and the obviously concocted character of the Republican-manufactured scandal, the Kerry campaign responded within hours with capitulation. Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer rejected Republican charges that Berger had provided the campaign with unauthorized classified information, calling this "a partisan attempt to divert attention away from the 9/11 commission report." But in less than a day, Berger resigned "voluntarily" as the campaign’s principal national security consultant, and Kerry issued a perfunctory statement accepting his resignation "until this matter is resolved objectively and fairly."

This speedy surrender to a right-wing provocation underscores a central political fact about the Kerry campaign. The Democrats fight ferociously to suppress any challenge from the left—witness their shamelessly antidemocratic attacks on the Ralph Nader presidential campaign, on Socialist Equality Party candidate Tom Mackaman in Illinois, and on Green Party candidates in many states. But they are prostrate in the face of attacks from the Republican right, just as they were throughout the Clinton impeachment fiasco and the stolen 2000 election in Florida.