Open up Convention to
Secure Democratic Victory,
Says LaRouche
The following letter by issued by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. to Joseph Andrew, National Chair, Democratic National Committee.
January 22, 2000
Joseph J. Andrew
National Chair
Democratic National Committee
430 South Capitol Street
Washington, D.C. 20003
Subject: Your Letter to Harpootlian
Sir:
My representative has been issued a copy of your letter, datelined January 11, 2000, addressed to Dick Harpootlian, the latter as State Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party.
I have the pleasure to inform you that that letter, unless provably a forgery, would define you and your accomplices within the Democratic National Committee as, variously, consummate liars, Jaybird-style racists, and generally dishonorable persons.
Notably, the included statement, "Mr. LaRouche's expressed political beliefs, including beliefs which are explicitly racist and anti-Semitic...," is, in its entirety, a willful lie by you. It is either a witting lie, or is a statement uttered in reckless disregard for truth readily available to you. There is nothing of a mitigating quality to your advantage, in the remainder of your letter considered as a whole.
The following passage from your letter is crucial:
"In their own publications, in the media, and in paid advertisements, the LaRouche forces have attacked the DNC for supposedly having argued, in the course of this litigation, that the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Nothing could be further from the truth" (your emphasis).
That denial by you is an outright lie.
What I have said and claimed, is set forth in a statement composed and issued by me, as this appeared on my campaign's website, and also published as a report in the December 17, 1999 edition of the newsweekly Executive Intelligence Review. As my statement clearly and rightly characterized the matter there, the characterization of the actions of DNC attorney Keeney, and of the argument foisted upon, and adopted by Judge Sentelle, are matters of the relevant Federal District Court, plainly set forth on the official record for August 16 and November 23, 1999. Taking also into account, the record of hearings on enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and also the issues of Morse which were heavily emphasized by Keeney in the August 16 proceeding, my characterization of Keeney's actions is accurate beyond the possibility of reasonable objection by members of the DNC.
There is, similarly, the widely circulated and much-endorsed letter from the Honorable Theo Mitchell, which reflects a reaction typical of Civil Rights veterans whose familiarity with the Voting Rights Act plainly surpasses that of the DNC's legal counsel. Thus, the actions of DNC attorney Keeney are to be considered baldly racist in character.
I emphasize that the Fowler efforts to coerce state party organizations into violations of the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, is the use of the party-as-a-private-club notion identical to those Texas Jaybird's Jim-Crow tactics, which were outlawed by the Voting Rights Act.
I also note that your letter states, that "... I will again, in the next few days, issue to all state party chairs a determination about Mr. LaRouche's failure to qualify...." Such an emission would be an act worthy of a Texas Jaybird of pre-Voting Rights Act vintage. If the DNC were to exploit the "private club" ruse as a cover for attempts to coerce state parties into violation of the enforcement provisions of the act, would that not make the conduct of the DNC tantamount to a RICO or kindred conspiracy? Or, would such use of coercion by the DNC, in 1996 and again now, be proof of the absurdity of the "private club" argument? Does it not bring us back to the real world, wherein what one does, is what one is?
In the final analysis, if truth had no tongue, it might yet speak by some wonderful organ. Not only this Party, but also this nation as a whole, might pay a greater price than it could ever afford, for what amounts to a thuggish sort of effort to eliminate democracy (i.e., an open primary process and August convention), all for the purpose, in 1996 and again today, of forcing the year 2000 nomination of an intrinsically unelectable Presidential candidate down the throats of a pre-rigged coming convention?
The only chance for defeating the stone-age, Bush-supporting faction of the Republican Party, in the Congressional and Presidential elections of November 2000, is to proceed to prepare for a truly open convention of the Democratic Party in this coming August, rather than attempting to impose a Gore nomination by rigging the primary process in the way seen during the several recent months. For reason of a moral fault within his engrained nature, Gore can not draw support from the potential voting base of those in the lower eighty percentile of family-income brackets. Without large support from those whom Gore's Third-Way campaign ideology regards as our republic's forgettable men and women, the Democratic Party has no chance in the November elections. Bush-backers' money and growing political base among the portion of the electorate in the upper twenty percent of income-brackets, would therefore ensure an easy victory for the Bush league. Texas Governor Bush may be the dumbest that notable Wall Street cash could buy, but even a blunt instrument like Bush could be, and is being employed as a suitable weapon of wickedly clever men.
The party bureaucracy rallied in support of the DNC's lies against me, could, admittedly, ram through a Gore nomination, but Gore is not only unelectable. His candidacy intrinsically alienates that vast sea of forgotten men and women of today's America, upon whom Gore turned his back so shamelessly in the matter of the 1996 welfare reform and other savage proposals to gut the general welfare of all in the lower eighty percentile of family-income brackets. The hateful taint of a Gore candidacy would thus drag the Democratic Congressional candidacies down to defeat with him.
In that case, let us all weep for our poor nation. At least, my conscience will be clean.
Since what you say against me personally is either the fruit of lies or kindred misrepresentation, the fact that you have produced no truthful claims against my candidacy, suggests that you have no honest objections, but, like any gangster's hit-man, are simply doing the lackey's job your master has assigned to you.
Sincerely,
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
