The War Plan for November:
LaRouche's Leadership in the
Democratic Party
by Debra Hanania Freeman
The Labor Day weekend conference of the Schiller Institute devoted its afternoon panel on Sept. 5 to "The War Plan for November." The conference was held simultaneously in Reston, Virginia, and Los Angeles, California—linked by videoconference.Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. introduced the panel; Debra Freeman, LaRouche's national spokeswoman for the East Coast, was the first speaker. She was followed by West Coast spokesman Harley Schlanger, and then by Mr. LaRouche. We publish their opening presentations here; nearly two hours of discussion followed. Audio and video archives of the entire conference panel are available for streaming and download.
Lyndon LaRouche: Okay, we're about to have this war briefing. And I shall make just a few remarks, now. Then, Debra shall report, and she has some very hard information, most of which you're not cleared to receive. But, she'll give you something. And then Harley, who will be speaking from afar, on the other coast—we're an Atlantic to Pacific operation, as you know. Therefore, then, he will be giving an address, and then I shall come in as the cleanup hitter.
Then after that, you folks and people who are listening by other means than being here, will have your opportunity to get in, and do their lobbying.
Okay, fine: Debbie.
Debra Freeman: Good afternoon. What I want to do, is I want to give people kind of a picture of where we are right now, and how we got here. And I think that that will set the stage for what Harley is going to discuss, which is where we're going—and where we're taking you.
But, I think that, really, there's little question, this is, probably one of the most important times in the nation's history. It occurs in the midst of a grave crisis, an existential crisis for this republic, and I think that that's something that Lyn has qualified well in the past period. The simple fact is, that Cheney and Bush should never have set foot in the White House, and the fact that they did, was due to some very grave errors on the part of the Democratic Party, including former President Clinton, that have to be corrected; and that, right now, are gladly in the process of being corrected.
I'd like to actually refer back to what happened for a moment, but first, let's just be clear on what characterizes the current moment in this campaign. You do not have a unified Democratic Party—and that's really okay, because there are serious disagreements in this party. You have some people who may not be committed to win. Then, you have another group, which is committed to win, but which is split into two camps: On the one side you have people who basically say, "Let's just win in November. It doesn't matter how we do it. It doesn't matter what the margin is. If we win by one vote, that'll be okay. Let's just win in November, and then we'll worry about what comes next."
But then, you have another group. And that is a group that has a different view and a far greater understanding of the nature of the Cheney-Bush Administration. They have a greater understanding of the grim reality of the current global strategic crisis. They have a deeper understanding of the financial and economic crisis. And they have a very clear understanding of the threat to the republic.
They got it from Lyn.
These are people who have been educated by Lyn, over the eight years of the Clinton Presidency, and over the three and a half years of Cheney-Bush. They say something different: They say, "We have to smash the neo-cons, and we have to do it now." They say, "We have to win in November, but not by one vote: We have to take the White House. We have to take the Senate. We have to take the House of Representatives. We have to take the country back."
That group is growing in ranks. It's growing in strength and in numbers.
The understanding among the people in this group is varied. But, no matter how you cut it, Lyn is the principal spokesman of that faction. And that is something that is increasingly being admitted by those who participate in it. For better or for worse, fully self-conscious or not, that group is the LaRouche faction of the Democratic Party.
Now, obviously, the question that comes up, is where does John Kerry stand in all of this? And, it was well put at a meeting that Lyn had with some people yesterday. Somebody was quoting Congressman John Conyers, who is the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, and a longtime representative from Detroit. And he quoted Conyers as saying, "You know, I've spent the last 40 years getting people elected President, and spending the next four years, teaching them how to be President."
And, when we look at John Kerry, we know exactly what it is that we're dealing with. During the course of the campaign thus far, Kerry performed well, when Lyn controlled the environment around him. We saw it in New Hampshire. When the LaRouche Youth Movement dominated what was going on on the ground in New Hampshire, Kerry performed very well. And one of the things that we have to do now—and we're in an excellent position to do it—what we have to do now, is, we have to persuade all of you, and all of you who are listening via the Worldwide Web, to join with us in creating the conditions, where precisely that condition is created again, and is maintained.
The simple fact, is that it were better, that Lyn be the Presidential nominee. And anybody who's serious, knows that. But, Lyn isn't the nominee. And since he's not, what we have to concentrate on right now, is setting the agenda, and overwhelming John Kerry and the electoral process.
The issue is not—and I really want to be clear on this: At the close of the Democratic Convention, Lyn threw the support of this movement behind defeating George Bush and getting Democrats elected, including John Kerry. Our job is not to go out there and hand out palm cards for John Kerry. I'm not going to do that. I can guarantee you, the LaRouche Youth Movement is not going to do that—they wouldn't do it, if we told 'em to! They're just not going to do it.
What Exactly Is Our Role?
That's not our role in this campaign.
What we have to do, is we have to go out there, and build this movement, and we have to build it around some very basic principles. One of the things that we discussed, in the meeting that we had with state legislators last night, is that, when you're talking about mobilizing the lower 80% [of family-income brackets], empty promises don't work! People have been promised things, over and over and over again. If you make promises to them, of that sort, they believe that you're full of garbage. But, if in fact, we do, on a continuing and more intense scale, what the youth movement has done successfully, time and time again; if you go out there, and you appeal to people around what it means to be a human being—because those are the principles that have defined this republic from its inception—then we can build a movement, and we can succeed.
But it has to be around those principles: Because, the question of what it is to be human, what it means to be human, is what informs this election. It's what informs the future of this nation, and of modern civilization as we know it. And as far as I understand, it has informed every critical policy and intervention that has been crafted by the genius that we know as Lyndon LaRouche.
If we do that, we'll successfully mobilize our constituency. Whoever you want to refer to them as: FDR called them the "forgotten men and women." We've often referred to them as "the lower 80%." The Democrats today call them "the unlikely voters."
But, we know that we won't do it by making promises to them. Again, the American people may not be the smartest people in the world, but they've grown callous to unkept promises. And that is not the role that we'll play.
The conference this weekend, from beginning to end, has been designed by Lyn, to show you exactly how we intend to do it, how this LaRouche Youth Movement will do it. And I'd like to tell you, exactly where we stand now, and how we came to this position.
Anybody who knows their way around Washington, D.C., will tell you that Lyn functions as an integral part of the institution of the Presidency, and that he has for some time. On a daily basis, we have direct access to key people in every department of government, to interlocking networks of Democrats and Republicans, some retired, some currently active. And it's the combination of the access to those networks, and Lyn's superior method, that makes up our intelligence capability, which is a critical feature of the day-to-day functioning of the principal institutions of this nation. It's the most important intelligence capability in the United States, and it's the most important intelligence capability in the world.
That intelligence, the fruit of that intelligence, is then fed back out, after Lyn has had the opportunity to assess it and to shape it. It's fed back out in Washington; it's fed back out through critical networks nationally; and it's fed back out into the streets, by the LaRouche Youth Movement.
Lyn's role in this capacity goes back decades, and we don't have time to go through that here. But there are obvious key points of intervention. Probably the first one that was known best to people, that was known best to the public, was Lyn's role in authoring the Strategic Defense Initiative.
DNC's 'Incredibly Stupid' Y2K Blunders
But, for purposes of this discussion, I really want to give you an idea of how Lyn's personal leadership of the grouping within the Democratic Party that we are now leading, was established. In large part, it was cemented on Nov. 7, in the year 2000. The day after Al Gore cemented his role in history, as the only man who could possibly have lost to George W. Bush.
That Y2K election was a complete, and total disaster. And people today, are still wondering, how the Vice President, of what was arguably the most popular President in the 20th Century, second only to FDR, could have lost the election, to a total imbecile! It's astounding! Some people are still stunned by it! And it's a story that is really too long to tell.
Suffice it to say, that Gore's candidacy was characterized by a few things: 1) Being incredibly stupid: keeping Bill Clinton out of his campaign; 2) Even more stupid: keeping Lyndon LaRouche out of the campaign; 3) Really, really stupid: Keeping traditional Democratic constituencies out of the campaign! That doesn't leave a whole lot of people. It was basically just him, Joe Lieberman, and a couple of other people.
I'm obviously being facetious. But, it was incredible stupidity, on Gore's part, by keeping Clinton out. We went into Arkansas; we appealed on the basic issues, and Lyn won significant delegates, in the state of Arkansas. Gore stole Lyn's delegates. They didn't say, "These delegates don't count, because they were accredited to LaRouche." They literally took people, delegates who had been duly elected, after the Democratic Party of Arkansas took money and put Lyn on the ballot as a Democrat; asked people to come out and vote, which they did; they came out and they voted—they could have voted for Lyn, they could have voted for Gore, they could have voted "undecided." They decided to vote for Lyn. Their votes were thrown in the trash, they were disenfranchised, and those delegates were given to Al Gore.
That act, that act of incredible stupidity, determined the Y2K election. Because, when the general election came around, because those people were furious and cynical, because their votes had been stolen, and because Gore the Idiot didn't want Clinton in there campaigning for him, Al Gore lost the state of Arkansas. If that had not occurred, Bush would not be President, today. And nobody would be talking about chads, in the state of Florida: Because winning in Arkansas, would have been sufficient, to have determined the Presidential election.
And it was, really, an act of incredible stupidity.
Lyn's role, during eight years of the Clinton Presidency, has been firmly established. When Clinton was inaugurated President, Lyn was in prison. Our appeal to Clinton, at that time, was to end Lyn's political incarceration, which had occurred largely at the hands of Bush I. What caught Clinton's attention, when Lyn was in prison, was not only the movement to free Lyn, but Lyn's understanding and the perspective of the situation in Russia. And it fascinated him.
When Lyn came out of prison, he continued to influence the thinking of the Clinton Administration in this area. That was apparent in the early days of the Clinton Administration. It became more apparent, with the "new financial architecture" proposal.
When a group of international financiers, largely based in the City of London, launched an attempted coup against the Clinton Presidency, Lyn, from his sick-bed in Europe, launched and directed the Committee to Save the Presidency. And that had a huge impact across the nation. Up until the launching of the Committee to Save the Presidency, not only was nobody mobilizing Democrats to fight, but people like Dick Gephardt and others, were preparing to jump ship, like fleeing rats. And Gore was heavily involved in that effort.
When the DLC crowd fought to kill the FDR tradition in the Democratic Party, explicitly, saying that the strategy for the Y2K election had to be to eradicate the memory of FDR, and to move forward to the New Age, Lyn fought it. When Gore refused to allow platform hearings, for the first time in Democratic Party history, because he was afraid that platform hearings would force an actual discussion of the issues that Democrats had to address, and would somehow disrupt the fantasies of suburban Baby Boomers, of soccer moms, and SUV dads, and all three of Heather's Mommies, the LaRouche campaign brought together a panel of prominent state legislators from across the United States, and we held platform hearings. We held the platform hearings, that the Democratic Party refused to hold.
The proceedings of those hearings flooded the nation, and flooded the Democratic National Convention. And a small, but very significant group of LaRouche Democrats fought, and fought very hard. But, the fact is, that we did not have hegemony in the Democratic Party at that time. And far too many people were persuaded to go the other way.
LaRouche's Warning of a 'Reichstag Fire'
Nov. 7 came, the nation was thrust into chaos. We faced a significant Constitutional crisis, when, for days, nobody could say what the outcome of that election was.
Lyn responded immediately. And Nov. 14 was the first of three, critical webcasts—webcasts that really did cement Lyn's personal leadership, both in the Democratic Party and nationally.
The first webcast, on Nov. 14, was called "Now Comes the Aftermath," when Lyn, again, addressed the issue of what it meant to run a Presidential election campaign, in the midst of a deep crisis. It was well-known—he had established during the course of his own campaign—that the United States had already entered the terminal phase of the financial collapse, and that that was the backdrop against which everything else took place. Immediately following the Nov. 14 webcast, we began to build for a second webcast: That took place on Dec. 12. It was called "The Fall of Ozymandias."
And then, in a move that gave the leadership of this organization agita, Lyn insisted that on Jan. 3, we would have another webcast! Pulling off a webcast, in Washington, D.C., the day after the New Year's holiday is no easy thing: But, that webcast proved to be, probably, the most critical intervention that we had made thus far. The webcast was entitled "Revive the Democratic Party of FDR and JFK To Save the Nation."
And Lyn's remarks at that webcast, were absolutely prophetic: Lyn warned, once again, that Bush's inauguration was coinciding with what had been a previous entry into financial and economic collapse. He warned, that Bush's inauguration, under conditions, like the conditions that faced the world in 1928 to 1933, coincided with the likelihood that powerful insider forces behind the scenes, would arrange an early outbreak of an incident, parallel to the Feb. 27, 1933 Reichstag Fire.
People were stunned, when Lyn made that analogy. For people here, who are not familiar with history, the Reichstag Fire that he referred to, was the incident that was used by the Nazis to establish Hitler's dictatorship. When Lyn discussed that, there was silence in the room. But, at the same time, we started to get a flood of questions coming in, over the Internet. Because, in fact, certain things had occurred, which caught people's attention. And probably the most important, was that before inauguration, George Bush was naming his cabinet. And what he did, in the naming of that cabinet, was he announced his intention to nominate John Ashcroft as Attorney General of the United States.
One of the first questions that came to Lyn, during that webcast, came from the Congressional Black Caucus. The question that was asked, was, "Mr. LaRouche, during your last seminar, you talked to us about the Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon. Now, since that seminar occurred, we have a nominee for Attorney General. He's an inveterate Confederate; a professed supporter of Jefferson Davis. We don't see how he can possibly uphold the Constitution that he clear rejects. However, we are not represented on the Senate Judiciary Committee. How do you think we should proceed?"
And, I'm going to read you Lyn's answer. Lyn said: "Well, two things. When Bush put Ashcroft in, as the nomination for Justice Department, he made it clear that the Ku Klux Klan was riding again. Maybe Bush didn't know what he was doing. But somebody in the Bush team did. Ashcroft was an insult to the Congress. If the Democrats in the Congress, capitulate to the Ashcroft nomination, the Congress is finished."
And then, once again, Lyn raised the specter of Nazi Germany. He said, " This is pretty much like the same thing that Germany did, in February of 1933, when the emergency decrees were established. Just remember that after the Reichstag Fire, that Göring who commanded, at that time, Prussia, set into motion an operation. As part of this operation under rules of Carl Schmitt, a famous pro-Nazi jurist of Germany, they passed an act which was known as an Emergency Decree. It gave the state the power, according to Schmitt's doctrine, to designate which part of his own population were enemies, and to imprison them, freely, and to eliminate them. That was the dictatorship."
Lyn continued: "I'm not suggesting that the case of Ashcroft is comparable to the Reichstag Fire. But it's a provocation, a deliberate provocation. And if the Democratic Party and decent Republicans do not combine to throw that nomination back in the face of the nominator, this Congress is worthless. That is, it will have surrendered its dignity."
Lyn said to the Congressional Black Caucus, "What I would do is this: Members of the House of Representatives do have some powers. They may not be the formal powers of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but they have some powers. And if the Congress makes it clear, and gets some members of the Senate, some Democratic Senators also, to make it clear, that we're not going to put up with this Ashcroft provocation, we can stop it.
"But little protest movements are not going to do it. You're going to have to jam the works up on this one. You're going to have to make it impossible for Bush to get his nomination through, as long as that Ashcroft nomination is not pulled back....
"And, the Congress has some powers in this matter. Remember, the Congress has not yet certified the President-Elect! I think the question ... this Ashcroft question, to be thrown on the table, on that question of certifying President-Elect Bush, and the Congress has got to do it." [The full transcript of LaRouche's Jan. 3, 2001 webcast can be found at www.larouchepub.com—ed.]
They did it. If people remember, there was a brawl on the day that Bush's election was to be certified. It was the day that the Electoral votes were counted. And the Black Caucus launched a virtual filibuster. Now, at the time, they did not do it specifically on the question of the Ashcroft nomination. They did it on the question of disenfranchisement. But, it was the first time that anything like that had happened. At one point, the Congressional Black Caucus, joined by a very significant number of other members of the House, got up and walked out! And rallied on the steps of the Congress. It was an historic moment. And, it was an instance, where, for a brief period of time, the Congressional Black Caucus, following Lyn's lead, acted as the conscience of this nation!
What they needed, to completely gum up the works, was one Democratic Senator. One! Just one. Out of fifty.
They couldn't get one. Not one Democratic Senator would stand up against Bush. And, in fact, what occurred, was that the certification of Bush went through.
But Lyn responded immediately. And we mobilized a national movement to defeat Ashcroft's nomination, around the very issues that Lyn specified. Not simply around issues of racism, but around the question of the threat, the fascist threat, to the legitimate government of the United States. When it came time for Ashcroft to be confirmed, we had the votes: We had the votes necessary to defeat him. The leadership of the Democratic Party pulled back, and leading Democrats were ordered to go along with the President's wish and to confirm John Ashcroft.
But, the fact is, we had the votes. We had sufficiently mobilized the nation, and had made enough of an issue of this. And once again, it was the failure of the leadership of the Democratic Party. And Ashcroft was confirmed.
A few months later, the Reichstag Fire that Lyn had warned about, in that January 2001 address, actually came, in the form of the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. And just as Hitler's Reichstag Fire did in 1933, the Sept. 11 attack was exploited by Dick Cheney and other followers of the Nazi Prof. Leo Strauss, including John Ashcroft: What was unleashed was an attempted fascist takeover of the United States from the inside.
That incident was used to draft legislation, which no Democrat was prepared to stand up against, until we mobilized. And even then, the opposition was very, very weak. People were frightened by the mood in response to 9/11. People were afraid that if they opposed the Patriot Act, and the various manifestations of it, that they would be referred to as "unpatriotic." And for the most part, whole sections of the Democratic Party moved in lockstep.
There is no question that it was the consolidation of this faction around Cheney, and the synarchists who are behind him, that led to a campaign that ultimately unleashed the Iraq War. It was a war that was based on lies, on lies that we identified. Yet, again, Democrats in Congress gave Bush the authority to launch this illegal war.
When the lies became obvious, shortly after a webcast that Lyn held in Washington, Ambassador Joe Wilson had an op-ed—and when I say "shortly after," I mean 48 hours after—Joe Wilson's op-ed appeared in the New York Times, identifying the fact that the administration knowingly lied in terms of the basis that was set for the war.
Dick Cheney and the 'Children of Satan'
That set off a storm of controversy in the United States. By April, the war was raging, and Lyn issued the first of three pamphlets, The Children of Satan: The 'Ignoble Liars' Behind Bush's No Exit War. Between April and January, over a million copies of that were circulated across the United States, identifying what was behind the drive to war, the ideology behind it. And it identified that what was at stake was far more, than a war that some people didn't like. But, that in fact, that war policy was part of the consolidation of fascist power inside the United States, and that the victims, as much as the people of Iraq, were the people of the United States.
In January 2004, because of new information that we had put together, in the course of the circulation of the "Children of Satan I," Lyn mandated the production of the "Children of Satan II," which was called The Beast-Men. It catalyzed a major political offensive against Dick Cheney. And, under our direction, under the direction of Lyndon LaRouche's intelligence staff, professional staffers in the Senate and in the House began to use Lyn's guidelines, to conduct an investigation that should have led to Cheney's impeachment.
But Cheney is still the Vice President. And the reason why Cheney is still the Vice President, is because the Democratic Party, in large part, simply refused—they simply refused to take this on. John Kerry, at the time, had actually promised, because he was furious: Kerry had identified to us, personally, that Cheney had sat in his office and lied to him, about the basic precepts that led the nation into war. And that it was based on those lies, Kerry said, that he voted for the war. He called a press conference—by then he was a Presidential candidate; he called a press conference, and everybody expected, including his own staff, that he was going to identify Cheney's lies! But, that's not what he did: He attacked George Bush in the press conference, based on advice from his advisors. It was bad advice. It was very bad advice. And it actually allowed Cheney to remain in office.
By June, we had put out The Children of Satan III: The Sexual Congress For Cultural Fascism, which began to get to the difficult question of what had happened to the American people, that they accepted this.
LaRouche Youth Transform Beltway Politics
During this time that we were engaged in intense intelligence warfare in Washington, Lyn took the fight to the streets. Ultimately, 3 million copies of these pamphlets were put into circulation. And during that time, two crucial fights came to a head.
On Sept. 9, [2003], the LaRouche Youth Movement had completely transformed the environment in Congress. What qualified that, was a months-long campaign, in which the LaRouche Youth demanded that Lyn be included in what was to be the first of the Presidential debates, the Congressional Black Caucus debate. It would have seemed to be a no-brainer. Lyn's collaboration with the Caucus was well known; Lyn had directed them, really from January—from Jan. 3 of the year 2001—if not earlier. But, the leadership of the Caucus, despite the fact that they engaged in what seemed to be a dialogue for a period of months, and insisted that Lyn would be somehow involved, when push came to shove, and the first forum was held at Morgan State University, Lyn was the only candidate who was not included in that debate. Candidates that nobody had heard of!—and nobody ever heard from again!—were included in that debate.
But in a move that captured the imagination of the country, the LaRouche Youth Movement intervened in that debate, and shamed the Congressional Black Caucus. It wasn't some anarchist disruption. It was a qualified, principled intervention. They were arrested. They were taken to jail. They were released the next day.
And, to this day, in Washington, people are still talking about what could have possibly motivated young people to make an intervention of that sort? These are young people, who aren't supposed to be interested in politics, who aren't supposed to be interested in the affairs of state, and who would never risk anything for a principle, according to the mentality of the people that were governing the electoral process. But, they did it.
The press was astounded. The population was astounded. And even attempts to say that what the LaRouche Youth had done was "outrageous," because, if they were going to intervene, why did they select the debate of the Congressional Black Caucus—i.e., the CBC should be allowed to do anything; they should be allowed to prostitute themselves. We had a very different view. Historically the CBC had functioned as the conscience of the Congress; so, if we were going to make a stand anywhere, it was going to be there.
And I can tell you, that the night that we went to Morgan State University, the youth who went into that debate were not told to intervene. I had no idea that they were going to stand up and do what they did. They did it, based on the force of a moral principle. And they did it, because they were fighting not only for Lyn, but because they were fighting for their own future, and for the future of the nation. And that began to become—it became the character, and to this day it is the character, and it is going to be the character of the remainder of this Presidential campaign.
Stopping Beast-Men, Arnie and Ashcroft
Two days later, two days after the debate, and after the stir of the debate was still ringing across the nation, Lyn went to Burbank, [California], and announced his intention to oppose the Recall of the duly elected, Democratic governor of the state of California. At the time, there was a virtual coup under way, to unseat Gray Davis, and to replace him with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ultimate beast-man. He's the beast-man without an artificial heart.
The only other Democrat who was really prepared to make this a fight, was Clinton. Clinton went out there, and got so disgusted with the Democratic Party in the state of California that he threw in the towel. But, we continued to fight. Harley will tell you more about that.
The Recall fight obviously was lost: Schwarzenegger is the Governor. But, the fact is, that we succeeded. And in the two parts of California where LYM forces were concentrated, Schwarzenegger was defeated. And the LaRouche movement qualified itself as virtually the sole force in the Democratic Party, that was willing to stand up and fight. And it was a critical lesson learned.
Democrats in Philadelphia were not going to make the same mistake that Democrats in California made: When the Mayor of Philadelphia had his office threatened because of an attack that was a classical Operation Fruehmenschen[1] attack, launched by John Ashcroft in the wiretapping of Mayor Street—Harold James, who is a legislator from the state of Pennsylvania, and the former chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus in Pennsylvania, came to a webcast that Lyn was holding in Washington, and he asked Lyn for help. He asked Lyn for help based on the fact that this was an issue, that we were distinguished as the experts on: We had made Operation Fruehmenschen a national issue, and we had made John Ashcroft a national issue.
Lyn issued a call on Oct. 28, and, in what was a lightning campaign, deployed hundreds of young people into the streets of Philadelphia. They made John Ashcroft the issue. And the Philadelphia election was essentially a referendum on Ashcroft, and Ashcroft's fascist policies. When the vote took place on Nov. 5, it was an overwhelming victory for John Street; who, prior to Lyn's intervention, was running neck and neck with his opponent.
That Philadelphia intervention served as a model for anybody who wanted to win in November of 2004. However, the DNC never learns! They are incapable—Terry McAuliffe is incapable of reason. He's brain-dead. That's why he's in that position. If you look deep into his eyes, you see dollar signs. If you look into his ear, you see whatever is on the other end of his head.
The first primary in the United States was going to take place in Washington, D.C. There he is! [Photo of Terry McAuliffe flashes on the screen]. If you look closely, you can see the dollar signs. Nice shirt, huh?
When the D.C. primary was getting under way, Terry McAuliffe insisted that every Democratic Presidential candidate withdraw from the primary! Why? Well, his reasoning was very straightforward: What McAuliffe said, is that, it would be really bad if the first Democratic primary in the nation took place in a city which was majority black and majority poor. Because, if that was the first primary, and the candidates went there to campaign, they would have to talk about that stuff. And it would upset people. McAuliffe said: "We don't want people to think that that's what the Democratic Party is! That it goes around talking to poor blacks!" And when people pointed out to him, that it was the previous campaign, of mobilizing soccer moms, that had led to a stunning defeat, his response—and I have to tell you, I was at a luncheon in D.C. when he said this; I almost fell off my chair!—he said, "We have a much broader perspective for this campaign. We don't intend to just mobilize soccer moms. We're going to mobilize SUV dads."
It's a very strange segment of the population. So, the entire future of humanity was going to rest on soccer moms and SUV dads—none of whom happen to live in Washington, D.C.! They come there sometimes to visit Congress, but they don't live there.
We determined that we would run a campaign in Washington, D.C., and the LaRouche Youth Movement did just that. And it was a brilliant campaign. It was a campaign that actually stood on the shoulders of a previous fight for the general welfare, that Lyn had launched, in defense of the last public hospital in the city of Washington, D.C. General Hospital. Lyn's name was well-known in Washington. And the LaRouche Youth were well-known. But, the campaign completely transformed a depressed, pessimistic, cynical city. Because, what these young people did, was they marched through the worst ghettos in Washington—and they sang.
And people came out.
Now, you may not think this is significant, but nobody comes out of their houses in D.C. If you come out of your house in the ghetto in D.C., you get caught in the cross-fire. Nobody comes out! But, people came out, because they heard this singing. There were a series of town meetings; people were mobilized. The fact of the matter is, that on one level, we simply were not strong enough, to counter what the DNC was up to. We didn't have that kind of money. There were massive, massive irregularities on election day. And the fact is, I guess in some sense, you can say, we lost the vote—but we succeeded in what we had set out to do. And every young person who participated in that campaign knew it.
The intention of Lyn's enemies in D.C.—there was no question about it, because we knew we had secured a significant portion of the vote in D.C.—by robbing us of every vote, the intention was to demoralize the youth movement. That was what they had hoped to do. There were no delegates at stake. The election itself was a beauty contest.
But, they didn't understand the nature of the movement. And the youth were far from demoralized. They knew what they had accomplished. And they moved very quickly, from Washington, to New Hampshire, where they proceeded to control the environment around John Kerry. And, that was a good thing. We had Kerry surrounded. And he actually did fairly well up there, for the most part, in terms of his performance.
During the course of the drive, the Children of Satan pamphlet continued to be distributed. And by now, leading Democrats, in the Senate and the House, followed Lyn's lead. And, again, the only thing that kept Cheney in office, was the fact that at the very top, there was an unwillingness to go after him.
LYM Makes a Revolution in Boston
Now, this set the stage for the Democratic National Convention. And I think most people here don't know exactly what happened prior to that convention. Because, again, you had two forces really at odds with each other. On the one hand, you had the DNC crowd, that was largely controlling Kerry's campaign, particularly under the guidance of a guy by the name of Shrum: Their position was that every aspect of the campaign had to be orchestrated; that there was to be no discussion, no platform discussion, no nothing. Because, they said, if you do that, there's going to be controversy, and we don't want controversy. We want a clean nomination. Now, any moron knows that controversy is what makes elections. And, because of the way these guys were conceptualizing the campaign, and conceptualizing the convention, that there was nothing there that was going to mobilize or energize Democrats.
Bill Clinton had a slightly different perspective on the thing. His advice to the Kerry campaign was the following, as it was conveyed to me. What Clinton said, is the world is a different place today, than it was when the first primary took place. The issues are not quite the same; nothing, really, is the same. Let's open up the convention. Bring everybody in. Leave the delegates up for grabs. His view, and what he tried to convince Kerry of, is, he said, "You've got the delegates. They're going to nominate you anyway. But, if you do this, first of all, people will have a reason to come to the convention. People will see the convention as a place where, in fact, their views can be aired. You also will create a media event, because nothing like this has ever been done before." He said, "Release your delegates. Tell them they can vote for anybody they want. Why not? What're you worried about?"
And, there's a little bit of time there, that Kerry actually considered it. You may remember the way that it appeared in the press, is that there was a question of whether or not John Kerry would accept the nomination, that it might be put off. And there was some crazy excuse given about fundraising, and things like that.
But, that proposal set off a huge fight! Inside the Kerry campaign. What was the real issue? When Clinton said, "Open it up. Bring everybody in." Who's "everybody"? That was the issue. Because, there was a view, that Lyn should be brought in. Why not? Lyn had successfully energized the nation's youth. And Lyn continued to have tremendous appeal among the lower 80%.
Had the Shrum-McAuliffe crowd prevailed, the Democratic Convention would have been a disaster. We saved it from being a disaster, by our intervention.
Approximately 100 members of the LaRouche Youth Movement moved into Boston. Nobody believes that it was just 100, but it really was. The funny thing in Washington is, people keep saying to us, "Tell the truth. It wasn't 100." If I was going to lie, I would lie in the opposite direction. I would say, "Yeah! We had 10,000 kids there!" It wasn't the case. It was simply 100 youth.
And what those 100 youth did, under Lyn's leadership, was really pretty remarkable. In the course of a few days, they distributed 50,000 of Lyn's Democratic Platform to convention delegates, who had no platform! Because the Democratic Party would not allow one to be crafted. We saturated the convention. We saturated the city of Boston. And we drew an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from party activists at every level. People who had never talked to us before, people who we've been trying to meet in Washington for quite some time, who would not sit down and meet, were absolutely chatty in Boston: Because the youth energized what was otherwise a dead convention.
And that convention was dead. People flocked to the parallel events that were going on, all over the city, events that had no airing on the floor of the convention itself. Ambassador Joe Wilson was holding book-signing events that you couldn't get into, because the delegates were opposed to the war, and wanted to hear what he had to say, despite the fact that the party refused to ever discuss this.
And the LaRouche Youth were everywhere. Doing what? Getting out the Platform—and singing. In the buses that went to the Fleet Center every day, convention delegates would ask the youth delegations what we were going to sing today. And it really was quite something. I know that no matter where I went, in the city of Boston that week, I could hear our youth, singing.
And again, the combination of that show of optimism, morality, and beauty, combined with the distribution of 50,000 copies of Lyn's Platform, brought to the surface a raging battle within the Democratic Party. It's a battle that had been under way for quite some time, but this forced it to the surface.
And it required nothing less, than Lyn's own personal presence in Boston. That is what forced it to the surface. Leading Democrats came to talk to Lyn, or came to talk to people who were there with Lyn, to try to figure out what they would do, after a convention that had garnered the lowest ratings in the history of any convention. What nobody was discussing publicly at the time, was that while the convention was taking place, John Kerry's numbers were crashing. The opposite is supposed to take place, but people were bored. People were bored, and disgusted. And the only thing that grew, were the "unlikely voters." More and more people became "unlikely."
The issue was not that they were going to vote for Bush. They won't vote for Bush. They just decided, they wouldn't vote.
But, we had made our stand. And the moment the convention gaveled to a close, Lyn held a press conference, and formed LaRouche PAC, and made clear that despite the Democratic Party leadership—and at that time, despite John Kerry—that he was going to take responsibility for a Democratic victory in November; that we would do whatever was necessary to effect that, because the fate of the nation, and the fate of humanity depended on it.
That was about 30 days ago. Before we convened here, there were a series of dramatic events that took place, all of which were catalyzed by what Lyn did.
In the period leading up to the Republican Convention, a campaign was launched against Kerry, by these Swift Boat Veterans. This is a completely disgusting, lying campaign, against a guy who is a legitimate war hero.
Kerry wanted to counterpunch, right from the beginning. He wanted to counterpunch at the Democratic Convention, and veterans' groups played a huge role at that convention. His advisors said, "No!" "No! No, no!" Same advisors who said, "Don't attack Dick Cheney."
What was the reasoning for not attacking Dick Cheney? The reason for not attacking Dick Cheney, was "because we want to run against Dick Cheney. That's good for us. We'll do good, if we run against Dick Cheney, John. Don't attack attack him."
What about the question of the Swift Boat Veterans? Cheney's a chickenhawk! The guy's a draft-dodger! The President is a draft-dodger. It was a no-brainer, to counterattack. "No, no, no, John. You don't want to honor that stuff. You shouldn't respond. Don't worry about it. They'll defeat themselves."
By the time the Republican Convention took place, John Kerry was furious! For the first time, Bush not only pulled ahead of Kerry, first by 3 points; by the time of the convention, his lead was in double digits. And what finally asserted itself, was the LaRouche faction in the Democratic Party. Kerry finally figured out, that Shrum was leading him down the same road, that he had led Al Gore. And then, on Tuesday, in the middle of the Republican Convention, there was a major shake-up. The Shrum-boys were moved out. A team of Clinton operatives was moved in. And we were told, that everything was going to change. We saw the first sign of it, Thursday night, when John Kerry came out fighting, for the first time since New Hampshire.
Now, maybe it's true. Maybe now, everything's going to change. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to stake my future on that. If everything is going to change, it's going to change, because we change it. What's important, is that we have a group now, that wants to fight. And they know, that if they want to fight, the best commander on the field, in any war, at this point in time, is Lyndon LaRouche! They know it! And, they're not inclined to keep Lyn out.
Energize the 'Lower 80%'
But, the fact of the matter is, that our job is not to do anything but what we have already been doing, on a much larger scale. Our job is to build a movement, that will energize the "unlikely voters." That will give people something to come out for. That something is not John Kerry, per se. John Kerry's a fine guy—I don't have any problem with him. But that's not what this is about. This is about building a movement around a principle. That is the only thing that's going to bring people out.
And the LaRouche Youth Movement can do it. It has to be a lot bigger. They'll get bigger, in a march across this nation, will intervene in key states where we can make a difference—but not in the traditional way. Not in the way that anyone expects. We'll do it Lyn's way. And if we do that, then the youth movement will continue to grow. And as it continues to grow, it will successfully mobilize older people.
Thirty days have passed since Boston. We've already begun to see the fruits of the change. But, it is still up to us. And that means it's up to you. And one of the things we're here to do, during the course of this conference, is to persuade you to do the right thing.
Thank you.
[1] The FBI's racist "Operation Frühmenschen"—primitive man—targetted African-American leaders with corruption scandals, to drive them from office.
