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Joe Biden, ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says that the "most pernicious legacy" of U.S. failure in Iraq would "be a further hardening of the Vietnam syndrome that afflicts some in the Democratic Party -- a distrust of the use of American power".
Michael Enzi, incoming chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, opposed increases in the minimum wage, saying he was for higher wages "but that increase should be sparked by a strong, free-market economy -- not by a federal mandate that would be detrimental to small businesses and to the existence of ... minimum wage paying jobs ... that are already few in number."
Besides their anti-worker Republicrat politics, what do these two men have in common? Both will serve in the Senate during its 2005-2006 session, despite receiving barely half as many votes as were earned by the Peace and Freedom Party’s Marsha Feinland in 2004.
P&F Senate candidate Feinland’s 243,846 votes are more than were received by fifteen men and one woman who will represent the capitalists of their states in the Senate during its 2005-2006 session. Eight were elected as Democrats and eight as Republicans with fewer votes than Marsha received as an openly socialist Peace and Freedom candidate.
The unrepresentative, anti-democratic nature of the Senate is shown by the fact that its other 84 members already are all from the two major capitalist parties, yet there is no room for a socialist who won more votes than sixteen sitting senators. Whenever the mainstream media respectfully quote one of the unrepresentative sixteen listed below, just remember that if the Senate were truly democratic, Marsha Feinland would be there too to represent California’s and the nation’s workers.
| Senator | Party | State | Last election | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of votes | Percentage of votes | Year | |||
| John Sununu | Rep | New Hampshire | 227,229 | 50.82% | 2002 |
| Lincoln D. Chafee | Rep | Rhode Island | 222,588 | 56.88% | 2000 |
| Patrick Leahy | Dem | Vermont | 216,972 | 70.6% | 2004 |
| Byron L Dorgan | Dem | North Dakota | 211,843 | 68.25% | 2004 |
| Conrad Burns | Rep | Montana | 208,082 | 51% | 2000 |
| Max Baucus | Dem | Montana | 204,853 | 62.74% | 2002 |
| John R Thune | Rep | South Dakota | 197,848 | 50.58% | 2004 |
| Jim Jeffords | Ind elected as Rep | Vermont | 189,133 | 65.5% | 2000 |
| Thomas R. Carper | Dem | Delaware | 181,566 | 55.5% | 2000 |
| Ted Stevens | Rep | Alaska | 179,438 | 78.17% | 2002 |
| Kent Conrad | Dem | North Dakota | 176,470 | 61.37% | 2000 |
| Tim Johnson | Dem | South Dakota | 167,481 | 49.62% | 2002 |
| Craig Thomas | Rep | Wyoming | 157,622 | 73.77% | 2000 |
| Lisa Murkowski | Rep | Alaska | 149,446 | 48.62% | 2004 |
| Joseph R. Biden, Jr. | Dem | Delaware | 135,253 | 58.2% | 2002 |
| Michael B. Enzi | Rep | Wyoming | 133,710 | 72.95% | 2002 |
If each Senator from California represented the same number of people as Senators from the smallest states, and Senators were elected proportionally statewide, then we’d have Peace and Freedom Senators in Washington. Even if each Senator from California represented the same number of people as Senators from the average state, we’d have a chance at electing a P&F Senator or two under a fair election system. (While a majority of Californians would benefit from socialism, and while a majority support ideas that Republicans call "socialist" when liberals advocate them, we don’t yet have a majority who would call themselves "socialist" or advocate socialism. However, enough Californians are open to having one avowedly socialist Senator of many, that if sixteen were elected proportionally at least one socialist should win.)
[Dave Kadlecek is a long-time activist in and board member of Californians for Electoral Reform, the main group advocating proportional representation in California, and is chair of the Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party.]
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