People, I need a little help here.

I keep hearing this urban legend that says Maria Cantwell, the junior Democratic US senator from Washington state, is a "liberal." Could this urban legend possibly be true? Doesn't make much sense to me, if by "liberal" one means an advocate of a polity that supports, as a matter of policy, its most vulnerable citizens (i.e., "New Deal liberalism"). Are we talking about the same Maria Cantwell who remains an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq War, that grand political, economic and humanitarian disaster that has diverted a staggering amount of public money from real and potential US government programs providing affordable health care, housing and education to American citizens?

Despite her status as a magnet for the usual misogynist dittohead apoplexy aplenty--and even granting her noted pro-choice and pro-environment record--personally, I just can't buy the idea of Sen. Cantwell being a "liberal." In fact, I believe Ms. Cantwell and her supporters (not to mention the Dittohead Nation) could use a little remedial education in this matter. Lesson number one: If you support The War, you're not a liberal. To quote the Democrats' famous slogan from the 1992 Clinton/Gore presidential campaign: It's the economy, stupid! Consider all the genuinely liberal public largess that could have been provided by the US government in the past three years by means of the $246 billion and counting (according to CostOfWar.com as of March 12) that has instead been funding war profiteering and terrorist recruiting in Iraq--all supported rhetorically and legislatively by the "liberal" Sen. Cantwell. Economically and semantically speaking, it all provides mightily for manufacturers of bullshit detectors.

Fortunately for genuine Washington state liberals frustrated with Cantwell's performance as their alleged representative in Washington, DC (and to mock the Dems' failed slogan for the 2004 Kerry/Edwards campaign), help is on the way. On Thursday, March 9, longtime Seattle community activist Aaron Dixon formally announced his candidacy for the Green Party nomination for the race for Cantwell's US Senate seat. As intended by Dixon and celebrated by his supporters, Dixon's candidacy poses a direct challenge to any expectations the Cantwell camp may have had to take Washington state's multitude of antiwar and social justice voters for granted in the months leading up to November. Now that there's a genuine liberal in the race for Cantwell's seat, if Cantwell and her supporters expect to earn (rather than simply expect) the liberal vote in Washington state, now's the time for the Cantwell camp to take a crash course in what being a liberal really means.

As liberal credentials go, the relevant contrasts between Cantwell and Dixon could not be clearer: Cantwell, 48, is best known for funding her own 2000 Senate campaign with her private sector earnings as a New Economy millionaire, and for her consistent New Democrat triangulation as a public representative. Dixon, 57, is best known for co-founding the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968, and for his unquestionable credentials earned since then as a lifelong citizen activist committed to the Seattle social justice community.

King County Councilmember Larry Gossett has been a close friend and social justice ally of Dixon's ever since the two helped co-found the University of Washington's Black Student Union the same year the Seattle BPP was founded. Recently interviewed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer regarding Dixon's candidacy, Gossett described Dixon as "principled, progressive and extremely popular" in Seattle's black community, especially among black youth. While Cantwell can claim a fair number of progressive victories from her two decades as an otherwise centrist public servant, Dixon, along with Gossett and many of their colleagues in Seattle's progressive activist community, has done much more than Cantwell (at least at the local level) for genuine liberal progress in his four decades of commitment to social justice.

So, between Maria Cantwell and Aaron Dixon, which of the two will truly deserve the Washington state liberal vote come November? What was it that Cantwell's fellow "liberal" Bill Clinton proclaimed upon signing the infamous Welfare Reform Act of 1996? "The age of entitlement is over"? If Clinton was then telling a rare truth, should Cantwell still be entitled to the liberal vote, despite her appalling stances on the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, corporate globalization, and many other issues of genuine liberal concern? Or should she, shall we say, pull herself up by her bootstraps and earn it--for example, by admitting that her support for the Iraq War has been a monumental mistake and joining those Congressional Democrats, such as John Conyers, Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich, who are calling for an end to the war? That stance, increasingly in line with majority US public opinion, is the centerpiece of Dixon's campaign, and until Cantwell finally sees the writing on the wall, Dixon has every small-d democratic right to the votes of those of us in Washington state who consider the invasion and occupation of Iraq to be a monumental injustice, as well as the defining issue of the 2006 US midterm elections.

Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, Dixon is already being branded condescendingly as a "spoiler" in Democratic circles, analogous to the treatment Ralph Nader got in 2000 for expecting that, as a candidate advocating a genuinely liberal agenda, he had the right to seek the votes of liberals unconvinced by the Clintonesquely compromising centrist Al Gore. The predictable fear among the Dems in 2006 is that, in a close general election, the Washington state liberal vote might be split between Dixon and Cantwell, thereby handing the election to Mike McGavick, the current Republican front-runner for Cantwell's seat.

That's a legitimate fear, especially since McGavick is also distinguishable from Cantwell, and in far more frightening ways (see "How 'Civil' is Mike McGavick?" from the Feb. 2 ETS! for details). Nevertheless, all too often Cantwell has failed to distinguish herself from the Bush regime on crucial issues--including and especially Iraq. As Dixon himself noted at his March 9 press conference, "Maria votes like a Republican." Dixon's campaign office further articulated that sad fact in a news advisory concerning his candidacy, stating, "Mr. Dixon believes Sen. Cantwell's positions--and votes--on crucial issues such as peace and war, fair trade and corporate control, as well as civil liberties vs. unchecked government surveillance, are no longer representing the majority of Washington state residents."

That sums up quite nicely the lesson that Cantwell and her supporters are apparently still struggling to learn. Cantwell has been sowing the seeds of "centrism" in both Washingtons for five long years now, and in the process has contributed to the slow, painful post-9/11 trend whereby, in America, the right has moved to the center, the center has been pushed to the left, and the genuine left, with its ideals that should be considered sensibly mainstream--such as civil liberties and social and economic equality--has been pushed to the "extreme left." That discourse is long overdue for a course correction. Sen. Cantwell now has seven months to consider whether she wants to start pushing the right back to its rightful place in the American political spectrum or, as with Iraq, she's content to "stay the course."

In other words, Cantwell needs to decide whether she wants to be a genuine liberal, or just another spineless, gutless, and ultimately worthless Democrat.