The Democratic Party is a strange creature indeed. Even in this most extreme of historical moments, with the most disastrous Republican administration ever, and the need for a genuine, fist-swinging opposition party more acute than ever, all too many Democrats remain engaged in the self-eviscerating strategy of attacking the party's left-of-liberal internal dissenters, rather than channeling all the party's diverse energies into dismantling the GOP's current death grip on American democracy.

Back in 2000, the Dems castigated Ralph Nader supporters in lieu of pressuring the Gore/Lieberman ticket to take Nader's unimpeachable critique of the Corporate Party to heart. This summer, a certain set of Sen. Joe Lieberman's lingering supporters are attempting to paint his antiwar critics as--brace yourselves, people--"anti-Semitic" in lieu of pressuring Lieberman to repent of his lowdown triangulating, Bush-brown-nosing ways.

When will they ever learn?

Now for a local case in point. Lately certain supporters of Sen. Maria Cantwell's re-election bid, speaking of her antiwar critics, have accused such critics of having a secret wish to elect her Republican opponent, former Safeco CEO and privatization cheerleader Mike McGavick. It's a ludicrous accusation indeed, betraying the worst tendencies of the Democratic Party machine to engage in Stalinist bad-jacket mind games in lieu of engaging constructively with the party's left-of-liberal critics.

It would be a brilliant gambit indeed if those of us in the progressive community who still refuse to forgive Cantwell for her support for the Iraq occupation, the PATRIOT Act, etc., were to also collectively endeavor to deny McGavick, and the corporate interests he represents, the chance to seize Washington state's junior US Senate seat come November. Oh, the ensuing confusion among the party hacks!

Well, all right then: Shall we dance?

It seems a safe bet that Cantwell supporters and her liberal-to-radical critics alike can easily agree that McGavick and his corporate puppeteers must not be allowed to seize the seat currently occupied by Cantwell. And the Washington State Democrats, to their credit, have been running a strong critique of McGavick's campaign, as exemplified by their deft dogging of his "Open Mike" propaganda tour of Washington state last month, spoiling his campground campaign party at several stops with hardball questions about his potential policy decisions.

That tour, with its forced aw-shucks down-home old-fashioned folksy shtick (think baseball, barbeques and bullshit), revealed a key strategy of McGavick's campaign, one that both factions in the Dems' dysfunctional divide would do well to mutually focus on in order to effectively derail McGavick's candidacy: namely, McGavick's efforts to paint himself as a just-plain-folks "moderate."

People, haven't we seen this movie before? Perhaps you can easily think of an outstanding past example of a candidate for high public office who portrayed himself as that race's aw-shucks candidate, only to reveal himself, once elected, to be a hardcore hard-right corporatist troglodyte, gleefully licking his chops at the thought of his new-found power over our national treasury and our military. Quick, what's the color of the House he's currently occupying?

A Senator McGavick might never prove as reckless an elected official as the Bush/Cheney hydra (unless you consider McGavick a puppet of Alaska senator, Cantwell nemesis, and certified loose cannon Ted Stevens--a remote possibility). But scratch the surface of his down-home facade, and he's clearly yet another in a long line of classic corporatists running for public office with an eye toward serving, once elected, the whims and wants of the private sector. The Washington State Democrats have done well so far in their work to reveal this inevitable fact. On July 25 they released a detailed survey of McGavick's numerous corporate supporters, revealing his campaign to be heavily bankrolled by right-wing corporate interests.

Where to begin? Much has already been said concerning McGavick's $28 million golden parachute from Safeco, and its potential to help buy a US Senate seat for the insurance industry. In addition, members of that industry have so far contributed more than $275,000 directly to McGavick's campaign. (McGavick himself once served as a lobbyist for the American Insurance Association.)

Among PACs who have shelled out for McGavick's campaign, he's gotten at least $9500 from Big Oil PACs, including $5000 from ExxonMobil, $2000 from BP, and $2500 from Conoco Phillips. McGavick has also accepted $1000 from Halliburton's PAC, $2000 from Pfizer's PAC, and $5000 from the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR) PAC. The FSR is a group of approximately 100 CEOs from America's largest financial services companies, who are on the front lines of the corporatist drive to privatize Social Security; they have already hosted two fundraisers for McGavick.

The FSR contribution in particular points toward the true essence of candidate McGavick: The man is most essentially an advocate for the privatization of public services. As previously noted in this space ("How 'Civil' is Mike McGavick?," ETS!, Feb. 2), even before declaring back in January his intention to run for Senate McGavick was already notorious for comments he made in September 2002 advocating the privatization of higher education in Washington state. During his keynote address that month at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting, McGavick essentially called for the privatization of the University of Washington and Washington State University:

"It is time to explore seriously whether over the next decade, we should either string the string or cut the cord and let the University of Washington and Washington State University operate more privately. Get them out of the budget fight and let them move on.... I know many of you are thinking, 'Now, wait a minute! There's a big public mission at the universities.' No doubt, but here's the sad truth.... The sad truth is our institutions are becoming more elite even as they face a budget crisis. We need to explore independence for those institutions."

The sad truth these days is that Washington state's antiwar voters are once again facing a "lesser of two evils" conundrum. With all due respect to Aaron Dixon and Hong Tran (and that's a considerable amount of respect from this writer), those candidates' respective campaigns are simply going nowhere, and now, with three months left until Nov. 7, Washington state simply has no serious liberal challenger to Sen. Maria Cantwell on the level of Ned Lamont's noteworthy challenge in Connecticut to Sen. Joe Lieberman (likely a primary victory by the time you read this). For antiwar, anti-corporate-power voters in Washington state, it seems best at this point to start framing the remaining weeks until Nov. 7 as a battle to keep Mike McGavick out of the US Senate--while still walking the fine line of refusing to support Maria Cantwell's re-election.

For now, Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut will apparently have to stand as the primary object lesson for those Bush-enabling Democrats who stand to survive this year's emerging referendum on Bush and Iraq--such as, I'm sorry to say, Sen. Maria Cantwell. Here in Washington state, it looks like we'll have to settle for defeating the far greater of two evils. Such are the hard, cold facts of political life, with at least one wolf in moderate's clothing already scratching at the door.