Harvey J. Kaye, author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, on Bill Moyers Journal:
HARVEY J. KAYE: And what– and something happened in the Seventies. The liberals and radicals divided themselves, okay? It was breaking up post ’68. I mean, this is my generation we’re talking about. Conservatives were utterly worried that the vast progressive cohorts were going to create some singular movement. Meanwhile, liberal and leftists are falling apart. They’re going at each other like cats and dogs. And liberal politicians watching the rise of the new right pulled back. They run scared. We saw it with, I mean, Carter was the first of the conservative Democrats to my mind.
The Clinton years. I mean, Clinton gave people hope when he ran. He talked about change. What did we get? We got a Democratic party or at least we got a Democratic administration that put more of its political capital into getting NAFTA passed which was a Republican initiative than they did to pass the national health care. So, one can imagine that Americans themselves are wondering, wait a minute. Why do I need– why do I need to lean liberal and democratic? I mean, what’s going on here?
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And I ask myself, why amongst the Democratic cohorts say in the Congress and in the Senate we’re not seeing people come forth and saying, okay. We may not be able to get a time table for withdrawal from Iraq. Let’s get a time table for national health care. Let’s ask our Congress, congressional comrades, the Republicans, are they willing to support national health care? We don’t even have to lay out a plan. We just want to have a time table for how we’re going to go about doing it. I ask myself why we don’t hear Democratic candidates say, “We’re Americans. We have nothing to be afraid of with immigration. In fact, why not a new deal on immigration? Why aren’t we investing heavily in incorporating, if you like, people don’t like to use this word, on assimilating all these new immigrants. Why do we view them as a threat? Why are we afraid of the very people who remind us of what we’re about?