Columnist Jon Ralston: Democrats make mockery of own tactics

Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2000 | 9:44 a.m.

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at ralston@vegas.com.

Nevada's Democrats should not feel too ashamed.

As they partied with the company (Bechtel) that wants to build the nuclear waste dump, just two weeks after they frothed about the GOP's repository-receptive platform, they were in good company.

The entire Democratic Party has used the ironic City of Angels venue to prove it is willing to make the same Faustian bargain the Republicans have with corporate America.

The cynicism in Los Angeles is epidemic. A fortnight after the Democrats cleverly and viciously lampooned the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney pairing as the Big Oil ticket, the Center for Responsive Politics reports, one of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's convention "partners" is Occidental Petroleum. In fact, the party's nominee, Vice President Al Gore, owns $500,000 worth of stock in Occidental, the CRP reports.

The Democrats went to great pains to smear the Republican convention as bought and paid for by corporate interests. And, it turns out, the Democratic confab also has been purchased by big business -- and many of the same ones who appeared in Philadelphia.

Look at who the sponsors are of a "Mardi Gras Goes to Hollywood" party honoring Louisiana's John Breaux, according to the CRP: the American Council of Life Insurance, Brown and Williamson, Edison Electric Institute, Waste Management and then the real sinful contributors, the American Gaming Association. So the Democrats are being feted by insurance companies, tobacco outfits, nuclear waste producers and, ahem, gambling interests.

Anyone else outraged?

The problem, in politics as in life, is if you get up on your high horse, inevitably you will take a tumble. The national Democrats can espouse populism and anti-corporate rhetoric, but with every step they take, they make Ralph Nader's case about the similarity between the two major parties.

It's no different for the Nevada folks. Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Shelley Berkley and Senate candidate Ed Bernstein delighted in taking pot shots at the Republicans during their convention. On prescription drugs. On nuclear waste. On almost everything.

But when they were asked this week about the Bechtel event, Reid, for one, made it sound as if the question was unfair. "We don't have a deciding vote on who gets the contracts at Yucca," Reid told the Sun's Benjamin Grove. And the relevance of that would be?

If you want to play the game of McCarthyism on the dump, get ready to have the same standard applied to you. If you can do it to them, they will do it to you. So it was not surprising to see Nevada Republicans salivate over the Bechtel affair -- call it tit for tat.

And it's also fair. Do Reid & Co. not think that Bechtel would advocate for the dump on Capitol Hill, considering how much money the company could make on the project?

Then check out the linguistic stretching by the Nevada Democrats on the proposed nuclear waste platform plank, which reads: "This responsibility (to develop clean energy technologies) includes disposing of nuclear waste in a scientifically sound manner in accordance with standards designed to protect human health and the environment."

Berkley insisted that disqualifies Yucca Mountain because "it doesn't meet safety standards." Really? Although the GOP platform was clearly more Yucca Mountain-friendly, the Democrats can't possibly say that language in their own plank is good for Nevada. None of the state's pols will ever acknowledge that the waste could be stored safely at Yucca Mountain -- does anyone believe that if the EPA stiffened its standards that Sen. Richard Bryan would step back and declare: "Let's get it on."

It's rank cynicism. And the Democrats deserve to be scorched for their continuing attempts to turn the dump into a partisan issue when the happenstance of GOP congressional control means nothing as to the inexorable progress of the dump project. If the House goes Democratic, does anyone believe the new energy chairman, John Dingell, honored by the Edison Electric Institute this week, would shut it down?

I mentioned that the Nevada Democrats shouldn't feel too ashamed. As they've already proved, along with their conspirators in cynicism in the GOP, they are unfamiliar with the emotion.