On Mon, 05 Oct 1998 10:42:47 -0700 (PDT) Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at tsoft.com>
writes:
>
>James Devine writes:
>
>And, more importantly, tell us what's _wrong_ with the alternative to
>the mug's game. Ignoring the arguments against the L-O-T-E theory of
>voting seems a symptom short-term thinking. (In this, it's extememly
>akin to that of the sectarians who reject thinking in favor of
>mindless action.) Instead of seeing the ballot box as a potential tool
>for pressuring politicians, it's some sort of obligation that promises
>vague results. But it is a strategic tool. It also has ethical
>implications. Do we want to vote for a party that trashed AFDC? a
>party that endorsed the strategic bombing of a medicine factory in
>Sudan (with suspicious timing, to say the least)?
>
>BTW, if you compare Nixon's program with that of Clinton, it's
>sometimes hard to decide which is better. After all, it was Nixon who
>brought the US OSHA and EPA.
>
Many of Nixon's proposals concerning domestic policy were
considerably more progressive than the proposals of any of his
successors including Clinton. As Doug pointed Nixon proposed a
guaranteed minimum annual income,and he proposed a form of national
health insurance that was certainly more progressive than Clinton's
abortion of a scheme.
>What's happened is that the US political spectrum has steadily moved
>to the right.
Very true, but we need an analysis of this has occurred so we can figure out what to do about it. I am intrigued by Charles Brown's suggestion that by the end of the '60s the left was very close to achieving hegemony in the Gramscian sense. The social movements of the '60s including the civil rights, anti-war, student and feminist movements had gone quite a long way to throwing the ruling class on the defensive. Also, given the tight labor markets of that time the unions were able successfully push for better pay and conditions. When Nixon came into office the '60s social movements were still quite strong so that Nixon despite his conservative to reactionary instincts (in fact the Nixon tapes revealed him to be quite a racist and anti-Semite) had to bend to the progressives. Nixon attempted to deal with the left by a combination of coopting and repression. By the mid-1970s the '60s social movements had begun to wane. Corporate capital which had been experiencing declining rates of profit had begun to go on the offensive. So whereas presidents like Johnson and Nixon had been pulled to the left. Subsequent presidents all experienced strong pressures from the right. Given the current balance of political forces I suspect that even if someone like Wellstone managed to get elected he would experience the same pressures to move rightwards as Clinton has experienced. In fact I doubt that under present conditions that a Wellstone administration would be that much more progressive than Clinton's.
>------------
>
>This sentiment more or less echos Paul Rosenberg's post also.
>
>Yes Clinton resembles Nixon--I would even argue Nixon was more
>liberal--but only in relation to our period. Nixon was responding to
>what he thought was the threatening policy appeal of Robert Kennedy,
>Gene McCarthy, and certainly the then growing changes occurring in the
>Democratic Party under Civil Rights and the Anti-war movements. He was
>pushed to the left. Twenty years before that when he wanted to get on
>the Republican national ticket he aligned with the Joe McCarthy
>movement
>to appear more solidly American (with a capital A). Nixon was a
>chameleon much like Clinton, moving in whatever direction seemed most
>expedient to his own career.
>
>So, here's the rational argument. By voting consistently democratic,
>then consistently liberal democratic, and then consistently the
>so-called radical wing of the democratic party (grass-roots? or in
>local elections), you move the entire spectrum back. But you have to
>vote this way. Otherwise, you throw away votes on candidates that have
>no chance of holding office and the consistent results are the
>dissembled Democrats through out the seventies and eighties. Now, I've
>been lucky since I moved to Berkeley from the LA area a long time ago
>as a student and have almost always had these kinds of choices in the
>local elections. Sometimes you get lucky. Delums for example started
>out in Berkeley city counsel elections where I voted for him then and
>so on through out his career. Not that he was any kind of true
>radical, but in relation to the existing spectrum, he was very liberal
>and quite tolerant. I just hope his career assistant Dejon Aroner,
>will be the same way. I suspect she might be more so, at least on
>local issues.
>
I think any strategy to move American politics leftwards that
focuses primarily on electoral politics is doomed to failure.
I think at the present time the revitalization of organized labor,
the reenergizing of social movements like feminist movement,
the environmental movement and other progressive social
movements and the forging of alliances between these movements
is of greater political importance. Only then can the terms of
political discourse which are currently being set by the corporate
owned media be altered in a more progressive direction.
Jim Farmelant
>Of course this is the 'lesser of two evils', but the choice is to
>throw away votes, or not vote. The trouble is that so many people are
>so turned off to the entire idea of a public commitment to anything,
>they don't vote, thus giving the fanatical Right and their minions the
>illusion of representation. They are not representative of anything
>but a rather limited group of mostly suburban, frightened and greedy
>bourgeois. With sufficient money from petty minded small business,
>they have managed to take over vast sections of the political spectrum
>and lay waste to the entire arena of public discourse--not to mention
>the concrete devastation they have wrought on tangible public
>institutions. To turn this around requires large solid turn outs,
>solid Democratic districts that are never in question, over and over
>and over--while working in whatever way you can to move those
>districts into ever more tolerant and progressive public
>positions. After all the Right is a disease than can only be kept
>under control through statistical means, but probably can be not
>irradicated. (Can fear, loathing of public duty, and selfish greed
>ever disappear?). The only time I would vote outside the demos would
>be when the demos were solidly in the lead and I wanted to effect a
>more progressive perception--move the existing candidate further to
>the left through their perception of their own base.
>
>So, there is no choice. Either you fine your discourse and votes
>within the possible and work to build up the perception of a more
>liberal public view, or you are excluded, or worse join the great sea
>of silence.
>
>Chuck Grimes
>
>
>
>
>
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