And now for Gore?

[Gary Bramstedt]

>Chris, aside from what I read as a thoroughly myopic sense of what 
>Gore's about -- see the Nation magazine's July critique for example 
>-- I don't know how you'd justify this statement below given your 
>strong sentiments on behalf of int'l regulation of K.
>
>> From:          Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org>
>> Subject:       And now for Gore?
>> I have been impressed but also a little surprised at the forebearance of US
>> contributors to discuss Clinton. Why gossip about what was obvious? I
>> presume was the feeling. Plus a sense that while you would not want to
>> campaign for him, he was better than his predecessors...
>
>No, it was always much easier to fight the global neo-liberal onslaught 
>when led by Reagan/Thatcher and Bush; as Clinton turned to 
>promoting Nafta, Gatt, IMF/WB recap and all the rest, any residual 
>integrity in the Democratic Party evaporated and the tiny 
>liberal-left contingent had to turn to the Far Right for anti-neo-lib 
>alliances. Clinton, the Wall Street Journal said before his 
>reelection, is the best president corporate America ever had. 
>Precisely because as a Democrat he eviscerated the left flank. This 
>goes for any number of issues, not just global political economy...
>
>P.
>
>From my own experience I had a similar outlook as yours, Chris: ending 
the Reagan/Bush era was VERY important and I voted for Bill (once). When 
he moved to the right of the R's I left the Democratic party after 30+ 
years and re-registered as GREEN (I could probably NEVER vote "R". The 
vote still is very important to me: I'd like to see 90%+ voter-turnouts 
with the majority voting AGAINST the D's and R's. Some of garbage that is 
played out on the political screen is designed to turn people off on 
voter participation, I believe. The enclaves with high concentrations of 
the "captains of industry and finance", for lack of a better description, 
always have high voter turn-outs. They know the importance.)

So for me Bill was the catalyst that moved me, as Parenti would say, from 
a position of "liberal-complaint" to "radical analysis"... Now I have a 
little clearer idea in what I can do. I think you both are correct...

GLB