>Up to this point, Nathan was smokin'. Then, like
>a swallow returning to Capistrano, he comes back
>to his DP syndrome . . . :
>Not much of a vehicle. We will look in vain for any
>basic critique of the Supremes when this is over. It
>will be laid over to how important it is to elect Dems,
>notwithstanding the fact that Dems have and will fail
>to act to defend the right to vote.
====
The word is "vehicle" - ie. a place for mass groups to run candidates in primaries- and there have been and will be critiques of the Supremes by unions, civil rights groups and the whole mass of groups who make up the grassroots structure of the Democratic Party.
Top corporate Dems may be dragged kicking and screaming into voting rights for immigrants, blacks and other disenfranchised groups, but the reality is that from the Voting Rights Act to Motor Voter to supporting counting black and latino votes in Florida today, those grassroots forces in alliance with self-interested Dems needing those votes have expanded the modern franchise of the disempowered.
I'm going to attach an article about Rehnquist's partisan start as a poll watching suppressing the right to vote. The reality is that the GOP has emerged as a catchall for ex-segregationists and rightwing capitalists. This does not mean that the Democratic leadership is anything than an ugly amalgamation of certain opposing corporate interests making an uneasy deal with progressive grassroots forces, but that deal is very real if limited. But the reality is specifically in the expansion of the franchise that supports the success of those deals, which is a potentially explosive longterm threat to those Dem-oriented capitalists.
But any left strategy has always been based on making short-term deals with certain capitalist forces, knowing that the profit motive will make those forces seize on short-term gains vis a vis other capitalists and sacrifice the longer-term interests of capital as a whole.
Without that assumption of the left being able to what-was-that-phrase "have the capitalists sell us the rope to hang them", there would be no possibility for ever defeating a united capitalist class holding military and police power. Expanding the franchise is the ultimate rope that has been negotiated with progressive elements of capital and the reactionary forces have, rightly, begun to mobilize against that threat.
If you think that every Supreme Court Justice and every Dem politicians is simply a representative of capital interests and nothing more, than a 5-4 SC decision or a contested election can have no interest to you. That is the viewpoint I am criticizing. It's kind of silly to say you are against blacks in Florida being denied the right to vote, but not caring about the fight for which they are demanding their vote be counted. Voting is not like sex, just done for the joy of the act, but is an expression of power. If the fight for which that power is being exercised is so useless, then Chuck O has the only reasonable position. But I think that is wrong and belies every element of history.
-- Nathan Newman