Arguments against Gore and Clinton are very untimely now. This is an example of rigid thinking on the left, this inability to break out of the anti-Gore mode that Nader supporters have been in. Nader is out of it. The main avenue for marring Bush, the most like victor, is through votes stolen from Gore. The weaknesses of the theory of focus against Democrats even more than against Republicans ( under the rubric of tweedle dee/tweedle dum , but really more anti-Dem than Repub, as articulated especially on this list through the election )is glaring at this moment.
However, Lefties will have four years to show just how much they can develop anti-Bush arguments, because Bush is the one.
Get pissed at Bush and the SC , even if you have to fake it.
From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
>For my part, I'm surprised by the relative lack of reaction here on the
list
>to the US Supreme Court's naked power grab. We can produce miles of
>scorched bandwidth over the proper interpretation of Max Weber -- a
>legitmate topic to be sure but hardly topical -- but seem to have little
>reaction at all to the black-robed coup d'etat now in progress.
>Justin, Nathan, do you want to want to offer any hymns to the glory of the
>law today?
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CB: Is there a way the dynamics currently underway can mar not just the president, but the presidency ? And also the Supremcy Courtesy . That should be the goal of leftists now.
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I don't think that either Justin or I ever were part of the choir on that point, but did believe that the conservatives on the Court would not sacrifice their total intellectual credibility for a naked partisan gain. We were apparently wrong and Scalia et al have made the pragmatic partisan decision to make sure that they keep their numerical majority on the Court by installing Bush, the credibility of the Court and their judicial philosophy be damned. I saw one conservative Bork supporter sputtering about how the injuction shutting down the vote count was as complete a betrayal of principle and as large a judicial overreaching as he could imagine.
But let's be clear. This is not a coup d'etat but merely the reality of existing power relations coming to the surface- the partisan power of the Court stepping into the limelight from its usual self-effacing mumbo-jumbo. The irony of course is that the nature of the Supreme Court is such that such a visible exercise of partisan power inherently diminishes its exercise and credibility in the future - which is what makes the overreaching gambit by Scalia et al so fascinating. Given the fact that the Supreme Court will have delivered the Presidency to Bush, every Supreme Court decision will be understood in that light from now on and every judicial appointment will be fought over with naked partisan mobilization, since it is now clear that who is appointed matters for every other partisan result in our electoral system.
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CB: As comrade attorney Lenin taught us, law is politics. Of course it is a case like this in which that becomes most stark. Most court decisions do not decide the winner of the presidential election. This is an important empirical lesson to supplement legal education.
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Which is great! Anything that strips the illusion of impartial legitimacy from the organs of power is a gain for progressives seeking to organize against that establishment.
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CB: Agree with Nathan.
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Blacks, latinos, the elderly, the disabled - those immediately disenfranchised by this latter-day Jim Crow Court are only the most obvious candidates for questioning the fundamental legitimacy of our whole corporate-dominated system.
Now, folks can sit on the sidelines and just say this is just an internal fight between capitalist parties or you can recognize that, in however fucked up and partial a way, the Democrats have been and continue to be the vehicle for the self-empowerment and enfranchisement of a whole range of interests and groups in our society, and that the corporate Right decided that this process needed to be turned back in this election. A lot of the Right is seeing what's going on in California, as latinos and other non-whites have become the majority and the radical changes in politics that are underway, and they fear the future as this process extends on to other states and across the country.
The fight over who is a citizen, who is enfranchised to vote, and the whole gambit of "electoral profiling" to shut down the voting power of the excluded is the chasm of conflict that has been revealed in this election. And it's not going away. The Supreme Court needs to jump in to stand square against the right to vote and have your vote counted, because we will see a whole onslaught of subtle and possibly not-so-subtle attempts to deny the right to vote to all sorts of groups in coming years. So the best way to understand the Court's action is as a sacrifice play - trade off credibility on a whole host of other issues in order to try to win on the most fundamental issue and always the issue in our partial democracy - who is a citizen and who shall rule along the color line of capitalist America.
-- Nathan Newman Up to this point, Nathan was smokin'. Then, like a swallow returning to Capistrano, he comes back to his DP syndrome . . . :
" . . . Now, folks can sit on the sidelines and just say this is just an internal fight between capitalist parties or you can recognize that, in however fucked up and partial a way, the Democrats have been and continue to be the vehicle for the self-empowerment and enfranchisement of a whole range of interests and groups in our society, . . . "
[mbs] 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.
Going to Court and/or making a fuss when you have been jobbed out of an election, or when it is close, is not my definition of defending suffrage.
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CB: However, it is the "job" of leftists such as us to make the arguments and develop the themes that do what the Dems won't do. This situation offers an opportunity to dis the system, and we shouldn't lose that. I don't mean that this the beginning of a revolution. But it there seems some likelihood that we can put a bad taste in people's mouths about what just happened, a bad taste that will last.
This is not the moment to be emphasizing that the Dems are the bad guys too. You did that sufficiently during the election. It worked. The Dems lost.
Flexibility is an important aspect of tactics. Gotta be able to turn on a dime.
Good to see that Nader seems to have heard some of the criticism from people like BRC national secretary, Fran Beal on his racial blind spot
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I would be curious to know if anyone can cite a statement about the current imbroglio from any Democratic bigwig as incisive as this:
"Nader, who ran unsuccessfully for the presidency as the Green Party candidate, also called for the courts to investigate the Florida presidential election even after Republican George W. Bush or Democrat Al Gore is declared the winner.
Nader said the Florida Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Justice Department must investigate allegations that registration lists were purged in a way that discriminated against minority voters and that minorities were excluded from voting in certain Florida precincts in greater numbers than other voters.
"It's increasingly clear that the situation in Florida reflects a voting rights discrimination," Nader said before his speech. "The situation cannot be corrected before the next president is chosen. But it certainly needs to be challenged in courts of law."
mbs