> >8. Nader doesn't use speechwriters, and he should. But he
> >did well enough. Needless to say, his appeal is content-driven.
>
> His appeal, especially to young, and Noam Chomsky's status as a youth
> cult figure, is a pretty cheering antidote to the claim that the
> masses are superficial and dumb. Polls and anecdote show the
> electorate massively alienated by the debased level of campaign
> discourse coming from the major parties. I don't think the stupidity
> of the public culture is bubbling up from below; it's oozing downward
> from the cultural and political elite.
Chomsky seems to be more widely popular than you would think, if you only listened to doom and gloom Left columnists who write about the media monopoly shutting Chomsky's voice out. I was listening last night to Jello Biafra's keynote lecture from a hacker convention last summer. When he mentioned Chomsky's name, a big cheer broke out. Many people think that hackers are already anarchists and libertarians, but actually they haven't been. It seems that this year, more of them have become more politicized, thanks to Napster, DeCSS, and successful hacker projects like the Independent Media Center.
> >10. There was plenty of emphasis on what next, after the election.
> >This is where the action is. Tomorrow, I'm looking up the Green
> >Party.
>
> Yup. If Ralph's campaign means anything, it's as the beginning of a
> movement, not a race for president. Though if it gives the DLC
> nighmares, so much the better.
Heh. I mentioned the DLCto several people yesterday who stopped to talk with me outside the Nader super rally. I said to them that if any of the folks from the DLC were spying on the Nader event, they were probably shitting in their pants. There were tons of young people at the rally yesterday. These were AVERAGE college students, not the typical hippies, Lefties, and campus activists that you would expect at a Nader event.
These were young people who had taken baths that morning. ;-)
Chuck0