> Quoth Newman!, voice of the masses:
> "Marco has nailed the pragmatic reality of the Nader campaign. It appeals
> to
> the true believers, while alienating everyone else - a disasterous strategy
> for any movement planning to try to build in the future and to expand.
>
> A real progressive movement must be based on belief
> in what is right for society as a whole.
I happen to agree with you. That said, that belief wouldn't drive me to vote for Nader in particular, so perhaps you should take my whole post with a grain of salt :).
> Manipulative
> approaches, including those premised on appeals to
> material self-interest, become transparent to voters.
That's a projection that I have trouble believing. Even among the educated elite, there's little more than a token attempt to cut through the masses of dis- and misinformation. And we are the educated elite. As participation in civic culture slides, it becomes much more easy to manipulate and polarize voters. I don't believe that there's an oncoming enlightenment as a result of this (if anything, there's increased apathy), and I don't think that we on LBO-talk realize how exceptional we really are in political terms.
> They are seen as lacking moral foundation. People try
> to vote that way, if without sufficient information
> or skill. Even DLC'ers think what they are doing is
> right, believe it or not.
I'm not sure that you're being fair to the DLC. Consider that decisions made by the president alone, while important, tend to be less important than many of the practical decisions of his appointees. While Clinton might be well to the right of anyone here, including myself, his political appointees by and large seem quite satisfying and seem to be drawn from traditional Democratic constituencies (yes, I know, there are counterexamples as well).
An acquaintance of mine, Arend Abel, made a similar argument from his experience as a government lawyer and judge in Indiana on usenet on alt.politics.democrats.d. Arend is much more articulate than I am, so I'll simply copy the relevant paragraph here.
"I wasn't talking, in the above passage, about court appointments, but about executive branch, policy level appointments. And I'm admittedly generalizing from my own experience in Indiana, where I griped for years, much as you have here, about our Democratic governor (now a Senator), who is much in the same DLC mold as Clinton and Gore. I said something to the effect of "If this is how far right we have to go to get a Democrat elected, then why bother." Then I spent some time inside government, and I saw why. "Conservative" as our Governor was, his political appointments came from the ranks of the Democratic base. His labor commissioner was a long-time union man, who has, since leaving government, gone on to become either the state or regional head of the AFL-CIO."
The DLCers, I believe, are making a tactical move - sliding right to match the rightward slant of the country. 8 years with Clinton seem to have given life, or at least a little life, to the progressive left, despite his many failings and despite his rightward inclinations. One shouldn't confuse that with a strategy to disenfranchise the progressives.
> Nader is well-positioned to move forward, with or
> without Nathan. The Greens are not the critical
> factor in this. It's the Ralph Party. The resignation
I don't think that that's to the Greens' credit. Perhaps every small party should parachute in a celebrity to gain votes? Perhaps every celebrity should sponsor a political party of their own?
Marco
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> | Civil liberties are always safe <
> Marco Anglesio | as long as their existence doesn't <
> mpa at the-wire.com | bother anyone. <
> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | --New York Times editorial, <
> | Jan 3, 1941 <
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