Marable writes:
>A more effective and persuasive
>position would have been to say that on many public policy positions,
>especially on civil rights, women's and reproductive rights, on the
>Supreme Court and most labor issues, Gore is clearly superior to Bush.
>But on a number of other crucial issues, such as the immoral embargo
>against Cuba, military spending, trade and globalization, civil
>liberties, ending the mass incarceration of over a million African
>Americans and the vast expansion of the prison industrial complex, Gore
>is at least as bad as Bush.
Marable doesn't seriously consider the organic links between Gore's pro-global neo-liberalism and his progressive stances on race and gender issues. There's always been a clear connection for "corporate liberals" between free trade imperialism abroad and civil rights gains at home -- see LBJ, Vietnam, and the War on Poverty. And there are organic links between Bush's slightly more "America first" foreign policy and pseudo- populist social conservatism -- see the Taft wing of the Republican Party, circa the 1950's. I don't think Marable deeply explores enough the historic ties b/w policy options he backs and those he abhors. I'm not saying that one has to be pro-WTO to affirm gay and lesbian rights, or anti-reproductive rights to be anti-NAFTA. But Marable takes too much of a timeless, placeless approach to electoral choices, in effect saying, "Golly, Gore's _x_, why can't he be _y_ and _z_," or "Golly, Nader's for _a_ and _b_, why can't he be for _c_ ?" Politics is not or cannot be about politically correct laundry lists.
John Gulick