One funny thing about Manning's position is that when he was in the leadership of the Committees of Correspondence - I guess he still is nominally - he was in the faction that supported endorsing Clinton in 1992 and was generally hostile to the third party folks within the CoC. And what may surprise people is that I was one of the louder people opposing CoC endorsement of Clinton and strongly supported promoting the third party efforts of those members who wished to.
So I was a bit surprised that having allied with the anti-third party faction in the CoC, largely driving those folks out of the organization, Marable is so dismissive of those who hold the position he advocated only a few years ago.
My hope back then was to have an organization of those promoting both third party and internal Democratic alliances in order to coordinate both strategies and maximize leverage of progressives. Manning helped block that then by supporting the leadership faction that attacked third party efforts and now he turns around and attacks those who still see value in working with the Dems - his own relatively recent position.
I'm not sure what to make of it, but heck, Manning is still doing great work supporting mass work through the Black Radical Congress, so his electoral zig-zags are not the measure of his contributions to the movement.
-- Nathan Newman