BW on EC

[Seth Ackerman]

> ----------
> From: 	Nathan Newman[SMTP:nathan at newman.org]
> Reply To: 	lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Sent: 	Monday, November 13, 2000 5:12 PM
> To: 	lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: 	Re: BW on EC
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> 
> 
> Nathan Newman wrote:
> 
> >Some of us remember Jackson in the Rainbow Coalition and still recognize
> >that Democratic leadership folks like David Bonior and John Conyers can
> go
> >head-to-head with Nader on progressive credentials.
> >
> >Jackson, Bonior and Conyers all received their votes from that base.
> 
> -Exactly. When push comes to shove, these people will all campaign for
> -the party. They're the mechanisms by which the base is bound to that
> -corrupt structure.
> 
> Now you are getting logically circular.  You argue that the base cannot
> elect progressive leadership.  Then when I point out that they have
> elected
> progressive leadership, the fact that those progressive leaders are part
> of
> the party is used to prove the illegitimacy of the party.
> 
> By your definition, there are no progressives in the Democratic Party
> leadership because anyone in the Democratic Party leadership is not really
> progressive by definition because they are in the party.
> 
> It's a tautological argument that avoids dealing with the reality of mass
> numbers of progressive rank-and-file and leadership folks voting for such
> leaders and that those leaders do progressive things.
> 
> You don't like the compromises they make, but then every third party from
> the Greens to the remaining Communists in Europe makes compromises in
> coalition politics.  There is no purity in political leadership which is
> why
> I take the class composition more seriously than the purity of rhetoric of
> the leadership.
> 

	---

	I think you're missing the point. The other day, Richard Gephardt
was asked on CNN what he thought of the budget that was just passed, which
used 90% of next year's surplus to pay down debt. He said he wished we could
pay down 90% of the next *five* years' surpluses.

	Is that what labor-liberal Richard Gephardt really thinks? Probably
not. He's just mouthing the official Democratic Party line. If he weren't
part of the Democratic structure, he might say -- no, what's with this
obsession with paying down the debt? Let's use the surplus for, say, serious
public investment.

	Seth