The Language of Betrayal

B. Deutsch ennead at teleport.com
Mon Nov 20 08:47:24 PST 2000


Jeff, thanks for the Medicare link.


: All true, but Clinton also appointed a more pro-labor NLRB, as opposed to
: his predecessors, who appointed Donald Dotson, now head of HR for Beverly
: Enterprises. Under Dotson's "leadership", Beverly acted in such a way as to
: merit the first ever nationwide cease and desist order for unfair labor
: practices. The time frame for representation elections from filing to
: election went from several months under Bush/Reagan to 43 days under
: Clinton.

True. What's unclear to me is what your weighing mechanism is; what makes the above a large enough difference so that it outweighs the harms of NAFTA and the WTO agreement? You may find the gains to labor so large that it obviously makes the Clinton/Gore administration positive for labor on balance, but I don't find that so clear.

This isn't purely an academic question; the next president, whoever that is, will be attempting to shepherd the FTAA (a bigger and badder NAFTA, covering many more countries) through the congress. Labor will probably have more success pressuring congressional Dems to resist the FTAA if there isn't a pro-FTAA Democrat in the White House telling the Dems that they must support it as a matter of party loyalty. Furthermore, having Gore in the White House probably sinks any hope of the Dems regaining the Senate or House in 2002; I'm not sure that the long-term benefits of having a DLC-Dem in the Oval Office outweigh the benefits of having a real chance at a Dem-majority congress.

You may find it perfectly clear that the gains of Gore outweigh the disadvantages; but not everyone does.


: As I see it, the only principled option is to support Gore based on these
: slight improvements while continuing to organize and build a mass movement
: while building coalitions with other groups and criticizing all he does
: wrong.

We don't have a menu of mass movements to choose from; Gore supporters discuss what hypothetically would be a better mass movement, but the hypothetical better movements aren't a current option. In this election, there has been exactly ONE movement building on Seattle, filling stadiums and exciting tens of thousands of young leftist activists. The question isn't which leftist mass movements we'll support, but whether we'll support the one that exists, or wait and hope that some other bus will come along.

Finally, folks on both sides of the Gore/Nader question should avoid language like "the only principled option," which implies that leftists who disagree are unprincipled. Whether or not the results of a Gore administration would be, on balance, clearly a "slight improvement" over a Bush administration is a matter of analysis, not principle. Whether or not the lesser-evil ("slight improvements") approach to voting is a fruitful approach is a matter of strategy, not principle. Progressives on both sides should try to keep that in mind.

--BD



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