preaching, waiting

[Michael McIntyre]

I think that the clear difficulties the Greens are having with party-building after the campaign is a very precise index of the problem of celebrity-chasing to which Doug refers.  A premature focus on elections can be distracting, although in the New Party's case Rogers had <i>such</i> a clever gimmick that it might have worked had not the Supremes killed the plan.  The New Party is now a remnant, and won't be with us much longer.  So, there may be a case to be made for the LP to defer an electoral focus.  On the other hand, does the LP have a focus?  Is it "fight[ing] around specific issues that 
could aid the organization-building"?  Adolph Reed and many of the other folks involved in the LP are tops, but they don't seem to have cracked this very tough nut.

But no sneering.  Who among us has?

Michael McIntyre


>>> dhenwood at panix.com - 2/20/01 10:35 AM >>>
Chris Kromm wrote:


>Most of the Labor Party supporters I know have grown disgusted with the LP's
>abstention from politics. Sure, it's great to organize around issues, but
>that's not the point of a PARTY, is it? If "objective conditions" aren't
>ripe to be running people for office (and I'm not sure when they will be, if
>not now...), then why form a political party? The whole line of thinking is
>a tangled rag of incoherence.

I don't agree. For a tiny, young party to start running candidates 
runs the risk of celebrity-chasing; this is one of the many problems 
of the Nader candidacy. The focus on elections is distracting and 
depoliticizing. It makes much more sense to me to try to sign up 
members, build an organization, and fight around specific issues that 
could aid the organization-building. Otherwise you end up like the 
New Party, which has turned out largely to be a support group for 
"progressive" Dems in a handful of political backwaters.

Doug