>The yawning gap that opened up within the "traditional left", along the
>battlelines of the Pacifica crisis, the Balkans War, Mumia, and finally
>Israel and the last U.S. elections is an objective fact. As such, it is
>the result of a => move to the right<= on the part of a certain milieu of
>left-liberals. It is not the result of a "shift to the left" on the part
>of "oppositionists".
Yet I am pro Democrat, anti Pacifica management, pro-intervention in Kosovo, have a Free Mumia t-shirt, and am at least moderately pro-Palestinian on the Israel issue. Not exactly a clear line of division.
>So, let's be clear on who's doing the splitting: The Left-Liberals WHO
>HAVE MOVED TO THE RIGHT -like Audie Bock. (please excuse my repetitive
>emphasis, but I really want to hammer home this point as a fact). In this
>example, Bock split from the Greens, not the other way around. And guess
>what, people like me were nowhere around to 'cause' it :-)
And yet the Greens ran her against a liberal Democrat talking about just such "obvious" divisions. Somehow, no matter how many "clear" divisions are made, those finding them find another one to further divide.
Bock defected because once she got elected, she had the power of the state to support her personal interests and therefore developed different interests from the unelected party activists. This is inevitable with electoral politics. NO ONE ELECTED will ever stay loyal unless the left has the grassroots power to punish them. And if we have that mobilization and power, then the character of the person won't matter. "Opportunists" will opportunistically do what we want to stay elected.
That's the problem with the purism of third party politics. It starts with trying to find pure candidates and parties rather than concentrating on the real issue - more power and organization among progressives. If we have the latter, good candidates will follow, in fact will rush to get at the head of our parade.
But symbolic campaigns without that power are just useless and worse, since they divide progressives and weaken the power we could have.
-- Nathan Newman