>Actually, it is probably less about principle than that SEIU's
>mobilization of their members and support is more valuable than the
>dollars involved. Which is a good thing. A tinge of principle can pass
>but when unions and other progressives make themselves more valuable than
>the big bucks donars,
>the Dem leaders will choose "principle" out of self-interest, a far more
>stable way to force them to do the right thing.
Why should anyone care what Dem leaders choose to do? That is their business, not ours.
But as far as their business is concerned, this is the operative passage:
>The direct financial impact on the Masschusetts party will be slight,
>sources said. The Schusters did not raise much money for the state party,
...which explains that neither 'principle' nor 'interest' was at stake for these MA Dems...
>but raised millions of dollars, through their own donations and by
>throwing lavish fund-raisers at their home, for the national Democratic
>Party and major national figures, such as the Clintons, Moakley, Kerry,
>Kennedy, and US Representative Martin T. Meehan of Lowell.
So, perhaps these "extreme leftists" in MA will feel the wrath of the NDC/DLC?
>Which is one more argument for mobilizing within the Dem party,
Actually, it looks more like an example of and argument for mass mobilization organized independently of the Democrats. The fact that it was hijacked by the MA Dems is quite beside the point - a organized progressive political alternative would have given them a place to go to.
>since it gets results, not only in elections but in concrete grassroots
>organizing, as in this example.
Hey, waddaminute, the "results" aren't in yet! Will the SEIU win? Will the MA Demos be punished?
A classic "the movement is everything" confusion: mobilizing for elections, or concrete grassroots organizing, is not an effect or result, but a cause or process to attain such effects or results.
Of which there is very little positive evidence from the Democratic Party over the last quarter century. Truly, leftist support of the Democratic party is the final reductio ad absurdum , the lowest circle of Hell, of "Bernsteinian revisionism".
-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA
>- -- Nathan Newman