Nathan Newman wrote:
>Cause it's so much better to get along with each other than attract new
>folks and win.
-This is bullshit. You're the one who's passing judgment on who the -good guys and bad guys are, dismissing the achivements of the antiwar -movement in a short space of time against all the odds imposed by -American political culture
Absolutely-- as do you with progressive Democrats. So what? That's what political argument is all about, passing judgement. I've celebrated a lot of the antiwar movement but analyzing why it failed is what real analysis is about.
Last night and this morning I was at events where the new Organizing Director for the AFL-CIO was talking. A lot of his time was spent trashing the failures of organizing by various AFL-CIO affiliates. That's what real organizers do when they fail-- analyze what's wrong, not wimper that people tried and it's too hard so that excuses everything. Sure you give credit where credit is due for small successes, but I don't think the antiwar movement can really claim that much.
They started with two-thirds of the public polling as opposed to going to war without UN approval. That's a strong place to start and they lost 40% of the population initially opposed to unilateral war to now supporting Bush's war.
So what's the achievement? Tactical successes such as a few big rallies? Rallies are means, not achievements. Why should we praise tactics that coincided with AN INCREASE in support for uniltateral war? The February global rallies seemed to make a small untick in opposition but it was pretty ephemeral.
The idea that the left will inevitably lose just gives license to this kind of justification for failed tactics and a refusal to do analysis on how to win. I do political work to win, not because I think it's some kind of moral witness to inevitable failure. So failure is failure. In the 2000 election, I criticized both Nader's and Gore's failures and neither excused the others, since the end result was Bush's Presidency. I'll amen criticisms of union campaigns when there are alternative tactics that were ignored that could have been more successful.
And from the beginning, I argued the antiwar movement was concentrating too much on rallies and not enough on outreach to the uncommitted. And it was precisely that middle 40% of the population that was lost during the public debate over the last few months.
That was a failure by the antiwar movement. You may think it was inevitable due to the power of the opposition. I don't.
-- Nathan Newman