[lbo-talk] Alternative polls (and a warning on polls) on retropoll.org

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Sat Dec 20 16:23:10 PST 2003


On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:07:24 -0500, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> Andrei wrote:
>
>> Well, in the case of Kucinich I think it's because average Americans
>> don't
>> seem to even know he's one of the candidates.

He's not as unknown as it might appear, "Dining With Dennis, " http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/19681_comment.php
> ...I missed the events earlier in the day, but I managed to get myself
> invited to a dinner of about a hundred Kucinich fans last night at
> Mykonos, a Greek place in Shepherd Plaza (apparently the owner and his
> wife are Kucinich supporters, as well)...The folks there last night were
> not your stereotypical lefty activists, but more closely resembled soccer
> moms and grandmas, baseball coaches and high school teachers. They
> could've been my neighbors, or yours.

The one thing I didn't see were a lot of "radical" people, and that mystifies me somewhat. Where were the "radical" Houstonians? I attended a number of anti-war vigils this past spring and summer, and I recognized few faces last night from those events, despite Kucinich's resolute anti-war stance. I'm also on a number of mailing lists for local political and artistic groups, and yet I've heard absolutely nothing about the guy in those forums.

VS. NYT Sunday Magazine 'sez, >...Orange County is ostensibly Reagan Country, but there are 325 non-Republicans who turn out to hear the fiery congressman give his eight-minute stump speech. It's hard to tell what has unified them. Since Kucinich resides at the left of his party (to the point where Ralph Nader has threatened to run in 2004 if anyone but Kucinich is the Democratic nominee), it seems that every faction of the left has come out and tossed up an information stand of some sort. You can stroll by a rackety table marked ISRAEL HOLOCAUST AGAINST PALESTINE; another pleading with you to FREE THE CUBAN FIVE http://www.actionsf.org/cuban5.htm ; and don't forget the COLOMBIA PEACE PROJECT . There are Greens, Socialists and New Agers of every stripe. To judge from the fashion tastes of the crowd, someone would be wise to set up a table selling muumuus... http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/magazine/21KUCINICH.html?pagewanted=print&position=

-- Michael Pugliese American imperialism has been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic. Harold Innis, 1948 http://www.monthlyreview.org/sr2004.htm



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