Sure. And Nixon presumably at least tried twice (maybe he didn't need to the second time, but the scuttling of the Paris peace talks sure helped the first time around) and Reagan's October Surprise was surely a factor in defeating Carter. I mean, how many of these fuckwads are legitimately elected anyway? It's not the Bush track record of stealing the last election that makes me nervous, it's their track record in other areas, the corporate media (supine when it's not frothing), and the world scene.
Look, I agree with you about the last 10 or 15 years. But it's rather far from people's experience (perhaps exaggerated a bit by the economic situation) to say that Bush is not an uglier expression of the U.S. beast unrivaled. As for the sanctions killing more people, hell, give Bush time. You think the maternal and infant death rate in Iraq is better now that it was before the war? Not to mention the guy's initiated a worldwide nuclear arms race.
>Conditions in
>the u.s. now are not even close to the kind of conditions that either
>allow or (from a ruling class perspective) would justify the kind of
>transfer of power Jenny envisages.
I hope you're right, and I wasn't trying to start a rumor. I just don't see this group going without a fight. My point was they'll do pretty much anything to keep from getting dislodged. If we don't put up a fight (as Chuck Grimes and Bill Bartlett suggested we shouldn't) they will look legitimate and their nickel-dime approach to stealing votes--as tested out in Florida--will be sufficient. If we do, they'll come up with some other tactics. Which tactics are beyond this lot? You tell me. Not much, in my estimation.
I didn't mean to imply they'd succeed, mind you. I said we better fight like hell or they won't even have to break a sweat. Under what strategy is it good to allow these people to claim legitimacy and the 'approval of the American people'?
>Worry about what the Bushies specifically are
>doing obscures both what has been happening for 10 years _and_
>interferes with the serious business of building an opposition.
Well, if I made this point to recommend 12 months of desperate clinging to the Democratic party, I'd side with you against myself. I was rather pointing out that it's (1) an overestimation of Democratic strength this far from the election to be urging people to vote for Bush lest the Democrats win and make obscure the general trajectory and (2) it's simply a misassessment of the current very ugly political scene--I actually think the general trajectory becomes _clearer_ under Democrats, since it proves that the major problem is not a Bush cabal idiosyncracy. Like it or not, it's the smarter not the dumber factions of the ruling class we have to deal with. And I'm not quite sure about dumb, either. Which policy goal, exactly, have they been foiled in carrying out?
And, to add to my reputation for irrationality, I'm actually quite optimistic about the movement, which I'm sure puts me in a small minority on this list.
Jenny Brown