Tahir Wood wrote:
>
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Kerry: America First!
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
> All I'm looking for is getting back to a baseline of
> normal capitalist horror.
> Doug
>
> If that's ALL you're looking for then that's ALL you'll be looking for forever and ever.
Not necessarily. But it is a possibility: I would cite as evidence for that possibility the fuss a number of people made about the Greens running a candidate against Wellstone in Minnesota. Anyone who thinks the Greens should only run against "bad" DPs is, at least potentially, tied to the DP for ever.
If one is really committed to a third 'force' of some kind, opposition to the DP must be fundamental to one's politics, unless (as was the case in Germany in 1932) an irrevocable change in fundamental strucure threatens. (That I believe was the logic of the Declaration of Independence.) I see no such threat of irrevocable change in Bush, as detestable as he is. He is worse than almost any DP candidate, but he is NOT a threat to overthrow the structure as it exists. Hence ABD represents at least a _temporary_ retreat from anti-capitalist _or_ mass reform politics. Such a retreat _can_ be a temporary error _or_ a fundamental shift in politics. It is not predictable which.
Carrol