> How much door-to-door work have you
> done John?
I'm not sure to which John Carrol is referring, since there were two of us in this exchange; however, the answer for my part is "a fair amount."
The reason I asked Yoshie is because, in my experience -- particularly in a recent campaign where I volunteered for a local candidate who defeated both the Democratic committee and the Labor Council -- the process is very time-consuming and slow. And Yoshie had suggested that Greens were up for this sort of thing, when in my experience Greens (I know a few, and have dealt with more than a few) are among the people I would least expect to have the patience or discipine for it. That's why real-life practice counts, and why it's a legitimate question.
The campaign I allude to above was run in a pretty conventional manner, appealing to "supervoters" especially, competing with other candidates for the usual universe of voters, on the theory that those are the only people who turn out in a local election anyway. In the end it was (1) money, (2) the dedication of volunteers and (3) the fact that the campaign highlighted some broad progressive issues (healthcare in particular) that carried the day, pretty much in that order. But it was hard enough, and the knock-down-drag-out process of registering new voters, mobilizing them around issues and a program, and turning them out on election day -- which I agree has to be done -- is even harder. But in the discussions about the upcoming November showdown with Bush, I have seen little in the way of concrete discussion of the efforts afoot to do just that, stuff like the 527s. Certainly nothing on this front has been forthcoming from the Cox/Furuhashi/Halle/et. al. side of the debate, such as it is. (I won't include Munson here, since he's even less worth taking seriously.)
Carrol elsewhere writes:
> In 1988, after all local activity of
> any kind had ceased here, we (Jan &
> I) came very near to establishing an
> enduring black/white progressive core
> by engaging in the Jackson campaign.
> If somehow that campaign had been
> able to endure after the election
> (but the Democratic National
> Committee, with the willing aid of
> Jackson himself made sure that didn't
> happen)
Which is the closest he's come to saying anything concrete. In one of my first comments on this topic I made reference to the Rainbow, but Carrol made no comments, so I'd actually be interested in seeing him elaborate on this theme, if he can only refrain from categorical assertion that whatever he says necessarily comes from God and instead talk about real life -- which I suppose is too much of an "if" to expect much, though hope springs eternal in the human breast. (That's Pope, Carrol -- if I were one of your undergraduates, how would you grade me?)
My question to Carrol, then, is HOW, concretely, did the DNC and Jackson prevent the growth of local black/white progressive coalitions? A more likely explanation would be the overwhelming pressures of circumstance, the absence of mass movements, and so on -- with the mistakes and failings of local organizers playing a role, I suppose, but a relatively smaller one -- were responsible for the Rainbow's failure to grow and thrive. If the DNC failed to capitalize on the mobilization that Jackson inspired, and was in fact even afraid of it, why should that have been surprising? What would be so magical about a "third-party" effort that would have avoided the problems to which hybrid social movements/electoral campaigns like the Rainbow are necessarily prone? I have yet to get a clear answer to this question.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the contrast between the Rainbow and the Christian Coalition -- which emerged out of Pat Robertson's campaign for the presidency the same year -- could not be more clear. Obviously there are differences because the right mobilizes in different ways and around different issues, but it's still true that the Christian Coalition has a predominantly non-elite constituency; even though it's heavily suburban and middle-class, it prioritizes issues that are out-of-sync with the priorities of the country-clubbers who actually run the Republican Party. And while its rank-and-file is often dissatisfied, it has an impact on policy, the party hierarchy takes it seriously (or at least did until the Christian Right began to decline in influence a few years ago, I would say around the time of the Clinton impeachment), they still basically run a lot of the local party organizations, they still do all sorts of unbelievably ridiculous shit that embarrasses US elites in the face of the world, such as banning the teaching of basic biology in Kansas public schools, etc. What's so special about the Democratic Party that would have prevented the Rainbow from doing the same kind of thing, except in a progressive direction, had enough Rainbow activists been so inclined?
And all of this is aside from the necessary defensive work that we have to do in this country because the left is so weak. (Or because the left doesn't exist at all, to use Carrol's preferred semantic formulation.) But I don't see why we can't do something like the following: run or support progressive candidates where possible, and at least work to defeat reaction in the cases where there is no progressive candidate with a chance to win. In cases where it's doable or necessary, run independents or "third-party" candidates; in most other cases, the progressive candidates will run as Democrats, and in some cases even as Republicans. All throughout we'd be building an independent left electoral presence adapted to the vagaries of the US electoral process. Wojtek Sokolowski, somewhere in a post laden with his trademark misanthropy, actually hit on this approach, which -- perhaps unbeknownst to him -- has a successful left precedent in this country in the form of the Non-Partisan League.
Michael Pugliese, near the end of one of his otherwise-unintelligible posts, also hit on a notion I like: bring back Dimitrov!
- - - - - John Lacny
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!