> But I think we have really got
> to the point where there is a significantly lesser
> evil, where restoring something like a sort of
> Clintonian regime of the sorts that any of the serious
> Dems might attempt to do, or even doing not much of
> anything, would be vastly better than the downward
> spiral we are in.
Sorry that my crack about a "generic capitalist" was not very clear -- I'm a charter member of the "Anyone But Bush" club too.
What I think I meant by it was that a "generic Anyone But Bush" would be the ideal candidate -- no blemishes or downsides. And given that an anti-capitalist is not in the cards, at least this year, I guess we're restricted to capitalists.
At this point, Democrats seem to have a serious drawback, because their party has become the one Americans love to hate. It doesn't seem to have any clear positive image -- no one can say what it is really in favor of, this far on from the great days of FDR and HST -- and its vaunted union-powered muscle seems to be seriously atrophied (at least if these Iowa results can be trusted). But all attempts to organize another mass left party have gotten nowhere, mainly because this rotting hulk of a donkey is standing in the way.
On Wednesday, January 21, 2004, at 01:00 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
> I mean honestly -- were Dean to become the candidate, do you think this
> trope that "he's fast and loose with the facts" could possibly endure
> when
> he's compared to Bush? Or that he has low support among blacks?
He has a lot of other problems as a candidate -- chiefly his abrasive, "too hot for TV" personality, which I don't think he can do much to alter at this point. I guess Vermont voters didn't mind his style, but I don't think it will play on the national stage. Something about Gore seemed to rub a lot of voters the wrong way too, though I personally didn't mind his "woodenness." OTOH, Clinton's persona did get on my nerves, but most people seemed to think he was utterly charming even after his Oval Office extracurricular activities came to light.
To win, a Democratic candidate apparently has to have a super TV-genic image, especially to beat W's "commander-in-chief" image. The more I think about it, Kucinich's nod to Edwards makes some sense. If he can be trusted to keep up this populist line he's been taking, he might not be a bad bet, since he has the smoothest TV campaigning style of any of them. And of course, he has a Southern accent -- a very big asset for a President these days. His problems as a candidate are of course his relative inexperience and his having been a trial lawyer, which the corporate media has been doing their best to turn into a synonym for "tool of Satan."
Of course, from the left point of view, all of these "centrist" Democrats are very nervous-making -- you can't trust them farther than you could throw them. But as Justin says, the times are such that we have to put on a happy grin and recite the mantra: "Anybody But Bush."
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax