Okay-- you are off my list of useful people to talk to. I always wonder why people who talk this way expect to even try to convince someone else of anything.
Contrariwise, Chuck O and I will slam each other's political views against the wall, but we never piss on each other personally.
But I see a disproportionate amount of this kind of personal, as opposed to political, attack coming from the narrow third party wing. I used to work closely with a lot of third party folks, including people I respect like Peter Camejo for example, but folks like R. are why I've just given up on the whole thing. The whole third party faction just attracts so many truly nasty people who piss on other peoples activism that I decided whatever the theoretical merits of third party strategy, as a practical matter in the US, it was useless because of the people it had attracted under its umbrella.
Nathan
----- Original Message ----- From: "Nathan Newman" <nathanne at nathannewman.org> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 12:07 PM Subject: Re: Nader Goes Buchananite (Re: [lbo-talk] Vote Nader/Camejo 2004!
----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
Nathan Newman wrote:
>-Expanded health care? What the fuck happened to universal health care?
>
>It got defeated.
-C'mon, Nathan. Defend Kerry all you like, but show some fidelity to -the facts. Clinton's health care proposal was a doomed disaster. -So instead, Clinton proposes some impossibly complicated scheme with -heavy private sector involvement and almost no political support. -That got defeated, not a real universal health insurance program.
I was in California in 1994 the same year Clinton's plan was defeated in Congress. Activists put single-payer health care on the California ballot (I helped set up a web site for them and my partner of the time was a statewide administrative director). It was CRUSHED at the polls, I think it got something like 35% of the vote.
Clinton's plan was a mess too, but you had the Clintonistas and the single payer absolutists refusing to deal. Frankly, the liberal Republican proposals on the table at the time, which could have been passed easily, look really good in retrospect. But no one was willing to settle for half a loaf, and fight another day for more.
What I care about is moving the ball down the field. I don't care how far it will move today; I care if we are moving it in the right direction and strengthening the mass movements that can move it farther tomorrow.
The equation of immediacy of victory with radicalism in some quarters drives me nuts. To demand everything and get nothing is not radical, it's a betrayal of those with immediate needs. Radicalism is getting as much as you can today, then planning the next battle.
Clinton screwed up in 1994, but so did the Left. They left a whole range of partial health care plans on the table that could have been passed, and instead held out for everything, rather than collaborate on a compromise. It was a suicidal, stupid mistake. I blame Clinton, but I also blame many single-payer advocates as well. They made sure that the votes were so divided among different proposals that no majority could emerge for any compromise plan.
Nathan Newman
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