We might find it probable, but there is some argument on the other side, viz., a Gore administration would have been a continuation of the incumbent administration, a Potemkin village of liberalism that disproportionately injured the working class, the poor and blacks by NAFTA, welfare reform and crime legislation. On the Nixon-goes-to-China model, it got through dismantlings of the New Deal that fulfilled the dreams of the previous Republican administrations. Why would a Gore term be different?
Having missed the Founding Plenum of the People's Front Against Bush, I groaned and marveled to find myself petit-bourgeois. (I'd always liked Gore Vidal's "Thank God I wasn't born middle-class.") I agree with Chomsky, that "Activist movements, if at all serious, pay virtually no attention to which faction of the business party is in office, but continue with their daily work, from which elections are a diversion..."
But, renouncing left-adventurism, I also agree with Chomsky when he says the following:
"Kerry is sometimes described as Bush-lite, which is not inaccurate, and in general the political spectrum is pretty narrow in the United States, and elections are mostly bought, as the population knows.
"But despite the limited differences both domestically and internationally, there are differences. And in this system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes.
"My feeling is pretty much the way it was in the year 2000. I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much, and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function -- that's important, and fine, and I support it.
"However, when it comes to the choice between the two factions of the business party, it does sometimes, in this case as in 2000, make a difference. A fraction.
"That's not only true for international affairs, it's maybe even more dramatically true domestically. The people around Bush are very deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century. The prospect of a government which serves popular interests is being dismantled here. It's an administration that works, that is devoted, to a narrow sector of wealth and power, no matter what the cost to the general population. And that could be extremely dangerous in the not very long run."
So I very much want the present administration to be tossed out. Of course, here in Illinois, a "safe" Democratic state, I'm free to vote for whoever appeals to me as president -- Nader, Cobb, or Chomsky on a write-in -- for if Kerry doesn't take Illinois comfortably, he hasn't a chance. --CGE
On Wed, 5 May 2004, John Lacny, having discovered objective treachery in my doubts and hesitations (and probably a witch-mark on my backside), writes:
> C. G. Estabrook, demonstrating willful intent to ignore the mountain
> of evidence in front of everyone's face, writes:
>
> > I think the assertion, taken for granted here,
> > that "the election of Bush would be worse for
> > working-class, poor people and blacks" than
> > that of Gore, is difficult to prove, at best.
>
> For months now people on this list have talked about the Bush tax
> cuts; the overtime regulations; the plan to turn Medicaid into a block
> grant program next term if Bush wins or steals this election; court
> appointments; a renewed drive to privatize Social Security; the fact
> that Bush "national security" doctrine straightforwardly entertains
> the notion of using nuclear weapons in a way that the Democrats simply
> do not; union organizing rights and the Bush regime's attempt to
> destroy unions in the public sector and systematically undermine them
> everywhere else; affirmative action; a thousand different regulatory
> changes for the benefit of polluters, credit-card loan-sharks,
> slumlords, and banks that Bush has put in place that the Democrats
> would not have enacted. And more.
>
> We have heard nothing -- absolutely nothing -- from the
> left-adventurist crowd about how betraying the People's Front Against
> Bush is a worthwhile political strategy. Indeed, they have
> consistently refused to address any concrete arguments and instead
> consistently fall back on what the old-fashioned -- like myself -- can
> only describe as childish, self-indulgent petit-bourgeois
> phrasemongering about "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," George
> Wallace-inspired metaphors about "a dime's worth of difference," and
> the like. Then they wonder why some of us don't take them seriously,
> or even point out that their position is objectively treacherous. They
> produce nothing but a constant stream of fact-free idiocy, and then
> complain about "name-calling." What a joke.