Carrol's remark becomes relevant here: "Who this 'us'? No Us I belong to got beat" ("Looking for a Way Out," <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20041122/027237.html>). Between organizers on the right and the Republican Party, there exists a "we," but the Democratic Party and organizers on the left cannot make a "we."
Most organizers on the left -- including those who ended up voting for John Kerry -- positively hated Kerry's and the Democratic Party's program on big-ticket issues like war and health care, so they didn't volunteer their knowledge of local communities to the Democratic Party's and allied 527's campaign managers -- nor did they in 2000, and they will not in 2008 either.
In contrast, I have yet to meet a AnybodyButKerry voter in person -- those who positively hated George W. Bush's and the Republican Party's program but voted for Bush anyway because they hated Kerry's and the Democratic Party's program even more -- though there must be at least some. Nationwide, only 7.5% of those who voted said that they voted for Bush in order to vote "against his opponent," whereas 17.5% of those who voted said they voted for Kerry to vote "against his opponent" ("U.S. President/National/Exit Poll," <http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html>). Organizers on the right were even less ambivalent about Bush than Bush voters in general, so they could readily offer all they had to the Republican Party's campaign managers.
More importantly, the Republican Party elite can easily court and absorb organizers on the right. What organizers on the right want -- restrictions on abortion, opposition to gay marriage -- doesn't cost the Republican Party donors any money, so Republicans in the White House, Congress, state legislatures, etc. can actually deliver a good deal of it -- of course, piece by piece, so as not to kill the gooses that lay the electoral golden eggs.
Not so with the Democratic Party and organizers on the left. What organizers on the left want -- an end to foreign wars, no foreign military aid to regimes that violate human rights, single-payer universal health care, equal funding for quality public education, defense of workers' rights to organize, strong protection of natural environments, etc. -- at least hurt the interests of one or more important sectors of the ruling class in the short term and may even threaten the ruling class's collective class power and capitalism as a mode of production in the long term. The Democratic Party not only cannot deliver it, but, when in power, it makes its own attack on it (especially since the mid-1970s). The Democratic Party, therefore, cannot even court organizers on the left as vigorously as the Republican party does organizers on the right. On the contrary, the Democratic Party wants to keep organizers on the left at arm's length.
>Also let's not forget: whatever its ideological faults, the old
>professional Dem model not only worked fine in the cities, it worked
>more than fine; it set records for turnout and/or margin in the
>three areas that have always previously been considered by both
>sides the keys to winning (Cuyahoga County, Franklin County, and
>Greater Cincinnati).
Even there, though the Democratic Party's model of professional organizing gained the party an expanded data base, it didn't leave any lasting human foundation on which it can build later. Parachuting professional organizers and white college youths they hire into inner cities can't do that.
>The problem is simply that the cities cannot outweigh the non-cities
>anymore. There's simply too much population out there.
<snip>
>A friend who is a researcher from SEIU who parachutted into exurban
>Wisconsin for the last two months of the campaign immediately
>realized that he was operating at a disadvantage to Republicans
>because they were using local folks. If this method worked as well
>for the Dems as it did for the Repugs -- on the union people they
>weren't reaching and the Repugs were ignoring -- it could well have
>supplied the missing margin in Ohio.
The Democratic Party doesn't know how to reach working-class suburbs,
for sure. Progressive union organizers and rank-and-file activists
for union democracy talk about the importance of social-movement
unionism, but it has yet to become the standard practice -- certainly
not in Ohio. If labor activists managed to turn unions away from
business unionism, get union members regularly engaged in politics
inside and outside the unions, and put movement back into "the labor
movement," however, unionists probably would not vote for Democrats.
:->
>The question is whether a pyramid model would work for the Dems or
>whether they would have a deep-seated natural aversion to it. I
>think most people who are movement organizers probably would have
>such an aversion. It's almost the antithesis of the left-liberal
>movement model of healthy participation.
The Democratic Party doesn't inspire faith in its mission. Faith in a political mission -- especially faith in a political mission that you believe is of world-historic importance, at one with waves of political upsurges worldwide -- is what it takes to make you feel what you are doing (even if what you are doing may look like functioning as a cog in a political machine, if seen from the outside by a disinterested observer) is meaningful.
Abolitionism was that sort of faith. The other day, I was reading an essay on the revolution of 1848 in Europe written by Frederick Douglass. In it, he speaks of living in "times that have no parallel in the history of the world. The grand commotion is universal and all-pervading. Kingdoms, realms, empires, and republics, roll to and fro like ships upon a stormy sea. The long pent up energies of human rights and sympathies, are at last let loose upon the world. The grand conflict of the angel Liberty with the monster Slavery, has at last come. The globe shakes with the contest. -- I thank God that I am permitted, with you, to live in these days, and to participate humbly in this struggle" ("The Revolution of 1848," _Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writing_, ed. Philip S. Foner, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999, p. 105). Douglass felt that his people's struggle against slavery was synchronized with the European proletariat's struggle for democracy, saluting the French republican provisional government's emancipation of slaves in French colonies.
The Communist Party used to inspire such faith, too. Besides, the Communist Party once had an all-encompassing social milieu (from unions to summer camps, from study groups to dance parties) in which party activists and their families lived every day.
>But if Bai's profile is accurate, it's remarkably how *little* the
>republican pyramidal volunteers were jazzed up about their candidate
>or his positions -- and how exclusively it seemed they were in it
>for the pleasures of social networking or the promise of personal
>advancement:
Whatever level of enthusiasm they mustered, at the very least, they didn't dislike Bush's and the Republican Party's program, unlike most organizers on the left who detested Kerry's and the Democratic Party's. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>