>I'm not sure that "self-defeating" is bad, because I'm not confident
>that a Kerry victory is the preferred outcome. I keep on wobbling
>("flip-flopping," you might say, if you were really cheeky) between
>the Henwood position of "Kerry victory creates a little room for
>progressive forces to go on the offensive" and the Kolko position of
>"Bush victory accelerates the decay of the predatory hegemon."
The question that leftist should be asking is why each POTUS is worse than the last one on big-ticket items (e.g., class polarization, US citizens who don't have health insurance, scales and frequencies of foreign wars and interventions, etc.) since the mid-1970s, rather than thinking of minor differences between the two ruling-class parties' candidates, and what we can do to reverse the trends. If the only thing that leftist do is to compare the two ruling-class candidates and choose the lesser of two evils, we will be not only unable to reverse the bad trends but rather contributing to their reinforcements.
Leftists should be building our own movements and organizations independent of the Democratic and Republican Parties, so that we will be prepared to fight on, whoever gets elected.
>The problem with the former is that I am highly skeptical that
>ABB'ers will possess the disposition to shed their supine
>pre-election mode
The rich and powerful Democrats are simply making use of the AnybodyButBush rhetoric. They will try to keep and exploit the mailing lists that they built through this election cycle and use it to defend the John Kerry administration from social movements and against any challenges from the left in future election cycles, recycling this cycle's rhetoric and tactics and inventing new ones. The question is how many of rank-and-file Democrats will break company with the Democratic Party elite and how soon they will do so. -- 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/>