As election day nears, the Left sinks deeper into its own hysterical morass of hooey. A choice one is the notion that the mass electoral support for Kerry represents some great forward-looking groundswell favorable to progressive politics. Dream on: this is a defensive move despairing in the face of having been given but Kerry for a choice. The odor of pure desperation hangs over Kerry support - admit it Doug! And even the desperation surge doesn't look all that impressive so far, or else Bush would have been written off some time ago.
Finally there is the grand promise of militant mass mobilizations against what will most likely be a warmongering Kerry Presidency, whose success will be measured by their "size" (criterion for succes that is a favorite obsession of the pro-Kerry Left, as a poor substitute for political substance and content, as M. Dawson reveals with his misplaced comment). Regardless of how slowly or quickly a mass response can be generated after a Kerry victory (and it is already established as FACT that it was profoundly demobilizing in the period prior to the election - is that not correct?), Yoshie rightfully poses an important question to all of you pro-Kerry "grand strategists" on the Left:
Won't your own mass mobilizations undermine and weaken a Kerry Presidency, helping to ensure a Republican return to the White House in 2008? Aren't you all really planning to "vote for the Republicans with your feet" the day after the election? Are you all even bothering to think that far ahead? Or thinking that "nothing could be worse than Bush" (another choice piece - they said that about Reagan, too), they really hope for a kindler and gentler Republican in 2008? (Hint: things can get worse than Bush, just as they got worse than Reagan).
I didn't think so, because you are all clueless. And if you are not, then you might be part of that left that will tell us to "keep quiet for President Kerry", to "give Kerry a chance", in short a continuation of the pre-election situation. That at least would make strategic sense and be consistent with the pre-election approach, so don't be surprised if it emerges.
But it certainly makes no sense to first vote Kerry into office only to immediately act to throw him out, asap. To where does that "lead" the masses? To continuing to despise the Left, which they do, admit it. And who could blame them, unless you are an anarchist/nihilist? And what could be more "nihil" than an invisible Left?
Which is perhaps a neat definition for the crackpot realist Left.
-Brad Mayer
Michael Dawson MDawson at pdx.edu, Fri Oct 29 15:04:25 PDT 2004:
>>"It is doubtful that it will be much larger than the Million Worker
>>March."
>>--
>>Yoshie
>
>Amazing. Yesterday, this was the defining mark of hope and
>revolution. Today, it's a yardstick of failure.
The main outfit mobilizing for the inauguration protest is International ANSWER <http://www.internationalanswer.org/>. While I have never taken the sort of sectarian attitude against ANSWER and the Workers World Party that some leftists have, I can't exactly generate the same enthusiasm for yet another march called by ANSWER as what is initiated and organized by ILWU Local 10. I think that such Black labor left organizers as Clarence Thomas, Trent Willis, Leo Robinson, etc. leading a movement against the occupations would make the movement much more politically promising than white professional revolutionaries like the Becker brothers leading it could.
>Are you 100 percent sure Kerry will continue the occupation? What
>if he's lying to get elected? What if he does appoint Biden to be a
>special ME envoy and Biden forces some sanity on Israel? Not
>likely, of course, but not impossible.
I'm not 100 percent sure -- I'm merely 99.99% sure. And I'd rather prepare post-election mobilization based on what's very much likely than what is only a theoretical possibility.
>And what's wrong with giving Kerry the LBJ treatment in 2008, if
>things aren't better?
You mean electing the Republican presidential candidate in 2008? -- Yoshie