[lbo-talk] Who Set People Up for Disappointment and Demoralization?

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Feb 26 07:10:46 PST 2005


Thomas Seay entheogens at yahoo.com, Fri Feb 25 22:10:27 PST 2005:
>--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>>if Kerry had won, people would have gone home, thinking that the
>>job was accomplished;
>
>That's pure conjecture. We dont know that would have happened.
>It's just as likely that people would have been energized by a Kerry
>victory. That also is pure conjecture, but that also was a
>possibility. We will never know.

A few of the John Kerry voters might have felt like Tariq Ali and Doug would have felt like in the event of Kerry victory, getting energized to oppose the Kerry administration enthusiastically. But, before the elections, I went to a fair number of pro-Kerry events -- sometimes for the purpose of dogging Kerry with a sign that said "Bring Them Home Now!", sometimes for the purpose of giving attendees flyers about the November 3rd demonstration (at the Federal Building in Columbus) on the theme of "Demand Peace & Justice, Whoever Gets Elected!" If a handful of my anti-war friends and I hadn't brought such things, all Kerry events in Columbus would have been totally devoid of any visible or verbal criticism of Kerry's position to continue the occupation of Iraq. Based on our observations and interactions with Kerry supporters, they -- especially politically active ones who show up at such events -- fell into the category of those who would have gone home, thinking that the job was accomplished, if he had gotten elected. Some of them, if they had gotten energized to continue their activism at all, would have joined professional liberal ideologues and begun defending Kerry's policy from oppositions from the left and the right.

You see, it generally takes far more groundwork to get people to oppose a Democratic Administration than a Republican Administration, but reluctant Kerry supporters like Ali and Doug, lacking in resources, were not in a position to lay such groundwork before election day. Besides, they were busier pummeling Nader and his supporters than Kerry or even George W. Bush. :-0

Why should Kerry supporters have immediately switched gears and gone on to opposing Kerry energetically as soon as he got elected? Did intellectuals and organizations supporting Kerry make concerted efforts to explain why it's absolutely necessarily to do so? Was anyone -- aside from such usual suspects as ANSWER, DC Anti-War Netwark, and the like -- organizing for Counter-Kerry-Inaugural or any other big anti-war demonstration before March 19, 2005? Would people have spontaneously risen up to oppose the Kerry Administration without anyone planning to organize opposition? No, and no, and no.

Those who think that people would have been energized by a Kerry victory to oppose the Iraq War or anything else before March 19 are just daydreaming.

There is no critical self reflection on the choice Doug and Ali themselves made in their post-election analysis -- they appear to believe that their choice was perfectly correct, not even stopping a moment to consider the possibility that their choice may have played a small role in setting people up for disappointment and demoralization, and that they simply concluded that Americans were or went more to the right than they thought just because Kerry didn't get elected.


>Are you suggesting that 4 percent of the vote to Ralph Nader would
>have boosted morale?

5% for Nader would have been very welcome, and more than that would have been fantastic.

But US leftists made lose-lose-lose choices, and that's what happened.

* Kerry lost with a far larger margin in 2004 than Gore did in 2000. * Nader was able to get on fewer ballots and received fewer votes in 2004 than in 2000. * The Green Party, choosing David Cobb, got its presidential candidate on fewer ballots in 2004 than in 2000, received minuscule votes of 119,862 (falling behind not only Nader but also the Libertarian Party [397,234 votes] and even the Constitution Party [143,609 votes]! -- cf. <http://www.gp.org/2004election/president2004.html>), and lost ballot status in 8 states (it had ballot status in 22 states and the District of Columbia before the 2004 elections -- it now has ballot status in only 14 states and D.C..-- cf. <http://www.ballot-access.org/2004/1212.html>).

Will US leftists be making a similar lose-lose-lose choice in 2008? Should they? Why??? -- 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/>



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