> Yes, they could be all more organization-oriented in building
> working class movements. They need to take organization-
> building and institution-building a bit more seriously, but then
> they are not alone in that.
Much of what you say here rings true. You obviously read Kos a lot more closely than I do; I cited the Casey-vs.-Hafer example because it's been an especially irritating topic for me with people in the Dean/Kos/MoveOn orbit, though as you say, Kos himself deserves more credit for understanding what's at stake. But I've thought about this a bit, and I realize what I have found frustrating about their politics: to the extent that they organize, they organize around ideology and not around interests. They're getting all the militant liberals together, which -- as you say -- is a good thing right now, but like all liberals they're afraid of so-called "special interests." That means that they have a tendency to see organizations among the working class or among blacks or other oppressed sectors as being just as potentially problematic as corporate lobbyists and PACs. All "special interests" are potential roadblocks to their Jeffersonian-idealist conception of the free citizen making interest-free decisions about what's best for the public good. They want to be the ones fighting the "machine" or the entrenched interests, but never recognize how self-interest -- particularly class interest -- affects their own politics and structures their assumptions, so that they make decisions about what is politically important based on those assumptions, and they do so without self-criticism or self-interrogation.
I know that this is a simplification, even a caricature. But surely you've dealt with enough of these folks in real life to understand how they think.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories