Antiwar movements may be a special case because Democrats (however they are predisposed, and there are plenty of liberal hawks) are scared of seeming chicken on "national defense." Moreover, the candidates and the officials are less likely to admit that they caved in to popular pressure on foreign policy, which is seen by the elites as an elite sphere insulated from democratic process.
Retropsectively it is clear that the antiwar movement forced Johnson not to run and Humphrey's support of the war hurt him with core Democratic constitutencies -- also that Nixon was grudgingly frightened by and unacknowledgedly affected by the movement. Some more recent research suggests that the international peace movement may have helped force Reagan and Gorbachev to stop deployment of medium range missiles in Europe and end end the Cold War, although the evidence of this is more ambiguous. -- Gorby wanted to end it start with and it appears that after he made pals with Gorby, so did Reagan, although on his terms (which he did).
I giess the lessons to be drawn are contextual -- domestic movements have more leverage with more or less sympathetic candidates and officials, on balance than foreign policy ones; candidates and officials will not do what their constitutents want unless forced to; it is probbaly easier on balance to get concrete iniatives by more broadly sympathetic officials. This is all pretty much common sense.
Now, if we are talking about fundamental, transformative reform, that requires a national crisis (like the Great Depression), and if we are talking about more radical changes, such as expropriation of expropriators, that is not come to come about by movements pressutring sympathetic major party candidates. No one has the slightest idea of how it is going to come about (some people think they do, but they are wrong).
I am not sure where all this leaves us. If all one cares about is the most radical transpormation, one will disavow the normal dialectic of movements and electoral politics. If one does not disavow that dialectic, one has to recognize its limitations, which are probably most severe in the foreign policy area.
To make things concrete with respect to Iraq: despite widespread disgust with the war and distrust of the Bush regime, the antiwar movement has fizzled. The opposition that is effective, to the extent that any is, is coming through elite sources like Murtha, or Lamont's apparently doomed challenge to Lieberman. It is a good bet that the Democrats are not going to end the war anytime soon even if they win Congress and/or the White House. It's remotely possible than the Iraqi "government" might give some administration a graceful basis for exit by asking us to leave. Otherwise the thing is likely to end like Vietnam -- Iraqi-azation of the conflict, scaling down US forces, and finally the helicopters lifting off the embassy roof when the Islamists storm the compound. A cheerful thought.
jks
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/6/06, Marvin Gandall
> <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> > > This sounds like you are saying that the antiwar
> movement's fortunes rise
> > > and fall with the fortunes of candidates for
> elected office. It's this
> > > that I disagree with.
> >
> > Movements in general advance when they score
> victories and fall back after
> > defeats, both inside and outside of the electoral
> arena. In the context of
> > US politics, a DP victory is interpreted as a
> victory for the antiwar
> > movement by its supporters as well as its
> opponents; a Bush victory as a
> > defeat. In this sense, the morale of the antiwar
> movement - and therefore
> > its "fortunes" - are indirectly tied to the
> outcome of primary and electoral
> > contests which are widely seen as referenda on the
> war.
>
> Here, nuances matter. There is a difference between
> the ideas and
> feelings of people who said Anybody But Bush and
> supported Kerry,
> regardless of his stand on the war, on one hand and
> those of people
> who said, Lieberman is for the war, so we'll run our
> own anti-war
> candidate, and have campaigned for Lamont. The
> former ideas and
> feelings didn't offer any opening for consideration
> of the kind of
> tactic I suggested, but the latter presents an
> opening, not a
> practical opening yet, but an opening for
> discussion.
>
> I'm not committed to the tactic I floated myself
> either, but it at
> least serves as a point of departure for discussion,
> and discussion is
> what we should have when the level of activities is
> low, like now.
>
>
> On 10/6/06, Eric <rayrena at realtime.net> wrote:
> > I think only unobtainable levels of opposition to
> the war
> > would make it end.
>
> I agree with you, but, in the meantime, we can still
> undertake
> capacity-building projects, of which electoral
> campaigns are but one
> sort, or, even more important, we can at least begin
> to have serious
> discussion about our ends and means, what we aim for
> and what we can
> do with what we have to move in that direction.
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
> ___________________________________
>
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