I does seem strange to me that in a country with a far-right party, a center party, and a left unable to break 5% by any measurement, that so many radicals cheer the far right on in the electoral realm. As if the millions in the base of the Dems are all just marxists waiting to be born in the ashes of the Dems. Its not that I don't see the Dem elite as pigs who deserve to be bacon. But can anyone really think the miniscule rad left of today could step up were the dems to collapse and the republicans to enjoy permanent majority status, abolishing the public sector, unions, social security, public school, existing gay and people of color civil rights, choice, not to mention whatever psychotic horrors around the world? We are not there yet, people. It is a fact.
On Bloomberg- when I've talked with people from nyc about him, I find they tend to overstate vastly the degree of potential support he could get. Maybe its the whole 'no world west of the hudson' or whatever the phrase is. I mean, his whole shtick pretty much doesn't exist outside nyc I don't think. Schwartzenneger is much more able to move such politics to a national stage, but I guess he can't be prez, yet at least. I don't think anyone outside NYC who doesn't read teh NYTimes has ever heard of him really. Then again a billion dollars buys a lot of ads.
Bloomberg, Booker, Nutter... are we seeing an era of liberal technocrats who do not come from the traditional Dem system arise in the urban northeast to inherit the sunnier fortunes of today's nyc, newark (err), philly? Hell the whole Obama thing is kinda like that...
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> For what? Just what are the Dems blocking? The revolutionary urge of
> the masses? When they fall, this frustrated and hitherto unexpressed
> revolutionary urge will spontaneously organize itself into a party
> and program? If there were all this bottled-up lust for
> transformative politics, why couldn't Ralph break 5%?
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> Doug
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