On Feb 7, 2008 10:13 AM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> BTW, I want to mention one fundamental basis of the otherwise inexplicable
> enthusiasm that surrounds Obama that I don't think has been mentioned yet
> even though it seems obvious and I think everyone knows about it: the deep
> emotional antagonism that exists between Democratic primary voters and the
> party apparatus they feel continually betrays them.
>
> It's an antagonism that is almost as empty as it is strongly felt.
>
> Empty because it never amounts to anything. It's always the same drama
> with
> the same ending: the upstart candidate enthuses the crowd, then either
> dies out
> in the early running, and the primary voters who were calling for the head
> of
> the mainstream candidate comes back and obey the party elders because
> they've
> got no other choice. It's like a quadrennial adolescent rebellion.
>
> Empty because there's no reason to expect anything else. As Adolph Reed
> has put so well so many times, you don't change the political course of
> the nation by voting for president. The whole idea that the reason we're
> in this position because the party apparatus is betraying the left is an
> attempt to blame them for our weakness and failings and magical thinking.
> The only way the establishment will ever budge is through the threat of
> mobilized popular force. And that happens outside presidential primaries.
>
> And empty because the candidates so embraced are never much different than
> the one chosen by the party machine. Bill Bradley? Howard Dean? They
> both had just as little in their policies to justify the progressive
> enthusiasm projected upon them as Obama does now. In fact, they actually
> both resemble Obama in key respects. Howard Dean was as much an anti-war
> candidate as Obama is. And Bill Bradley was as much a domestic
> progressive as Obama is.
>
> But precisely because these candidates always die out, this emotional
> desire to rebel, to have the primary mean something, this desire to cause
> something with their vote, never gets a satisfying expression.
>
> And the difference with Obama is that he's not dying out. So this huge
> desire that's been frustrated for decades is on the verge of finally being
> satisfied in the hugest of ways (because you can't conceive of a more
> party- establishment candidate than Clinton).
>
> You can see how that would make people flush up and swell until they were
> just about to burst.
>
> Then maybe afterwards they'll be sad,(1) just like they would in an
> alternative universe where Dean or Bradley won. Because of course in the
> harsh light of the morning after, it's pretty obvious that Dean wouldn't
> have been any more progressive than Kerry, or Bradley than Gore.
>
> But while it would have zero effect on policy (or least zero predictable
> effect), the result of the "progressive" candidate winning in any of those
> races might well be a stronger fall campaign and a more solidified party.
>
> The former because if the progressive wing feels they've won for the first
> time in history, they'll be more enthusiastic in ringing doorbells. And
> because the establishment side knows they haven't lost, they'll pipe in
> just as much money.
>
> The latter because maybe like with Reagan or Kennedy the illusion will
> persist. In which case, the wing and the mainstream of the Dem party will
> be for once as united in supporting "their" government as the mainstream
> and the wings of the Republican party were under Reagan.
>
> FWIW, FBOW.
>
> Michael
>
> (1) That's a Latin joke for Shagcopula.
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