--- 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.
[WS:] As usually, you are right on the money, Michael.
When I read your comments, I thought of Bertolucci's last flick "The Dreamers" http://worldfilm.about.com/cs/italianfilms/fr/thedreamers.htm whose protagonists - a bunch of 1968 leftist intellectuals gaze in each other navels, play sex and dream of a revolution while the streets of Paris are brimming with protest. When awaken from their stupor by a stone thrown by the protesters, they are incapable of any coherent course action - two of them engage in meaningless skirmishes with the cops while one withdraws altogether.
This is precisely the state of "progressive" politics in the US - stupor punctured by irrational euphoria and jumping on bandwagons. What is particulary sad about it is that the "surrender monkey" French are able to periodically mount a street action that shakes the powers that be and forces changes, wheareas the supposedly "individulalistic," government hating and self-interested Americans toe-in the government party line, swallow the crap dished to them by both parties without protest, settle for the fraction of what the French (or other Europeans) get, and limit their animus and warrior spirit to foreigner bashing.
US electoral politics is nothing but a silly beauty contest, like many others, from Oscars to American Idol, to Miss America. It is the media circus to excite the masses - but otherwise inconsequential. The only thing that will change it is people's willingness to get into the streets en masse - like the French do from time to time - and "make the economy scream" by bringing the entire country to a screeching halt. But I do not think it is likley to happen any time soon.
PS. The above contradicts what I used to write about party politics on this list in response to Chuck, Carrol & Co. I have to admit I was wrong then - party politcs in the US is a dead end.
Wojtek
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