Dwayne Monroe <dwayne.monroe at gmail.com> wrote:
"Why do we think the word (movement) applies to the corona circling the Obama campaign?"
"Movement" is a vague term, with many meanings. The "anti-war" movement is a broad cultural one, without much organizational base. Broad cultural movements can last, until they find their organizational base, (though the current, or recent, "anti-war" movement doesnt prove that.) "Civil rights" is another such broad cultural movement, in its fortieth year or so, which periodically resurfaces with a new organizational base. Obama is clearly drawaing on that movement.
Movement also refers to anything with a strong organizational base, or even simply something that stays in the news for awhile, as in the various "grassroots" movements, which bloom and die. Dean and Ron Paul are examples. These movements are temporary, faddish, ideologically weak, but they do produce organizations, local leaders, volunteers and a kind of mythic experience for the participants. From what I've heard, Obama has put together that kind of movement.
Each case has to be analyzed independently, but I believe the notion of misleadership has congealed into such a hardened dogma on the small socialist left that it has now become commonplace for many to blame the leaders even BEFORE the movements have been defeated, in anticipation of the inevitable "betrayal". That's how I understand the distance of yourself and others from the Obama campaign.
[...]
Glen Ford, Adolph Reed and others insist that there is no "movement" in the way lefties usually mean, only people voting for, and affixing their hopes to a "good man" who promises "change". I'm sure there are people who'd argue that Sen. Clinton's supporters are part of a movement too. But none of us are buying that. Why do we think the word applies to the corona circling the Obama campaign?
Marvin wrote:
Obama is a black man around whom a rank-and-file insurgency unexpectedly developed against the DLC's once "inevitable" candidate. His campaign seems more like a hybrid offspring of the electoral movements around Eugene McCarthy and Jesse Jackson than a clone of the ones run by Carter and Kerry.
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Taking into account Sen. Obama's supporters *within* the DLC and other well moneyed sectors (even prior to his first win) I think there's evidence that, at the highest level and well before the "rank and file" got involved, some key people changed their minds about who was "inevitable".
To H. Clinton's continuing dismay, the "insurgency" started within elite circles. Indeed, it was the funds initially provided by those Dolce wearing, Gulfstream G550 flying 'guerrillas' that made it possible for Sen. Obama to get his stylish message out to the rank and file. Millions liked what they saw and heard. That's nice. Mazal Tov to all who 'hope'. But let's not put the nozzle before the warhead: Sen. Obama's ascendancy was not a shock to the powerful.
Many of them are seeing exactly the outcome they hoped for.
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