>i think it's the way we fetishize voting and elections in this country,
>isn't it? that voting is actually doing something, and then nothing else is
>required? it will be interesting to see if they can hold it together. it
>would pretty genuinely change american politics if they could, don't you
>think? a party as an actual organizing machine (deleuze warning?) instead of
>just an electing machine. and instead of organizing falling to fractious
>NGOs.
>
>j
i'm going by what I see at work, the people of color supporting Obama. 20-somethings, professional-managerial, some clerical and sales. Judging by their attitudes toward the poor and by their tendency toward social conservativism, I'm not at all inclined to see this as a movement I could want to see held together. Opposition to the war is only significant among half of them. What ties them all together is antipathy to anything smacking of "partisanship". Being "political" is considered so Jesse Jackson. Like I said: I think it's a social class thing. an organizing machine for people who think that gay marriage is wrong? an organizing machine for people who think that the problem in black America is the poverty caused by absent fathers? an organizing machine for people who cheer whenever Obama says, "government can't solve our problems"? an organizing machine for people opposed to unilateral bombing who, instead, want an upstanding country that creates coalitions of nations to bomb them instead?
this is what you get when you go to the web site, btw. You are redirected to a request for money to support the DNC: https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/dnc08splashnd
so, thanks. but no thanks.
I would like it to be different. I would like to be proven wrong, that my social milieu is not representative.
When Obama was confronted by Uhuru in St. Pete, asking, "What about poor black people Obama? What about Africans Obama?" he responded by listing some things he'd done: fight again predatory lending, something about racial profiling.
You don't have to like me, he said. We don't have to agree. In fact, if you don't agree with me, why don't you run for office yourself? he asked. For no drama Obama, that was an intemperate outburst in so far as he was using logical fallacy to trounce a critic.
The audience cheered about that. One woman turned around and looked at the guy and said, "Yeah, why don't you run for office?" with a vengeful little smirk that said, "There, take that, punk."
Thanks. But no thanks.
Like Gulick, I'm reminded of 1992 when what proliferated was a mass of wonk think tanks, smart people sitting around trying to influence policy with position papers and debates.
ho. hum.
It was their hay day, that time. They were flush with the anticipation that they could turn around the Reagan revolution. Clinton flushed that for them. Now they want to get it back, to try one more time.
The people in this movement who could orchestrate a massive ramping up of the organizational effort to sustain that enterprises, grass roots style, aren't likely to do this. They want wonk; they don't want messy writhing humanity to have to manage. They'll pull them into volunteering and interning for their think tanks, sure. But they aren't going to want to actually, you know, engage the unwashed because who wants to talk to people who have to be engaged at a much more basic level. They are wonks: they want a grad seminar not to actually listen to people. Obama speaks constantly of how he needs them but he needs them to do his bidding. He assumes a republican clientele that needs to be persuaded. Magically, he assumes a democratic clientele that doesn't. He's not interested in what they want, politically. He is interested in mobilizing people who already agree with him, not in working with people who do not, not in perhaps changing his positions in response to concerted agitation.
Ask yourself: have you ever once heard him frame things as him being open to listening to "the people"? No, he simply assumes his based is already in line. When he anticipates disagreement, he doesn't anticipate that he might be open to criticism and change his mind due to grassroots agitation. No, when he anticipates disagreements, he does so in order to set the stage: *I* am going to do things with which you won't agree. *You* are probably not going to like it.
Don't like it? Run for office yourself.