--- On Tue, 9/2/08, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> I know Adolph pretty well - in fact I just spent 45 minutes
> with him
> on the phone, and I've read a lot of his work - and you
> couldn't be
> more wrong. Adolph believes in organizing large numbers of
> people
> around an actual political agenda. He's spent years
> trying to build
> the Labor Party. There's nothing glamorous or
> charismatic about it -
> it's all about knocking on doors, talking to people,
> signing them up,
> building institutions. Where do you get this stuff from?
>
[WS:] Obviously, I do not know Ralph Reed personally, so my mistake if I misrepresented his personal views. Sorry.
But my main point is that if people think that mobilizing large numbers of people for a radical or trully progressive cause, by going door to door or otherwise, is possible in the US - I wish I had the same stuff they've been smoking or ingesting. This country did not even get "wussy" social-democracy when the time was right and ripe for a change (i.e. during the Great Depression, or even Vietnam War), so what makes anyone think that implementing some form of radical policy is even remotely possible today, when neoliberalism is the king?
Bush-syle gangster capitalism may experience some hiccups, but free market is the dogma today among both elites and the masses in the US, and it is not going to change any time soon, perhaps even in our life time. That is the sad reality. The best we can hope for is people like Obama - who have enough skill and will to negotiate a slighly better deal for people who have been getting the short end of the stick since the Reagan "revolution."
This whole left-wing criticim of Obama is like a patient with a terminal cancer cursing his doctors that they offer him only palliative treatment instead of curing him. There is no cure for cancenr, and there is no chance for radical policy in the US. Get real, people, and show some gratitude to those who try to soothe your pain a bit.
Wojtek