Don't be so modest, ravi. And you should include Louis Proyect and Doug Henwood. Louis' blog almost single-handedly unhinged Obama's campaign.
Look, I'm not talking about the *causes* of Obama's likely defeat. I'm saying that those who've opposed him from left and right are likely to prevail, not because they were effective. They just may be lucky and what they wanted may wind up happening. Or because Obama, who is the leader of his own campaign, botched it with his own personal decisions. It may be because of an array of factors that in the bigger scheme of things amounts to randomness or to History a la Hegel (or a la Carrol). So, no, I'm not saying it was because of you.
I have no doubt that the outcome of the November election will have huge consequences for the world, even if I cannot establish an obvious counter-factual. This is pretty serious. I don't buy that political theology that says that humans can only learn and change through pain and suffering. I don't think that what is worst is best.
And, for those who never took a serious course in probability and statistics, when I say that it's *likely* that Obama will lose, I'm not saying that he *will* lose. I make a sharp distinction between expectations, which depend on information we know *now*, and what actually ends up happening *then*. If the information set changes, our expectations should change as well. And the information set changes because *we*, people, are not chopped liver. The fact that I bother to send these posts to the lists suggests that I'm still interested in persuading Louis Proyect to stop the imposture, out himself as the cruise-missile Nancy-Pelossi type of liberal he's always been, suspend his Netflix subscription for a few weeks, and canvass and phone for Obama in the suburbs of Cleveland.
Change. Hope. Get it?
Doyle,
> If Obama loses then the reformist era is not strong enough yet to
> affect things. There must be strong enough support for change to make
> it happen.
Except that eras, reformist or not, do nothing. They do not "pump iron" nor "wage wars." It is humans, actual, living humans who do all that, who get stronger and fight. Eras are not separate persons that use humans as instruments to achieve their own aims. Eras are nothing but the activity of humans pursuing their goals.
(c) Julio Huato, 2008
> Over all we won't have a left until reformism emerges as a
> valid response to events. I see the evidence for ferment all around
> right now. Whatever the election results, the move left will continue.
I don't know under what scenario a coherent and combative left may emerge in the U.S. We can only go by what we've observed, historically. (There are unknown unknowns.) Historically, the existing U.S. left is largely the product of the 1960s, i.e. of the postwar economic boom, the baby boom/generational-cultural shift, Vietnam war, etc. It was an international phenomenon (because WW2 and the U.S.-led aftermath affected much of the world), with the coastal urban areas of the U.S. as two of its epicenters. The political energy generated by the 1960s was huge. We need that and more.
Can the boom of the 1990s, 9/11, and the Iraq/Afghanistan debacles (yes, in spite of the supposedly successful surge) generate even a portion of that political energy to propel the formation of a new left? I don't see why not. But I accept that the *main* initiative will have to come from the *younger* generation. It has to be about them -- of them, by them, and for them. It'll be *their* fight against a future that, as we handed to them, looks too gloomy, narrow, and miserable for them to accept. It'll be that or nothing. So, I take this humbly. The older farts may help a little bit by transferring some helpful experience from bygone times, but -- let's be clear -- that all amounts to very marginal help. Still, we need to keep trying to do even that little. Because, what else is there?
Maybe I'm a bit too bitter now, but I wonder if the old farts are just too freaking self-satisfied and cynical to even bother. But that's okay. If we cannot lead, we can still follow, or get out of the way.