> 1.) Acceptance of defeat (or, learning the real lessons of
> the campaign)
Let's take two issues. One, was it wrong for leftists to support Obama's election? Even with the 20-20 information we have now about how Obama has handled Afghanistan, the financial and economic mess, health care reform, etc., I fail to see how not supporting Obama's election could have been significantly better than its opposite. Do I need to go over what McCain represented, locally and internationally?
Two, have the leftists who supported Obama's election suffered a political defeat? At most, we can say that leftists who supported Obama's election are suffering from a frustration attack, because their best hopes haven't been realized yet and may not be realized any time soon (or at all under Obama). But that is not a defeat. In my book, defeat means that your forces have been decimated and demoralized, that your ability to fight has been impaired for some time to come. As weak and fragmented as it is, the left remains active and in fighting mode. It's definitely not politically weaker now than it was 5 or 10 years ago.
> What does this mean?
>
> It means that you take the problem's scope seriously instead
> of supposing that a "good man" sitting in a powerful office
> can architect the profound improvements we want to see (and
> doubtless need, to survive long term in a civilized form).
> I think that much of the enthusiasm for Obama from truly
> radical people (by which I mean, people who've long shown a
> willingness to follow the money and blood trails all the way
> down without pulling the usual liberal 'well, but...' punches)
> was inspired by an exhaustion with knowing.
>
> Knowing the monster's full size and utter ruthlessness.
> Knowing how small we seem when pitted against such an
> adversary. After years -- decades -- of struggle, it was nice
> to just feel part of something positive, large-scale, polished
> and successful for a change.
I'm not sure how helpful it is to psychoanalyze the motivations of individual leftists who called for an Obama vote in 2008. And I don't see how supporting Obama's election required believing in some "good man" theory or resulted necessarily from self-delusion.
> But this impulse led many astray. Attempts have been made to
> rhetorically save appearances by insisting that "pressure from
> below" will eventually force this essentially 'good man' to do
> the right thing.
And by not supporting Obama, which -- unless the law of cause and effect got temporarily suspended -- effectively strengthened the alternative (McCain), leftists found their way? I mean, did the leftists who didn't support Obama found the way?
I don't know if action from below will force the 'good man' to do good, but action from below is all we have. And it's proved to work.
> 2.) Re-discover the "communist hypothesis".
Thanks for the reading tip.