[lbo-talk] How to make the Senate a majority rule institutioninone day

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Fri Jan 22 08:46:55 PST 2010


Carrol Cox wrote:


> SA wrote:"But what I just don't understand is this desperate effort by
> liberals and leftists to pin all their problems on the Democrats -- to
> pretend that *they* are weak because the *Democrats* are pussies. _It's
> the other way around._"
>
> Who does this? I've always argued that Democrats are _not_ "pussies" or
> sell-outs or stupid, but that their actions represent their core
> convictions, and that on the whole they stick to these convictions
> regardless of whether it costs them at election time.

Honestly, Carrol - without rancor - I confess to doubts that you really know anything at all about Democratic Congressmen or their core convictions. I read your argument more as a plea for a revolutionary strategy than as an earnest empirical claim about the world.


> But I don't see
> what this has to do with the weakness of "the left" -- either as cause
> or result.
>

If the left is strong enough, it can make Democrats do what it wants. If the Democrats don't do what the left wants it's because the left isn't strong enough. That's the basic gist of my argument.....You mentioned the Civil Rights Act, which is a good example of this. Though your argument that Hubert Humphrey secretly didn't want to pass the Civil Rights Act but was forced to by unruly outsiders is, for those of us who are familiar with the relevant texts...let's say, surprising.

SA



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list