> Julio, that's ridiculous. There was no mobilization. It was empty from the
> first. A bunch of people, including some who should have known better (like
> Younge), were drunk on Obamamania in the summer of 2008.
We looked at the same exit poll data. I'm not going to re-examine the data now, but I remember distinctively that there were was diverse group of young people who significantly increased their traditional participation in federal elections. We also know how Obama did among women, Blacks, and Hispanics. We know that old and not so old whites and males favored McCain. And we know, by comparison, what happened to each of these groups in the intermediate elections.
Given the menu back then, voting for Obama was the right thing to do. In spite of your skepticism, you voted for Obama. Whatever your rationale -- if it was good for you, why was it not so for others? If one thinks that voting for Obama is better than the alternative, then why not call others to do the same? It seems to me like wanting to have it both ways.
You want to bring back the issue and tell these guys, "I told you so"?
Then explain: What was the right thing to do for leftists back then, in the face of the presidential election? Abstain? Vote for McCain? And how would have that different approach been better for the left?
I can understand Proyect playing his silly game. That's what turns him on. But at least, he's been (kind of) consistent with his shibboleth -- he argued early on that there was no difference whatever between McCain and Obama. So, for him, *objectively* helping McCain was not (entirely) inconsistent.
> The "psuedo-radical"
> bit is insulting, on top of the absurdity of this - it was obvious to me at
> that time that this would all end badly, and I was right. How is this
> "pseudo-radical"?
I didn't intend the pseudo-radical epithet as an attack on you. Sorry about this.
I'm just pushing back on this. See how it began. I reacted against your post, because it is unclear to me that anything good can be gained politically by reproaching people their support of Obama in 2008. Why presume that they were infected with Obamania, rather than soberly pondering the *objective* effect that Obama had on certain groups of working people and (under uncertainty) an expectation about how the dynamics was likely to play out in our favor, which was not farfetched back then. Yes, there were signs that Obama would betray those expectations, but we'd have to have a mechanistic view of things to argue that there was absolutely no chance back then that Obama could have done things differently. Now, again, that Obama engaged new groups of people in politics (people who tend to be among the main natural constituencies of the left, so we leftists have a vested interest in those people taking whatever baby steps they can take collectively) was duly demonstrated in the electoral turnout (and, to some extent, is still shown today in the steady support that some of them give to Obama, in spite of everything)?
This is my last post on this. I really see no gain in pursuing this kind of an argument.