On 2011-07-29, at 9:29 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jul 28, 2011, at 11:25 PM, Julio Huato wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> It's one thing to vote for the guy. It's another to waste a lot of time stumping for him and waste massive amounts of energy bloviating about his greatness.
Sorry, Doug, I fail to see how voting for Obama while convinced that he was going to continue the same old failed policies is a more coherent and admirable political stance than that displayed by millions of black youth and others who, lacking a crystal ball, supported Obama as the candidate promising change - in an election, moreover, in which Obama's race was a central issue for many of those opposed to his candidacy.
So far as I'm concerned, all who vote and work for social change are my comrades, whether they are inside or outside the Democratic party, and while criticism is necessary and healthy, it should be comradely and tempered by a certain humility. There's no one individual or tendency on the left who can claim success; we've all in retrospect been plagued by "illusions" of one sort or another. With rare, transient exceptions, capitalism has survived repeated attempts by generations of Marxists, anarchists, and left-wing social democrats, each with their own prescriptions, to overthrow or to fundamentally alter it. The reasons for these failures are historical and material rather than ideological, though you wouldn't know it by the factional recriminations and proclamations of "told you so" which have regularly followed each defeat.
It's too bad your feelings about Obama have expressed themselves in a certain contempt towards his multi-hued working class base and the left-wing activists who engaged with it, but I suppose it's indicative of the bitterness and despair felt by many on the US left at the failure of the Obama administration to press for even the mildest of reforms in the midst of a crisis, compounded by the often unwarranted apologetics which have been offered by some on its behalf.