On 2011-07-29, at 5:16 PM, // ravi wrote:
> On Jul 29, 2011, at 4:37 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>>
>> 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 - ...
>>
>
> ...I don’t see Doug blaming them (despite your quoted section above) based on the full context of what he has said here: he is blaming some dudes called Younge and Schmitty (or something like that) …
Doug can speak for himself, but I understood him to be casting his net rather more widely than Younge, Coates, and other commentators when he wrote that the turnout of black youth "didn't amount to a hill of beans - the 'mobilization' was little more than a fan club", and that while he hoped "people will learn from this experience, of course they probably won't."
In any case, as I've noted previously, unless and until the US working class returns to its militant roots and begins to move left, there is simply no way of knowing for certain whether such an impulse would initially express itself inside or outside the DP. This is the strategic question which has divided American socialists for generations - it has affected where they position themselves in relation to the party and their attitude to its base - and as it can't be resolved in debate, it hardly warrants the furor surrounding it on both sides.