Commentary
Periodically I return to edit older blogs for spelling problems, technical glitches and to correct artless prose. Yesterday I was in the throes of such a process when I came upon a blog entitled Musings on Presidential Campaign 2008, dated March 7, 2008. The gist of that commentary, a response to a reader’s question, was to answer why I had reduced the amount of time and energy I had been spending writing on the mind-boggling but essentially trivial American presidential campaign. As described then I have kept on that track pretty faithfully, except I went off the wagon once when there was a tempest in a teapot controversy over the relationship between Obama and ex-Weatherpeople Professors Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. That is until I read a little article about the doings of one ex-drug addict (I assume) and drafter dodger (Vietnam) radio ‘talk jock’ Rush Limbaugh and his role in the just concluded Indiana Democratic primary.
In the real world it has not been a good spring. Fighting continues to rage in Baghdad. There are no timetables for troop withdrawals in sight, much less the necessary immediate, unconditional withdrawal that we fight for. The escalating war budgets, despite harmless Democratic parliamentary antics, keep getting funded. Fuel prices have skyrocketed. Previously ample and cheap food staples are starting to give the world economy the feel of Paris or Petrograd in their revolutionary days. Homeowners, their tenants and others are going to the wall during the relentless mortgage foreclosure crisis. And those are the good days. Into this mix comes one Rush Limbaugh who has presented a very simple idea. In order to give his beloved Republican Party at least the semblance of a fighting chance to win the presidency in November he has decided to muddy the waters of the Democratic Party nominating process by having Republicans, in states where it is permissible, vote in those primaries for Senator Hillary Clinton.
Well, nobody that I know, and that includes some very committed liberal Democrats, would have thought much of this sophomoric tactic except that in Indiana on Tuesday May 6, 2008 it is very possible that the tactic worked. At least the Obama campaign is acting like the small Clinton margin of victory was essentially based on this crossover vote. Of course, for the Obama campaign this meant something. It meant, in the coin of the realm of bourgeois politics, that they could not close the deal on the nomination.
But what about those of us outside and to the left of this process? That brings me back to my original point above from that March blog. Don’t look for relief from those quarters. This whole process now is about mudslinging and some antics that we would not accept from twelve year olds. But it also brings me back to the litany of problems that I presented above. If you want to address the real problems of this sorry old world then back away, way away from the Democratic and Republican Parties, their agents, apologists and hangers-on and come over and help us build a workers party we can call our own. Join us.
The core argument of this blog was that the Democratic Party presidential nominating process had come down to a food fight and that those of us who wanted to fight for real issues better move away from this mundane process. Nothing politically or economically, to speak nothing of the wars, has moved an inch closer to resolution since then.
ReplyDeleteI have made my fair share of politcal mistakes, including politcal projections but I had the right instinct on this one- and I recomment staying clear in the fall when these executive and legislative contests get really nasty.
One of the drawbacks of reducing my attention to the day to day ‘drama’ of the Democratic Party presidential nomination contest between Hilary and Obama during this spring was that I missed a very important racial incident involving the trashing of one of Obama’s campaign offices in Indiana, the immediate location of the subject of the above blog. Those who know a little of Indiana know that there is something of a great divide in the state between the northern part of the state, mainly urban with a heavily black and minority population, and downstate, where the incident occurred, with a white population tied, since about the time of the American Civil War, with the South. The racially-motivated trashing incident reported there is likely to be replicated once this presidential campaign gets serious in the fall and the undertow of the unresolved racial issues in this country get placed front and center.
ReplyDeleteWhere does that put those of us who are outside this parliamentary process yet committed to such democratic rights as normal elections? Hell, this is a no- brainer. Look, we give no political support to Barack, his Democratic Party or any pro-capitalist party. We argue until the cows come home that a workers party fighting for a workers government is necessary to begin to resolve the pressing social questions today. However, while we are more than willing to rain on Barack’s parade he has the right to run for office, take office and use the formal prerogatives of office. We will defend that right to do so and in more than a propaganda way, if necessary. We will call for and create worker defense guards, or any other appropriate organization, to defend that right. In short, unlike the run of the mill democrats who are forever talking about the democratic process we will put our money where our mouths are. They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. Here is a prima facie case for that statement. Enough said
A member of my circle practically went crazy when she saw my comment on our possibly having to offer defense services to the Democratic Party (and by implication any bourgeois party under attack from rightist or racist elements). She is old enough to have known (through her parents- she is a ‘red diaper’ baby) a time when the Democratic Party actively hunted done communists in the late 1940’s and most of the 1950’s, or turned its head aside while others did it. True enough. Although where that would leave her on something like the defense of the Republic in Spain in the 1930’s I am not sure. But to cut to the point. As I mentioned in my previous comment one aspect of politics is that it makes strange bedfellows. Another aspect is that sometimes we have to hold our noses dealing with those strange bedfellows. This is one of those times.
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