Wednesday, October 1, 2008

responses to my anarchist, trotskyite, and nader chums

1. the anarchist
...the dnc IS all about money and i agree that they do not reach out to people in a meaningful way. obama has a fucking chance. it's fine. if he wins, we can all watch him blow it and go back to voting nader. the main reason he is where he is is because he motivated people to get off their dead asses and get involved in the stacked against them crappy us pseudo-democratic system. Besides being a tall black man with an insane name, the reason he is not blowing out mccain is bc he's clearly NOT as good a politician as clinton or reagan or kennedy. But that's to his advantage i'd say. I have no interest in defending the dnc or any democrat for that matter. Those of us that split our week living between liberal elite cities and rundown upstate republican craphole areas may be able to see things even clearer than swing state people do. as i said to an annoyed trotskyite recently, we'll have to agree to disagree on this shit.
2. the trotskyite
...You are right that we need a new party etc... but in the meantime i'd rather not get into a nuclear fucking war. As i see it, Obama is a centrist with some some center left tendencies and that is likely to give us some breathing room. He might have some chance of getting some people a chance at affordable health care which neither McCain nor any fantasy candidate on the left is going to be able to do. I don't see this lesser of two evils, which is why i didn't do this kind of work for kerry or gore or clinton or dukakis. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I know some people on the left prefer a McCain since it is a more honest face of American imperialism. Me, I prefer to make the bus drivers in Kenya happy who are painting Obama's face on their buses.
3. the naderite
...I voted for Nader in 2000 in illinois. I think it likely that obama will continue our imperial presidency in afghanistan and bail out wall street etc... But i think he will get something real on health care and i think that if he gets elected he will be responsive to pressure from the base. Not just bitchy lefty bloggo types but from real humans. I also know that there are buses all over Kenya with his face on them and if he wins, Africa is going to have a fucking party and I think that he will also really fuck up Al Qaeda's fundraising. He talks about things like student loans and reducing the interest and trading college for service. I don't expect much from a Pres of the US. But this seems like more than i would have thought possible back in the Clinton years. I just assumed the Dem party was creeping farther to the right every year. They are of course but an Obama loss would only validate the wing of the party that uses progressives, blacks, youth, etc.. to get out the vote bc they have no viable alternative.

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