[A-List] US presidential election discussion

["Charles Brown" <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is crossposted from Marxmail:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-January/022673.html

On Jan 5, 2008 9:56 PM, Joaquin Bustelo <jbustelo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mark Lause writes about Obama: "It doesn't take too much imagination
to see
> him caught in a Kennedy spiral. That is, he succeeds by tapping into
vague
> and ill-defined generational aspirations for a change. He could
easily then
> finds himself trapped by the logic of what he's expressing to chart a
much
> more reformist turn than he might otherwise be inclined to take..."
>
> I'm half-convinced that Obama is serving to crystallize an until-now
> atomized yearning for change. I've been seeing it expressed in
various ways
> at my workplace for months now, and only now with Iowa have I seen
the
> attitudinal shift taking place might be linked to Obama.


"I'd like to think that Obama, with his community organizing
experience and insistence on firing people up, gets it a little
better. But whoever is elected President this year, there won't be any
real change in a progressive direction without a mass social movement
to bring it about--either by holding the president accountable or by
holding his or her feet to the fire. And a mass social movement
doesn't begin at the top. It begins right now, with you."

                       -- Barbara Ehrenreich

Full:
<http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/marxism+kennedy/1174adfa5523acca>