RE: Chronicle online poll of 7,300: Camejo won the debate

["Jose G. Perez" <jgperez@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eli: >>And yet, despite this, and a perfectly reasonable showing in
previous 
debates, he continues to poll 2-3% in polls.<<

Yeah, and that's up from the 1% at the beginning of the campaign, when
he was tied with the guy from Hustler and Arianna was scoring 6%, mostly
from confused Republicans.

Camejo's support is likely to be much less in this campaign because the
independent vote is split between him and Arianna, who is a
qualitatively better known figure.

Also it is one thing to cast a protest vote against Gray Davis, it is
another to vote Green in such a mixed up uncertain race and thereby run
the risk Bustamante not getting elected. He is a much more attractive
figure to Latinos and Blacks than Davis.

There is a sense in which the first Latino governor of the state in
modern times registers a certain advance in a distorted way, and some
people are going to be voting for that, identifying with that.

To the degree that there is nascent, instinctive class consciousness
among Latinos it is inextricably intertwined with national
consciousness, people don't make the kinds of distinctions we do between
these two aspects, Bustamante to many people is "one of us" in a way
that Davis is not. I'm not sure if this is a factor in the Black
community, but it certainly is among Latinos.

For us these things are very yes or no, for the masses it is much more
of a muddle. Consciousness on a mass scale can take root only on the
basis of *action,* and I would add for it to be conscious independent
working class political action in the sense we mean, not just "action"
in the electoral arena, but mostly outside it.

For all these sorts of reasons, I think the best polls or election
results tell us is that we're reaching a mass audience, and that there
is some motion there. 

José


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.