[Marxism] POST MILWAUKEE: Where we're at, and where we're headed...

["Don DeBar" <b.corti@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Greens and Friends:

Here we are:

Bush and Kerry have the same position on the war, USA Patriot, NAFTA, WTO, 
etc., etc. There is only one candidate for president with the political stature 
and media profile to posit an alternative effectively - and that is Ralph Nader.

Politics is about power and nothing else. If you can enforce your demands, the 
system responds - if not, you are ignored. This is not of my doing, so please 
don't kill the messenger, but it is a fact, and it should provide context for 
the rest.

With Nader, the Greens have the power to deny Kerry the election - in other 
words, they have real power to affect the outcome of the election. Without him, 
that power evaporates. How to wield such power could, and should, generate much 
thought and discussion (hopefully in that sequence), but in its absence, there 
is really little point in talking further.

Nominating a (presumably) well-intentioned unknown who further announced, in 
essence, that he would not challenge Kerry where he is weakest constitutes a 
per se surrender of our power to affect the outcome of the election. And what 
do we get in return? Kerry has only moved further from our positions as the 
campaign has progressed. The anti-duopoly vote will, if Cobb has any success, 
be divided. The Green Party lies apparently exposed as weak and sectarian, even 
where, in fact, it is not. And Greens will now be divided in the petitioning 
effort between those who are party loyalists above all to those who see the 
strategic and tactical necessity of working with the Nader campaign.

These are the objective conditions which exist today. How they came to pass is 
another matter. Suffice to say that, no matter the intentions of those 
involved, the process of selecting a candidate, whether by nomination or 
endorsement, is insufficient if it does not produce the result desired by a 
majority of the membership, and the apparatus that permits such a condition to 
come into being is inadequate for a serious democratic political movement.

The objectives of progressives at this moment must be to organize the left and 
center, to demand an immediate pull-out in Iraq, to demand immediate repeal of 
USA Patriot and NAFTA, to demand top-to-bottom reform of the electoral system, 
including decisive campaign finance reform which effectively and finally takes 
the influence of money out of the process, and a restructuring of the law to 
curb the power of corporations over society. hese things are actually, in one 
fashion or another, wanted by millions of Americans. The purpose of a 
progressive political movement must be to wield this power to achieve these 
goals. Surrendering such power as we have (had?) without a single concession is 
a foolish and dangerous act that betrays the needs of humanity for no good 
reason and in sastisfaction of no discernable objective.

Our only remaining lever is Nader's candidacy. We need to act - not talk, but 
act - to get him on the ballot in as many states as possible. Time is short, 
but the situation is urgent. Let's get to work! 

DDeBar
87 Ferris Place
Ossining, NY 10562
914 739-2700 days
914 945-0815 eves
dondebar@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.bestweb.net/~debar
WBAI--99.5 FM in New York---Peace and Justice Radio
On the Web at http://www.wbai.org.
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