Re: [Marxism] The stench of doom

[<g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The world is watching these elections.  In my classes there
is a regular majority of 80% who hate Bush, who dislike
America etc etc.  I have never seen this kind of response
from students.  Once in the early 80s I gave a lecture on the
Rambo syndrome to a packed Hall.  I outlined how America won
the war on the screen but somehow lost it in the tunnels and
alleways of Vietnam.  The students were entertained but one
felt obliged to shout out, 'What about Afghanistan?'

Now adays there is no call to fall in behind the leader of
the Free World.  Bush and his whole coterie are in Free Fall
abroad, and if the attendance figures for 9/11 are any guide
he is also dipping remarkably at home.

Yet Kerry cannot beat him.

Myself thinks that he was never intended to beat Bush.  He
was the Dukakis candidtate - designed to lose, who because
Bush is doing so badly in Iraq looked for a fleeting second
as if he might win.

But I think the Democrats had a problem.  They could have
swamped Bush with anti-war sentiment.  They could even have
announced Kerry had a secret plan to end the war.  However
they decided to do none of that.  Partly I suspect because
they feared what would happen if millions of Americans saw
the powerful fall out.  Nothing disorients the grunts more
than seeing the bosses quarrel.

And a disoriented grunt is potentially very dangerous.  Other
ideas might enter.

So Kerry's camp went for the "We agree on the funamentals but
we would finesse it all  differently and be much smarter etc"
approach to Iraq.  Underneath this was a message to the
people that "This is as good as it gets.  A different America
is not possible".

The Democrats will now lose, but deep in their hearts they
will feel they have had a victory, because the system will
have been preserved at a time when it could so easily have
been derailed.

It will look very much as if it is business as usual after
November.  Bush might even win his first election and he
might even scrape ahead in the popular vote. I want to stress
that none of this is off the Democrats basic agenda - the
preservation of the status quo in the USA.  To repeat to
unseat Bush they would have to have disagreed on the
fundamentals and they were never going to do that.

It is still possible of course that as November approaches
and the awful and terrifying thought of another four years of
Bush breaks into the popular consciousness that Kerry might
scrape home.  That is his preferred option, a narrow vicotry
based not on a challenge to Bush but on the people's hatred
of the encumbent.

Either way Go Nader I say.

regards

Gary



---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 16:19:42 -0400
>From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [Marxism] The stench of doom
>To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
<marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, PEN-L list <PEN-
L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>Counterpunch, September 1, 2004
>
>Kerry's Slippage
>The Stench of Doom
>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
>Even the people who tell me they will vote for Kerry take
pains to
>stress that they don't like him. CounterPuncher JoAnn
Wsypijewski, who
>marched against Bush in New York Sunday phoned me to say
that though she
>didn't like Kerry but would vote for the man ," I know now
he's
>definitely going to lose."
>
>"How do you know that?"
>
>"There were maybe 450,000 people on the streets of
Manhattan, all of
>them hating Bush and I saw maybe ten people with
Kerry/Edwards signs.
>Maybe two with Nader/Camejo signs. People don't connect
hating Bush with
>voting for Kerry."
>
>You can blame that partly on the whole Bush-as-Monster
frenzy that has
>every book store piled with hysterical tracts making the
President out
>as a cross between Caligula and Nero, without even the
latter's fiddle
>playing as a redeeming quality.
>
>The trouble with this is that Bush, albeit a somewhat weird
and limited
>fellow, isn't Caligula or Nero though he does have some
resemblance to
>the repellent Domitian and furthermore, unlike the Roman
emperors, has
>an attractive wife whom, as yet at least, he hasn't
poisoned, Nor has
>she, so far as we know, tried to poison him, though she is a
killer as
>her erstwhile boyfriend discovered to his terminal cost at
that lonely
>Texas crossroads on the edge of Midland. To many people
habituated to
>the character profiles of the people in mortgage commercials
Bush comes
>across as a straightforward fellow offering them a 4 percent
loan with
>no balloon payments. My bet is that he'll probably win the
debates with
>Kerry, not just on style and bearing but because Kerry has
made life so
>easy for him, as was attested by the recent polls that
showed Bush
>inching ahead, even before the Republican convention.
>
>Some of these polls were being taken even as the headlines
were telling
>us that on Bush's watch more people had slipped into
poverty, more kids
>were hungry and now 45 million are without health insurance.
Meat and
>drink for Kerry, you'd suppose, but No.
>
>The prime reason can only be the awful decision of Kerry and
his
>advisers to give his war record in Vietnam the starring role
in the
>Democratic convention in Boston, followed closely by his
utterly mad and
>unnecessary resolve in mid-August to announce via Jamie
Rubin, his
>foreign policy spokesman, that he would have gone to war
against Saddam
>Hussein even knowing the WMD threat was spurious.
>
>The insufferable Jamie Rubin, top State Department flack in
the Clinton
>years, told the Washington Post that 'knowing then what he
knows today'
>about the lack of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons
in Iraq,
>Kerry still would have voted to authorize the war and, 'in
all
>probability', would have launched a military attack to oust
Hussein by
>now if he were president. (Previously, Kerry had only said,
with typical
>forthrightness, that he 'might' have still gone to war.)
>
>In August, with US forces engaged in heavy fighting in
Najaf, and
>American casualties edging inexorably towards 1,000, Rubin
apologized to
>the Washington Post for his 'in all probability' phrase. In
more
>philosophical mode, he now explained that it was 'unknowable
whether
>Kerry would have waged the war. "Bush went to war the wrong
way," Rubin
>said. "What we don't know is what would have happened if a
president had
>gone about it the right way".'
>
>How stupid do you have to be to throw away the Non-Existent
WMDs as a
>stick to beat Bush with?
>
>At this point I reckon a lot of people who don't like the
war lost
>interest in Kerry, as Kerry and his advisers must have
realized since
>they sent out James Rubin to say that he had misspoken,
which only
>enhanced Kerry's rep as a flip-flopper.
>
>Does Kerry's bid carry the stench of doom? You'd have
thought just the
>economic news would carry him to victory but doom is what
it's beginning
>to smell like. Maybe only the CIA, an agency fighting for
its life, can
>save him, with some sort of October surprise.
>
>--
>
>The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
>
>
>
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