[Marxism] Having said that, What should be done is...

[Anthony Boynton <northbogota@xxxxxxxxx>]

What should not Be Done in 2008?

The Peace and Freedom Socialist Workers World
Vegetarian Labor Ticket.

What should be done is that 

1) A candidate search committee should be organized by
people like Mark Lause and others on this list and
elsewhere who are active in left electoral politics in
the USA. It should be broader than the Green Party.
People from other organizations, including those
mentioned in Mark's nightmare amalgam above, should be
invited to participate. (The fact that the Peace and
freedom Party has ballot access in California should
not be ignored. In 2008 it would be better if both the
Greens and the PFP would have the same candidates for
Prez and VP.)

2) It's aim should be to find a "name" candidate like
Ralph Nader and Dick Gregory once were, who is already
for unequivocally ending the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan, leaving no US troops behind. The
candidate should also have a strong position on
immigrant rights, and be recognizably part of the left
on other issues, but should not have to commit
her/himself to any more detailed program.

3) Who could this person be? I really don't have a
list, but Cindy Sheehan is the one internationally
known name that I can think of. 

4.)A fund raising committee should be established, and
registered.

5.) An effort to set up committees in every state
should be made.

6) Whoever the candidate of the left search committee
turns out to be, and effort should be made to win the
nominations of all ballot qualified independent left
parties in the USA which still exist (I don't know if
there are any besides PFP and the greens, but such
parties used to exist in a half dozen states.

7) Where there are no available ballot access parties,
the state search committees ? if they have become
viable in any way ? could become the organizing
committee to put the Greens on the ballot, or put the
candidate on the ballot as an independent.

Of course, maybe this is already happening, and I
can't see it from here. But if it is happening it is
invisible in the press.

As far as Mark's other points go. Progressive voters
will be mobilized if there is a good candidate with a
clear anti-war message and some media visibility.
Mobilizing already existing progressive voters is one
of the keys to convincing anti-war sort of Democrats
to move left.

More later, Anthony


A

The questionable assumption here is that the
progressive voters--like the
insurgents of 2000--are mobilized as Democratic
voters.  The Democrats claim
this, but the proportion of qualified voters who sat
out 2004 (even 2006)
was quite high.

In Ohio, we had something like 100,000 Nader voters in
2000.  In 2004, the
Secretary of State here--with active Democratic
pressure--announced that
they would not even count write-ins for Nader and it
seems to me that most
of the 2000 insurgent voters were so angry at both
that they tended to not
vote.

I wouldn't underestimate what we can mobilize with the
right candidate and
the right issues, but we will never get those kind of
numbers to turn out
for the Peace and Freedom Socialist Workers World
Vegetarian Labor Ticket.
The sane thing is to try a unified progressive third
party ticket.



      
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