Re: [Marxism] Is Obama toast this time? Will our cluelesscriticfinally get to butter him?

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joaquin wrote:

This far ahead of a general election, polls on
their outcome aren't all that meaningful.
===========================
The only meaningful numbers come the fall will be the jobless, foreclosure,
and personal bankruptcy rates. If they're up significantly, the Democrats
could put Rev. Wright on the ticket and win. If the current downturn is
shallower than many anticipate and unemployment ticks up only a couple of
percentage points, it will more likely be another dumbed-down personality
contest to determine who has accumulated the least media-orchestrated
"negatives". All things being equal (ie. no  terrorist attack), I don't
think the war in Iraq or Bush hatred or the youthful enthusiasm surrounding
Obama's candidacy will be enough in themselves or even in combination to
decide the outcome, particularly as Clinton's proto-Republican scorched
earth campaign has succeeded in making McCain competitive against Obama or
herself, whoever gets the DP nomination.

A McCain victory wouldn't be a disaster, though I'd rather see the tens of
millions of Democratic supporters emboldened by victory and pressing for
change rather than dispirited by defeat. However, it might be easier for
McCain rather than a Democrat, in the manner of Eisenhower and Nixon and de
Gaulle, to declare victory and withdraw all or at least the main body of the
occupation forces from Iraq, which the bipartisan defence and foreign policy
establishment favours. And he'd be constrained in domestic policy by both a
Democratic Congress and the conjunctural need for Keynesian-style fiscal
policy and regulation in the wake of the housing and credit crises.

But, yes, these are still early days.

Not too early, though, to lend support to Fred's comments that the political
situation in the US is more fluid than it has been in a very long time -
with deep divisions within the two major parties and third party trial
balloons being circulated at the highest political levels. Within that
context, Obama's candidacy might well contain the germs of a third party
formation from below more serious than the earlier Nader and other efforts
to build something from outside "actual, existing" American politics.



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