Re: [Marxism] Counterpunch Swift-Boats McCain

[Eli Stephens <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fred comments:
Actually I never characterized Counterpunch as "rightist proimperialist"

Eli:
Sorry about the poor wording in my post. Clearly you were referring, and I was 
too (but didn't spell out carefully) this particular post (or at most Cockburn 
himself), and certainly not CounterPunch as a whole, which is hardly rightist 
or 
pro-imperialist.

Fred:
He also challenges but makes no argument against my estimate that this
expose will not be effective against McCain.

Eli:
Not true. I wrote that "it isn't really meant to be
effective against McCain in the sense of discouraging anyone who might be
thinking of voting for McCain, few of whom are reading CounterPunch anyway." I 
can't "prove" that, not having seen any polls of the Presidential preferences 
of 
CounterPunch readers, but, based on the mix of articles that appear there, I 
think it's pretty darn likely that CounterPunch readers are a mixture of 
liberals and leftists who will be voting for Obama (or even Clinton should she 
pull off a miracle win), further leftists who will be voting for Nader or 
McKinney or La Riva or someone else, and other leftists and anarchists and such 
who won't be voting at all. And, as I wrote, I see this piece as addressed to 
all those groups except the ones already planning to vote for the Democrat, as 
the latest variant of the "we've got to vote for the lesser evil Democrat to 
make sure this dangerous Republican doesn't get into the Oval Office."

I suppose it IS true that getting someone to vote for a Democrat is actually 
"proimperialist," if not actively "rightist," so in that sense, the piece is 
proimperialist.


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