Re: [Marxism] Pols, polls and THE polls in Pennsylvania

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Joaquin Bustelo wrote:
> 
>       Mrs. Clinton's campaign has become the immediate vehicle for those
> who oppose such a development; and as it has become clearer and clearer that
> Clinton has no way of gathering enough votes or delegates to make a case she
> has majority support, her campaign has morphed into a typical racist
> Republican onslaught that from the other side is viewed as being not just
> against Obama, but against the kind of progressive political change that
> most of his supporters, and especially in the Black community and among
> young people, believe or hope he will carry out. That Obama's plebeian
> backers are (mostly) mistaken about this is true, but just one factor in the
> calculus. So were most Black people wrong in 1963 and 1964 when they thought
> the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts would bring them liberation.

I don't think there is any kind of parallel between the fight against 
Jim Crow and Obama's presidential bid. The right to vote is the kind of 
elementary right that socialists have always fought for, going back to 
the Chartist movement.

>       Such illusions can sometimes play a progressive role in driving
> social movements onto a higher level of struggle, as was the case in the
> 60s. 

By this logic, socialists should have voted for LBJ in 1964.

>       And I am convinced, while less dramatic and clear-cut, the clash of
> social forces in this case is real, as it was then. So much is this the case
> that major right-wing figures have called on their base to intervene in the
> Democrat's primary on Mrs. Clinton's side; and in the recent Mississippi
> primary, fully one-fourth of Sen. Clinton's vote came from self-identified
> Republicans. Not nice granola-crunching Berkeley or Madison independents, or
> even Silicon Valley libertarian Republicans, but Mississippi Republicans,
> the ones that still keep white sheets next to the rope and shotgun in their
> closet.

Actually, the era of white sheets is long gone. Racism in the U.S. is 
not a function of Klan terror, but of the marketplace. De facto 
segregation based on class inequality simply replaced de jure segregation.

>       I know a lot of people on this list are chagrined, to say the least,
> that such a clash of social forces has taken shape around the issue of which
> one of two bourgeois candidates, with basically the same paper programs and
> promises, should be the standard bearer for what is clearly the majority
> imperialist party in the U.S. at this time. But there it is. That's how I
> read things. I think the evolution has been clear. 

Oh please. Two of the most hidebound reactionaries in the Democratic 
Party have now thrown their weight behind Obama.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_skeeter__080421_clinton_s_attacks_ba.htm
Obama Gets Backing By Two Conservative Democrats. . .

Two other Democratic elder statesmen, former Senators Sam Nunn of 
Georgia and David Boren of Oklahoma, also said they were supporting the 
Illinois senator. Nunn and Boren said they have accepted Obama's 
invitation to serve as advisers to his national security foreign policy 
team.

Nunn served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1987 
to 1995, while Boren was the longest-serving chairman of the Senate 
Select Committee on Intelligence.

Both fall into the conservative end of the Democratic party's 
ideological spectrum and both gave Bill Clinton trouble during his 
presidency, trying to tug him to the right on issues while most 
congressional Democrats were leaning to the left.

Most memorably, Nunn forced President Clinton to compromise on the 
still-simmering issue over whether gay men and lesbians could serve in 
the U.S. military without keeping their sexual identity a secret. That 
compromise, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," remains in force.

In a statement issued by the Obama campaign, Nunn said: "We need a 
president who has the temperament of a leader -- a sharp, incisive, 
strategic mind, a rare capacity for self criticism, and a willingness to 
hear contrary points of view. Based on my conversations with Senator 
Obama, reading his book and his speeches and seeing the kind of campaign 
he has run, I believe that he is our best choice to lead our nation."






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