[Marxism] The campaign and the debate around Obama,

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In general, Joaquin's analysis seems sound. The terms of the game have not
changed. The Palin nomination may strengthen the "white nationalist" appeal
of McCain in the modern GOP tradition, but does not guarantee it victory to
put it mildly.  "White nationalism" not being a purely independent factor
but at the psychological core of a broad reactionary framework framework of
class domination. 

Think about Palin's criticism of Michelle Obama, who said she found the
votes for her husband made her completely proud of being an American for the
first time. Palin replies, No, I have always been proud of my country, the
best country of the world. Michelle Obama is here required to believe, in
order to be a loyal American, that America is and has always been the best
country in the world. Slave! Jim Crow! What are YOU complaining about? This
is America, and you must think that being here is the most wonderful thing
that could have happened to you! Do you think that running around in the
jungle eating bananas would have been better for you, you Black ape -- no
offense meant, of course, and color-blindness guaranteed.

Would even Clarence Thomas or Condoleeza Rice be able to firmly endorse this
claim without a lot of hemming and hawing. Would they insist, as the
Republicans in the form of McCain-Palin really demand of Blacks, that it
would have been better to be a slave here than free anywhere else. Because
who knows, your great-great-great-great grandchildren MIGHT get rich, which
makes it all okay.

Actually I don't think the Republican convention has carried the day for the
Republicans, though some of my warnings about the ultrarightist character of
Palin and therefore McCain-Palin, as the most genuinely white male-female
ticket, as well as the evidence that the Democrats are ill-prepared to take
this on, are valid. 

The meaning of this ticket is: all people who fight for white consciousness,
get on board. In other words, the appeal to alleged or real Clinton
supporters who reject Obama is an appeal to white power given a very slight
twist through a female who fights openly for the subordination of women in
the interests of the struggle against the elite that sold our country to the
Blacks, the Arabs, the illegal immigrants, the elite feminist baby-killing
scum (the people who supposedly insisted she MUST ABORT her Down's Syndrome
fetus), and, in general, the colored of all shapes, sizes, hues, and sexes.
This is the Southern Strategy fighting for survival.

My own suspicion -- and I certainly hope I am right -- is that it is not
going to work. The Palin nomination and the partial transformation of the
McCain campaign into a more open, sharp, and necessarily right-wing
white-power campaign (regardless of the fact that Buchanan, in an orgy of
overjoyed generosity about the Palin nomination, gives McCain permission to
reach out to liberals and so forth if he must).

The right wing, of course, is in a state of prolonged and repetitive orgasm
over the outcome of the Republican convention:

Here is the beginning of a typically over the top analysis attributed to
Robert Novak:

HumanEvents@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
1.      Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has utterly changed the political landscape
and revitalized the Republican Party. The presidential contest is not the
race it was two weeks ago. It is now a serious fight for the "reform"
mantle, and-in a return to 2002 and 2004-another battle in the now-revived
culture war.
2.      Expect Sen. John McCain to surge ahead of Sen. Barack Obama in the
polls over the weekend. This could be crushing for the Obama campaign,
especially in the wake of their superb convention last week in Denver.
3.      The Palin effect has rallied the conservative base in an
extraordinary way, with Republicans at all levels reporting a deluge of
donations and volunteers. If the phenomenon persists until Election Day, it
will have an impact down-ballot and slash Republican losses.
4.      Democratic unity cannot be questioned. The Clintons' performances in
Denver highlighted a four-day love-fest.


I follow Novak, whose reports go under the name of Evans-Novak though
Rowland Evans died in 2001. Novak himself was recently diagnosed with a
brain tumor with an unfavorable prognosis. He pulled out of the column for a
time, but has now resumed "authorship." 


++But I find it hard to believe he wrote the first three points in this
analysis, which seems to assume that if the Republican party base is united,
then the nation is theirs by definition. This does not sound like Novak to
me who is not as a rule drunk with culture-war triumphalism as the first
three points clearly are.

The points starting with four which remind everybody of the strength of the
Democratic position, contradict the "dizzy with success" (that's a quote
from Stalin) first three points, bear Novak's cautions and more thoughtful
trademark.

And "if Democratic unity cannot be questioned" as the column suddenly
insists on point four, what the hell guarantees all the triumphalist stuff
that proceeds. He seems to assume that the fact that McCain-Pailin have
taken the country by storm and are marching to a smashing victory will not
divide the Democrats. Why the hell not?

If "patriotic" white "America" is now crying with one voice to ban all
abortions, ban books, for Alaskan WHITE independence (let me reveal here
that I am not unconditionally opposed to Alaskan independence), that the
Iraq war is ordered by God (a Palinism, though, like a good Buchananite, she
sometimes has her doubts), and so on, well, this may be so. But this may be
a misreading of where the population, where Obama has now retained a strong
base of support for a long time now, is at. 

The whites who have been supporting him, in my view, have already noticed
that Obama is Black. And I tend to doubt that the McCain decision (whether
he knew what he was doing or not) to create a more open male-female campaign
for white power as the American Way will totally reverse the trend toward
Obama that existed before.





________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu