Re: [Marxism] The campaign and the debate around Obama

["Mark Lause" <markalause@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> Frustration sets in when your group, whether inside or outside a broader
> political formation, stops growing. Growth and the promise of victory are
> powerful stimulants to action. Has a certain listlisness developed within
> the Obama campaign as a result of it's compromises and failure so far to
> break away from McCain? What's your impression?
>

I have sensed a definate lessening of the enthusiasm among the legions
of black friends and neighbors that support Obama.  They will go to
the polls and vote for him, but my impression is that their
expectations have declined considerably from the euphoria of earlier
days.  A buddy who wanted to put an Obama sticker on my car when he
was clinching the nomination told me yesterday that he thinks little
will change because power will be in the hands of the people around
Obama.  There's a realism that tempers what had been an almost shocked
appreciation earlier.

But my point about frustration is deeper than whatever the current fad
might be.  Almost anybody you talk to who's been involved in the PDA,
for example, is deep down frustrated and much more cynical than most
anyone you can find on this list.

To take an extreme example, I have old friends from the 1968 campaign
who have never failed to back Democrats each and every election.  They
are what I'd call soft "New Left."  They want almost anything that all
of us would want in terms of immediate policy changes...and end to the
war, socialized medicine, etc.  They've gone one way after 1968, and
I've gone another.  I understand the forces that keep us from winning,
and they deliberately avoid such an awareness.  They have allegedly
won, helping to elect Carter and Clinton and scores of lesser
Democrats.  But they haven't won anything at all, have they?

This year, they're pelting me with emails on the awfulness of McCain
and Palin...and, of course, urging me to vote for Obama and the Credit
Card Company guy from Delaware.  What, they ask, will voting for Nader
accomplish?

I respond by asking what voting for a Democrat will accomplish...even
if the Democrat wins.  In the end, the only thing they can say is that
the Democrat will be a place holder to keep a Republican out of office
who will do us great harm.

But even that requires a level of faith that Sister Madeline Pius
Fitzgibbon can only admire.

ML

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