Re: [Marxism] In "battleground Virginia", desperate GOP plays variations on "vote white"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis wrote:
My take on this is that the ruling class has really committed itself 
to seeing Obama elected. They have huge problems on their hands and 
the spectacle of McCain-Palin in recent weeks really makes them 
nervous.

Fred comments:
That's my impression too. Obama may now be headed toward the blowout that
Wallerstein, a very abstract "world system" thinker but not at all stupid or
unperceptive in my experience, predicted what seems like many months ago.
After Iowa, I think. Despite the cosmic generality, I find his assessments
are less indifferent to the actual motion taking place than many assume. No,
"world system" theory does not tempt me at all.

However, Louis and my common conclusion reflects the fact that this was not
a settled matter until recently. The ruling class was divided over the
election, and the capitalist media was broadly open to sinking Obama if that
could be done. Obama's campaign would have been impossible without some
support and encouragement in the ruling class. 

But the recent turn toward broader ruling class support is a product of
gyrations and instability that stemmed not primarily from Republican
weirdness, although this clearly enters the game, but from the failure of
successive waves of attack to break Obama's mass electoral base in the mass
of the population, including white people. Remember that when Hilary raised
all this crap, the media was pretty sympathetic, but the Obama base did not
break. She also crossed the line, presenting herself to all intents and
purposes, as the spokesperson of "hard-working people, white people."

So the problem to which the ruling class as a whole (this is new in my
opinion, as Louis seems to agree) is responding is in part not just the
problems of the Republican Party but the problem of the failure of repeated
attempts to make Obama "toast" to fundamentally break the momentum of the
campaign for him, which had a spontaneous mass response which was and is
real. 

By the way (this is more a response to Joaquin, not Louis), I do not think
that the Democrats would have had an easier time if they had nominated
Hillary Clinton or, God help us, the "pro-working class" handsome white nerd
Edwards -- even leaving aside his more recent embarrassment. I think Obama
was not only more vulnerable because Black, but more importantly more
invulnerable because Black to the routine Republican attacks of the last two
decades. This has to do with progressive shifts I have been sensing for some
times in American politics, as reflected in my workplaces and other
experiences.

Probably, given the catastrophe which the Bush administration is ending up
in, I believe that Hilary (if not Edwards) would have won in the end, but
she would not have done as well against McCain as Obama seems likely to do.
In part, this is not just a matter of "race" although that is clearly
involved as a positive as well as negative for Obama (I think), but because
of Hillary's all too excessive "experience." 

What seens to be shaping up as a historical crisis of present day US
capitalism (pace Charlie Post, I don't believe in a "final crisis of
capitalism" as an economic construct, although I believe firmly that, viewed
in a broader social/political construct a final crisis is entirely possible.
The bottom line is what the masses of workers, peasants, oppressed
nationalities, women, and their potentially vast array of allies. 

Given the fact that we are apparently going to have to go through this
historical crisis, which promises to be quite painful, I plan to do whatever
I can individually and collectively with others (most importantly) to have
it turn out to be the final one, but I make no such predictions.

Louis continued:
I predict that the rightwing binge of the Republican Party 
over the past 30 years or so will give way to the kind of centrism 
that Gerald Ford, Robert Dole et al once demonstrated.

Fred comments:
In the context of the crisis which exists, what possesses Louis to portray
Obama as though he represented simply a moderate wing of the Republican
Party? Ford, Dole, with even Carter and Clinton dissolved into an "et al"
which may or may not refer to them (maybe the et al refers to Eisenhower and
Dewey for all I know).

I have no idea what Obama will do in office. I think awful things are
possible and even likely, but I also think that some progressive or less
reactionary or whatever you want to call them are possible. In the end, of
course, without the struggle of the masses against the existing order, all
this will lead to disaster, just as the New Deal, to the extent that the
masses could be demobilized through it,  helped pave the way to World War
II. 

But I do not believe that ANYBODY is electing him because they think things
must stay exactly the same, without rocking the boat, which is what the
Dole-Ford parallels seem to suggest. 
Fred 




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