Skewering Roy Neel

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

On the Nation Magazine website, you can read an attack on Dean's new
campaign manager by David Corn:

>>So it's Dean's right to boot Trippi. What warrants criticism is his
decision to put his campaign in the mitts of a Washington insider. Neel,
a former Al Gore aide, was head of the U.S. Telecom Association in
Washington in the late 1990s until he left to join Gore's 2000 campaign.
The USTA lobbies on behalf of the telecommunications industry. As its
lead lobbyist, Neel was the embodiment of the "special interests" that
Dean has assailed on the campaign trail.<<

full: http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1219

He does mention, almost parenthetically, that "it would be no surprise
to find special interests lobbyists on the payroll of Senators John
Kerry or John Edwards."

Well, I would say not.

But what you will see as the months unfold is an all-out push for John
Kerry from the Nation Magazine and the rest of the liberal
establishment. Despite his vote for the war and the Patriot Act, he will
be seen as something like the Little Dutch Boy who has his finger in the
dike preventing the fascist flood from sweeping America.

As critical as I am of Howard Dean and the Democratic Party, I have to
say that the media blitz against him reminds me very much of the film
"The Revolution Will not be Televised", which demonstrated how
Venezuelan TV conspired in a coup to unseat Hugo Chavez. Yesterday I did
a Lexis-Nexis search on "Howard Dean" and "angry" and 889 articles were
returned. That is simply mind-boggling. This was obviously a
well-orchestrated campaign to derail a mildly left-of-center electoral
bid. It was clear that in a period of deepening economic crisis and
imperialist war, an election campaign that depended on small donations
and volunteers solicited through the Internet was perceived as a dire
threat to the status quo.

I would suggest that this presages an extremely violent and repressive
conflict in the years to come as the class composition of the radical
movement in the USA becomes more proletarian and the political stakes
are raised. The Weimar Republic will look like a picnic by comparison.
For those who have illusions that this will not be the case, I suggest
maintaining a respectful distance from radical politics and leaving the
task for those who have the guts to take the bastards on.


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