Re: Paul Felton: Open Letter to Progressive Democrats

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

At 5:49 PM -0600 4/3/04, Carrol Cox wrote:
> One difference between advocating Kerry's election and supporting an
> independent candicate or party is that the latter effort generates
> serious conversation about the issues that will confront us over the
> next decade and longer, while the former is a conversation stopper.
> "Bush is so bad that we must support Kerry, even though he isn't any
> good," or something like that. Nothing really follows, except in a
> forced way. At least I can't imagine myself knocking on a door in
> order to deliver that message.

The only thing that left-wing supporters for John Kerry can say for
Kerry is that he is Not Bush, as they rightly suspect that the less
said about Kerry, the better.  :-)  Unfortunately for them, that
Kerry is Not Bush isn't probably enough to get many people to become
motivated to go to the ballot box and vote for Kerry, since it is
clear that Kerry supports most of Bush's positions.

At 5:49 PM -0600 4/3/04, Carrol Cox wrote:
> One is that "mass movement building" or "ABB" is not (or need not
> be) an either/or proposition, that one can do both.

If it is simply the Anybody But Bush position, like the one advocated
by Sam Smith (cf. "The Election Is Over.  We Lost.  Now onto November
3rd," <http://prorev.com/welost.htm>), yes, there is no conflict
between it and mass movement building.

What Doug and other anti-Nader warriors have been promulgating is not
so much the Anybody But Bush position as the Anybody But Nader
rhetoric and the Nobody But Democrat position.

If the point is simply to say Anybody But Bush and support whoever is
Not Bush, they might as well call upon John Kerry to quit the race
and not to spoil the Nader/Green candidacy.

At 5:49 PM -0600 4/3/04, Carrol Cox wrote:
> (He also argues for a division of labor in which his role is not
> organizing _either_ for the election or for the mass movement but
> economic analysis as a journalist. I'll accept the legitimacy of
> that, but then Doug ought to recognize that that _does_ rather
> dilute any opinions he might have on organizing strategy and
> tactics.)

No one should be allowed to get away with saying that he is not
interested in building the Green Party while complaining that Nader
didn't help build the Green Party.

At 5:49 PM -0600 4/3/04, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Doug's other argument (repeated, as he says, a million times) is
> that he is very critical of Kerry (and will resume his opposition to
> the DP immediately after the election).

That sort of opposition is called "loyal opposition."  :-)
--
Yoshie

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