Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Carrol wrote:
> even through contesting for power in local DP organizations.

At the local level, what a Green politician does and what a really
good left-wing Democratic politician does may not be so different
anyway.  (Real irreconcilable political differences make their
appearance at the level above state representatives and senators, I
think.)  The reason I don't push for working through local Democratic
parties is that the Green Party has already shown that it can elect
its own candidates for local offices, so why bother trying the second
best now?

>  >  Even if the Green Party were to succeed in
> >  electing Green mayors in all cities in the United States, for
> >  instance, an impact of such a dramatic change in local politics on US
> >  foreign policy won't be even minimalist -- it will be practically
> >  zero.
>
> Not necessarily. One can't judge that _If_  as though in a
> laboratory where one element changes while all other elements remain
> constant. The conditions under which the GP could elect mayors in
> several hundred substantial (150k+ population) cities around the
> u.s. would be conditions which could not occur without profound
> reverberations elsewhere from the activities which brought about the
> electoral victories. You and I have both complained about those
> comments on revolution which presuppose that revolutionary action
> would occur with all other conditions (as now experienced) remaining
> constant. (E.g. someone once asked the silly question of how we
> could ask the working class to risk everything for overthrow of
> capitalism, when of course "we" would never ask that but conditions,
> now unpredictable and undescribable -- perhaps of rising
> expectations,  perhaps of utter chaos, perhaps of something we
> cannot describe now--would do the "asking.")
>
> I tend to agree that the local politics route to national power is
> illusional, but in considering it we can't consider it in a vacuum.

That's a good point.

But, all the arguments in favor of concentrating on local politics
that are advanced now here and elsewhere, I think, come with a
subtext: you, leftists, had better work on only local issues like
zoning -- leave big national and international issues like war and
peace to the Democratic Party, because you can't win presidency
immediately anyway.

To the contrary, war years are especially important years when
leftists need to make interventions in national politics, including
mounting electoral challenges through presidential elections.  The
question is how exactly to do that effectively, knowing that our
candidate won't become the next POTUS.

Yoshie