Since I've spent some time on this blog twisting Louis Proyect's universalist-moralist-Trotskyist tail, it's only right to acknowledge that I agree with him on this one:
What’s wrong with a primary challenge to Obama?What Louis seems to be saying -- though he takes a long time to get there, via a number of chatty Polonian reminiscences and sectarian sideswipes en passant -- is that primary challenges are silly; what matters is a third-party challenge in the general election -- a challenge that might actually deprive the Donk of victory in a close-run race, as Nader so gloriously did in 2000.
Filed under: Obama,parliamentary cretinism — louisproyect @ 4:10 pmThe best thing would be for a high-profile bourgeois politician to run as an independent candidate against both Obama and whichever nitwit the Republicans nominate in the same fashion as Henry Wallace’s 1948 Progressive campaign.
My uncle -- great-uncle, actually -- used to tell the story of the city slicker who (for some reason) came to visit the old Kentucky farmer. So the slicker goes out before dawn to accompany the farmer on his rounds. Farmer feeds the chickens, slops the hogs, milks the cow and so on, chatting very kindly with the livestock all the while. Finally it's starting to get light and time to hitch up the mule and start plowing. Farmer heads up to the south forty where the mule is kept, strolls into the field, picks up a two-by-four, hauls off and whacks the mule a stunning blow right between the eyes. City boy is shocked: "Why'd you do that?"
"That? That was just to get his attention," says the farmer.
Of course the question may be asked, what is the point of getting the Donks' attention? They certainly didn't learn anything -- or rather, learned all the wrong things -- in 2000.(*) A hell of a good question, of course. But I just want to see the look on their face after the two-by-four connects.
-------------
(*) Like the Bourbons: Ils n'ont rien appris, ni rien oublié.
Comments (24)
"But I just want to see the look on their face after the two-by-four connects."
That would be the greatest visual in political history.
Posted by Adam Trovillion | September 20, 2011 5:53 PM
Posted on September 20, 2011 17:53
I actually agree with Bill Schneider's assessment in his Electric Politics interview - that any primary challenge to Obama would be seen as a horrid betrayal by African-American voters and is therefore doomed - if it weren't doomed already by lack of funds.
If FDR had the guts to keep Wallace as his VP in spite of all the pundit advice to the contrary, we might be in a very different world. It's difficult to imagine Wallace signing off on the CIA for example.
Posted by Charles D | September 20, 2011 8:42 PM
Posted on September 20, 2011 20:42
A primary challenge to Obama is so utterly beside the point, one wonders why it's even being contemplated. Doing anything within the Dembot structure is utterly beside the point. Yes, if voting is something you feel you just do for whatever reason --- perhaps nostalgic, perhaps sacramental --- then by all means vote for the furthest left indy candidate on the ballot, or write in the homeless guy who shakes his cup in front of the bodega.
Posted by Chomskyzinn | September 20, 2011 8:57 PM
Posted on September 20, 2011 20:57
"A hell of a good question, of course. But I just want to see the look on their face after the two-by-four connects. "
Secretly, that's all the farmer wanted too.
I'm fully sympathetic.
Mules are not... sympathetic I mean. They can't reproduce and so they're just in it for whatever they can get out of it.
Sorta like the folks who run the country.
Posted by Drunk Pundit | September 20, 2011 11:03 PM
Posted on September 20, 2011 23:03
"write in the homeless guy who shakes his cup in front of the bodega."
He's got my vote.
Posted by Drunk Pundit | September 20, 2011 11:05 PM
Posted on September 20, 2011 23:05
"Like the Bourbons: Ils n'ont rien appris, ni rien oublié."
Damn you MJS for making me look up a bunch of French and Latin all the time. Us ignorant masses have better things to do you know.
Point well taken though.
Posted by Drunk Pundit | September 20, 2011 11:08 PM
Posted on September 20, 2011 23:08
DP, some advice from the Bourbons for you:
Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.
Posted by sk | September 20, 2011 11:37 PM
Posted on September 20, 2011 23:37
SK:
"DP, some advice from the Bourbons for you:
Qu’ils mangent de la brioche."
Such advice is still useful today. Just ask Jamie Dimon.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/05/jamie-dimon-says-banks-are-being-nice-to-you-when-they-take-your-house.html
In my idle dreams I imagine Jamie Dimon in the same predicament as Marie Antoinette.
Posted by Drunk Pundit | September 21, 2011 1:12 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 01:12
Freedom is violence in the "Risk Society", mon ami.
Posted by sk | September 21, 2011 2:19 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 02:19
CZ,
I think the people contemplating the primary challenge either still believe the Dems have merely strayed, and therefore can like lost sheep be saved or cynically want to demonstrate that the Dems have always been Bad Shepherds.
(Most probably believe in that last minute salvation...)
Posted by Jack Crow | September 21, 2011 6:26 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 06:26
Jack, institutionally and/or psychologically, they can't let go. It has become truly pathetic.
Posted by Chomskyzinn | September 21, 2011 7:32 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 07:32
Finally we come to the election
I strongly urge .....
Ignore the prez race
Focus on defeating democrats in the house
Prolject as a Unrecovered trot is forever pushing third party
....... third leg fetishisms
We need a vanguard party of cadre
But not an electoral party of dubious construction
That is a confusion of movement work with ballot boxing
That fails to attend to our American electoral system
In fact the primary is precisely the run off system here
If you want to defeat some Jack ass run-in m Indy wise as a small d democrat
And split the vote electing a GOP er
That part of the proyect project makes sense
But go after ...
And here's where strategy matters
Is it Barny Frank and the pwog poofs
we go after
or some poor blue dog remnants?
Posted by Op | September 21, 2011 10:41 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 10:41
Do we try to punish the pwogs that will not cut loose and form a congressional rebel bloc that faces off agin the two headed
corporate party center aisle monster
Or try to weaken the foot soldiers of the center aisle party
Like the t baggers are trying to do. Attacking from the right
The GOP corporate bag men
Problemthe right wing has so many corporate cut outs it's like my younger sister
Joy paine's 19 th century paper doll collection
Posted by Op | September 21, 2011 10:54 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 10:54
This site has an intrinsic ambivalence
Do we boycott the ballot boxcar ala
On the old narco-anarchy line
" if it worked it would be illegal"
Or tamper with it by sabotaging the dembots in an effort to force
Class struggle
Out into the open
by insuring an unbroken reign of right wing deadly buffoons
If the job class majority saw the system as in The hands of
an ......"enemy from above "
Why I'd claim
we'd see a civilian maquis emerging here in a matter of weeks
not even months ....weeks
But now most job class white Americans still think this is their country
Even if "we" lost or are losing control of it to aliens from below
Posted by Op | September 21, 2011 11:05 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 11:05
Btw I say leave bummer be
Because he will win regardless if the GOP nom
Is a yahoo ass pincher like Rick the manly hick
My take
Wal street wants a divided gubmint
In thre rings
Technocrat potus
Lethal Gas bag senate
And hell bent house
Which between the three can maintain the stag
Not a yahoo rodeo bull riding contest
A key stone pol muddle up
Posted by Op | September 21, 2011 11:13 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 11:13
Op,
I can't see how legislative victories have any value without social unrest and the threat of more to come. Even with unrest and agitation, the tussle between the two parties isn't (a) going to produce a viable third party, which wouldn't be almost immediately co-opted and (b) distracts far more than it could ever provide relief or benefit.
Posted by Jack Crow | September 21, 2011 11:27 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 11:27
Au contraire, they did learn -- eventually -- producing the miracle of Obama, Part I. Clearly the only thing Part II has going is the comparative craziness of Michele Bachmann; but they sure accomplished a hell of or a lot with Part I...probably as much as they could have hoped for short of actually caving to some of the popular demands.
Posted by Peter Ward | September 21, 2011 11:30 AM
Posted on September 21, 2011 11:30
Crow
We do not share views on the value to job class elements
of reformations endogenous to the system
Point
I view a new deal II as worth the struggle
And it would involve both a roiled up base and some superstructure mod
Ie proly a successful dem party internal revolt or bolt
The ohbummer regime never faced a base challenge
And as you suggest that must take an in the streets form
And even that is a necessary but far from sufficient cause
If we seek serious reformation
Obviously world revolution is a preferred outcome
But.........
Looks like Clio is playing the death by a thousand revs game here
By my count we're at rev 57 now
943. To go comrades
Posted by Op | September 21, 2011 2:14 PM
Posted on September 21, 2011 14:14
They learned after only 40 years (take that the 800 year ruling French Capetians, or the 300 year long Romanov dynasts who ended up entrusting keys to the castle to dunderheads who would show their mug for decades to the proles only to act as magnets for resentment; Machiavelli's bones would have proffered better policy).
That empty sleeve
From an August 29, 1968, phone conversation between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Then the Democratic nominee for president, Humphrey was in the process of choosing a running mate. Three days earlier, Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, a Japanese American who lost his right arm while serving in World War II, delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. The recording was released last December by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.
Posted by sk | September 21, 2011 2:15 PM
Posted on September 21, 2011 14:15
I'lladd this we need one red hot successful national blood soaked revolution on this planet
If we are to be taken seriously by the elite of corporate earth
Nepal was maybe on of the 57 revs so far but not
A splash of blood heard round the world
Like the limited liability set need to hear
Posted by Op | September 21, 2011 2:18 PM
Posted on September 21, 2011 14:18
Sk
This is johnson at his best
Not sure what you are trying to demonstrate ?
the double phrase empty sleeve bit
is one for the time capsule
The brown face line is merely realistic talk
Maybe you share my sense of the shrewd horse trader at work here
but I suspect not
What say u mate ?
Posted by Op | September 21, 2011 2:27 PM
Posted on September 21, 2011 14:27
That is a great quote from LBJ. Everything I like about the guy.
Posted by MJS | September 21, 2011 3:04 PM
Posted on September 21, 2011 15:04
Here's the answer to old horse-trader's query and why nobody remembers whatever became of Hubert (even before '68):
Heck, even Republicans have cottoned on to the need for disarming the identity politics crowd by satiating their need for faces in high places. Remember how comfortable Dubya was with "strong women"? You'll be seeing more "only in America" miracles for a few decades to come. Enjoy the funk!
Posted by sk | September 21, 2011 3:09 PM
Posted on September 21, 2011 15:09
It's a little disingenuous for them to call it a -primary challenge. They seem to just want to force Obama to debate and get his and the Democratic Party's head on straight about defending the working class(!), not truly oppose him as a possible candidate. A lot of these folks still seem to be (to quote Tariq Ali) -disillusioned in their own illusions about Obama. And in the end, like the predictable recurrence of a cold sore before a big first date, Lesser Evil-ism will make it's diseased appearance.
Posted by Rick | September 22, 2011 12:54 PM
Posted on September 22, 2011 12:54