On Jul 28, 2011, at 5:27 PM, Julio Huato wrote: > Doug wrote: > >> Coates and Gary Younge gave me a hard time for not understanding >> how Obama had mobilized the youth of color. I argued that that >> didn't amount to a hill of beans - the "mobilization" was little more than a >> fan club, and Obama was just another DLC type, not much different in >> substance >> from Hillary Clinton. But to them, I was just a cranky old white intellectual >> elitist and such. I wish we could reconvene so I could say "I told you so." > > It seems to me that *they told you so*. > > It seems to me that they told you -- or suggested or implied to you -- > that at the time the left had to bet, not on pseudo-radicals waging > the finger and sitting on the margins of the electoral process, but > precisely on those who got involved and vested in support of Obama > (including the author of this op-ed in the NY Times), those masses of > young people, some doing very creative forms of political work.
Julio, that's ridiculous. There was no mobilization. It was empty from the first. A bunch of people, including some who should have known better (like Younge), were drunk on Obamamania in the summer of 2008. The "psuedo-radical" bit is insulting, on top of the absurdity of this - it was obvious to me at that time that this would all end badly, and I was right. How is this "pseudo-radical"? The p-r position was that the Obama campaign meant something good. It was a snare, a delusion, a waste. The left is on the ropes and the right is setting the agenda. Doug ^^^^ CB: It's not ridiculous. Your version of how you have responded to Obama is forgetful. You started opposing Obama while he and Hilary Clinton were the only ones left in the Democratic primary without criticizing Clinton or McCain. Pretty strange for an "authentic" radical. Nobody else out of the three was going to be President. Evidently you thought it would turn out better if Clinton or McCain had won. The left is not on the ropes; it has been knocked out of the political ring completely for about thirty years. Hello. Obama , therefore , did not run nor could he have won as a leftist. And the weakness of the left is now not in the least the fault of Obama. That's an ultra-left canard ( in case Lou Pro wants a real example of a canard) . Obama running from the center ( Kucinich was the left candidate; Edwards was to the left of Obama ; just to demonstrate that Obama didn't run ,left compare him to them) didn't stop you from making up a fairy tale version of from what place on the political spectrum he ran, so that you could dishonestly attack him for not governing left. His whole campaign was being nicey nicey and bipartisan with his opponents. That was patent. So, his not getting tough with the Republicans was not a switch from the campaign as whiny , peter pan lefties are making up now in order to claim he betrayed somebody. You are deluding yourself that his campaign was as if you were running for President. Your correspondents above are deluding themselves. I listened very careful to Obama's positions during the campaign and I noted that he was not running as a leftist. He clearly ran as a Clintonian. He's governing like a Clintonian. It is entirely consistent with his campaign. The current tea party suicide political bomber attack is enabled by the 2010 elections prior to which the right wing went into overt racist mode against immigration and Obama being a dark skinned" immigrant not born in the US." Did you miss that or something ? it doesn't appear anywhere in your discussions of these issues, except to say it's not that important; or it's just an inconvenient occurence giving the Communist Party the excuse to claim there is a right wing danger. Guess what ? There is a rightwing danger, which you ignore, like the rogue elephant in the room, so you can mis-blame Obama. White supremacist anger was very clearly the juice that jumped the Tea Party; and they were successful in geeking up rightwingers for 2010; which gave us the current House. Blaming Obama for that is blaming the victim.... in order to say "I told you so"; but what you told us isn't so, because Obama is not to blame for where we are. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
