An abstract idea without *a practical plan* is just an _opinion_.

-

["Deadbeat":] What I mean by that the Left has not been successful drawing who I think are the most loyal of the Democratic Party base away from the Democrats. The result of the election, IMO, indicates that people of color were central to Obama’s victory and the Left needs to build solidarity with people-of-color. The Left seem to not have done a good job on that front. ]

Sorry guys (”armean”). I passed out on the bong in my Berkeley hot tub, Saturday a week ago, and I just came to! I hope it’s not too late for you and Brandy to see this post.

(Actually, since my last post, Nov 15, a political or literatry event-a-night in the Bay Area which I attended, and a recent huge scandal, at UC Berkeley, all last week, about a group of arch-Zionist Jewish students assaulting two Palestinian female students and one Palestinian male student for holding a Palestinian flag — affirming their existence — on a student organization university building balcony overlooking an anti-Palestinian Zionist concert performance, took almost all my free time last week.

See the BerkeleyDailyPlanet online: UCPD Investigates Israeli-Palestinian Altercation On Campus )

“Deadbeat”, you said what the left *should* do, but you still haven’t given any specific, concrete, *practical* (i.e., *operational*) ideas about how to do that. You’re just repeating yourself on your variations of your same *abstract*, *generalized* ideas. You still haven’t offered any explication of *specifically* _HOW_ you proposed to do that. I gave an actual concrete, *specific activity* to achieve my goal. You’re just talking about A *goal* — which few (at least real) leftists would disagree with.

A specific, concrete, practical, operational idea is like my national, *organized* presidential election boycott — and other specific, concrete *direct action* ideas I have or could offer.

When African Americans wanted to desegregate the buses in 1960’s Montgomery, Alabama, they didn’t just say, “We needed to desegregate seating on the buses and stop the bus service from making us sit in the back.” They had a specific plan: the Montgomery Bus Boycott and how they were going to execute that plan. An idea without *a practical plan* is just an _opinion_.

It’s like when Sarah Palin said about her and McCain, “We’re going to decrease unempoyment [or whatever]“, and Katie Couric (the news interviewer) asked Palin *how* — and Palin repeated, “By decreasing unemployment” — and Couric said, “Yes…, but specifically *how*?”

(I don’t mean at all to directly compare you to Sarah Palin, altho I’m going to miss her *very much* in the news. Hahaha!)

You’re saying that you (&/or the Left) should bring Blacks and Latinos/Browns & all people-of-color together, or draw Blacks from the Dems, or whatever — but you haven’t said, specifically, *HOW*.

What stops PDA from infiltrating the Dem Party?

This construct DB weaves has now connection to reality. Sounds kinda interesting, but there is nothing actionable about it.

As far as African Americans voting for Dem candidates (Obama just be one of thousands of examples), no particular mystery there. The interesting thing is that the total % of eligible voters who turned out to vote in ‘08 was the same as ‘04. Now that’s telling.

Parties are not going to solve the deep problems that exist in the American body politics (and yes these are structural, not Party-oriented, rather than politically systemic). Perhaps that is the lesson of the US Green Party and those other parties that have tried and tried to edge there way in. At the Presidential level you’ve got the electorial college which requires a constitutional amendment to change before there can even be a meaningful alternative to the duopoly.

Keep the energy at the local level where there is home rule of one sort of another. With the collapse of the global economic system, a local economy that moves outwardly to regions is a viable alternative. Let the PDA and the Cobb’s fantasize about transforming DC.

What DB seems to be bickering about is that some old notion of a “left” needs to strategize around upending the body-politics. Top-down will never do it. The nation will stay at war, keep it’s occupied territories and empire until what it takes to do that costs more than letting go. They’ve found a money generating and deregulatory pyramid scheme to keep it going way past its real world collapse; but that cannot go on for much longer. The only non-negotiable is energy and most of that is fossil. We cannot shift to alternatives – 1) fast enough 2) sufficiently to keep the material Western and large parts of the Eastern world going.

This human based material world is based on the characteristics of oil, coal and natural gas. Altneratives can over time reduce some dependency but not all. Only a major cultural and economic transformation will allow the continuation of the species.

“The best ideas come from a relaxed mind. Have a good time”

Lol!! You guys are funny.

What I mean by that the Left has not been successful drawing who I think are the most loyal of the Democratic Party base away from the Democrats. The result of the election, IMO, indicates that people of color were central to Obama’s victory and the Left needs to build solidarity with people-of-color. The Left seem to not have done a good job on that front.

Thanks for your clarification of “boycott”. I misinterpreted your meaning. I agree that a direct action serving to apply pressure is a needed approach. And you are right about the Greens being naive to being infiltrated by people like David Cobb and Medea Benjamin and other so-called “Demo-Greens”.

That’s why such an organization needs to have “a mission statement of governing principles”, so that infiltrators can’t come in and subvert the organization’s stated purpose for being, practical mission, operating/governing principles and goal. Like Brandy, I’ve observed that leftists aren’t very savvy/streetwise.

The Green Party has their “10 points” but they have internal and structural deficiencies that enabled them to be infiltrated by Cobb. I don’t think those deficiencies were addressed this year which means the Greens could face another “coup”. In order to have an effective boycott a strong organizational structure is necessary. Unless there’s going to be new political structures on the Left or there be some renewed solidarity, the Green Party is the only working structure at this time particular time to compete against the Democrats. And their ineffectiveness doesn’t present much hope.

“Insanity”: when you keep doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results!

That is why I’m asking questions and engaging in this discussion and testing my own assumptions.

Hey, Deadbeat, I’ll be away for a few hours taking a bong and a jaccuzi in my backyard garden hot tub…

The best ideas come from a relaxed mind. Have a good time.

[wink, wink...]

Right “armean”…?

You are just *repeating* yourself (Deadbeat said on November 14th, 2008 at 7:26pm) …

And I have *already responded* to your arguments (Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, CA, said on November 14th, 2008 at 11:28pm).

But, while you’re at it, still just *repeating* yourself, what do you *mean* by:

“I am just trying to analyze the behavior of the electorate and to think of ways that the Left can attract those voters to the Left.”

*What* ways…?

Offer up some concrete, specific, *practical* ideas.

—————————————————————————————–

And when you said, “Joseph, I interpret your definition of a boycott means to “withdraw” from electoral politic[s]“.

Again (if this mere *restatement* in different words helps your understanding) — aside from the fact that uniting behind one truly progressive 3rd party candidate is hardly “withdrawing” — I’m not talking about withdrawing *completely*, by an organized national election boycott. I’m talking about boycotting, as a form of direct action/pressure, under certain existing *conditions*, for certain *purposes*, and as a way to make certain *demands* (like when Civil Rights activists of all colors used to boycott stores that didn’t hire minorities) — other than what you seem to offer: _just *caving into* the Democrats_, which means you see the solution (with some alliance that doesn’t exist) as just being a *Democrat* and more or less continuing the lesser of two evils neoliberal imperialist *status quo*.

In fact, one reason that the Greens imploded on a national level four years ago was because they didn’t realize that they’d be infiltrated and subverted by the *Democrats* (as with David Cobb). That’s why such an organization needs to have “a mission statement of governing principles”, so that infiltrators can’t come in and subvert the organization’s stated purpose for being, practical mission, operating/governing principles and goal. Like Brandy, I’ve observed that leftists aren’t very savvy/streetwise.

“Insanity”: when you keep doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results!

[Like, certain Jewish friends of mine have a "We are an anti-Zionist organizaton dedicated to the reunification of historic Palestine under absolutely equal rights regardless of religion, ethnicity and gender, for all its inhabitants" statement. Because, otherwise you have all these liberal closet Zionists (like, Chomsky, Bennis, Avnery, Halper, Zunes, Greg Palast, now even Finkelstein, etc., and their lesser or rank-&-file cohorts) speaking for, or leading, infiltrating, subverting and causing discord (like, for just one example, demanding that every liberal Zionist rabbi in the area must speak at a *global justice* event, but, they demand, *no* anti-Zionist Palestinians/Jews can speak), especially at thee most critical moments in time, in what generally passes for the Western "pro-Palestinian human rights movement" and even in the anti-war movement (like, exactly when Israeli IDF is mass rampaging through or re-invading Gaza, or some West Bank Palestinian towns, or Lebanon: and *that's* exactly when these liberal closet Zionist icons suddenly "discover" and start publicly talking/writing about "rampant anti-Semitism" on the *left* -- like Naomi Klein did too, as with an old commentary at her website exactly the month, 2002/2003?, when Israel was mass invading Jenin, etc.!) It's a *fact*: most of the Jewish so-called "Peace Now" movement in Israel is *Zionist*.]

Worrrd…

(I lllike the way you think, Brandy.)

So, Deadbeat, your argument logically (whether you mean it or not, whether you’re pro-Dem or not) boils down to: the left has to support Dems because most everyone is going to vote Dem anyway, and therefore you won’t look stupid supporting a 3rd party, or participating in a nationally *organized* voter boycott for the reasons I mentioned above

Joseph, I interpret your definition of a boycott means to “withdraw” from electoral political. It my interpretation is correct then what I am saying is that the resulting “vacuum” will leave pragmatic voters not other options other than to vote for the Democrats.

What I am saying is that the Left must have a presence in the electoral arena for this reason. I think you misinterpret my message. I am not “pro-Democratic Party”. I am just trying to analyze the behavior of the electorate and to think of ways that the Left can attract those voters to the Left.

I agree with you that Obama will disillusion his supporters. We see that taking shape with his inner circle selections. However the question I am asking is what will the Left have in place to corral that discontent.

Another possible reactions could be that the disillusioned will just stay home opening up the opportunity for the Republicans and a right wing backlash due to lack of participation and demoralization. That IMO would be a worst outcome than folks staying with the Democrats.

I don’t have the answer but I do appreciate this discussing difference without acrimony. Your answer help me understand your position better and I don’t disagree with some sort of direct action which is what a boycott is. I also agree to adherence to principles as well. However if the main strategy is to dissuade people from supporting the Democrats the key to that strategy is attracting people of color from the Democrats. IMO the Left this year was ill-prepared because of their inability to build solidarity especially with people-of-color.

Therefore Joseph, my position is not about giving the Democrats anything. It is about being prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that the Democrats will give to the Left.

Just quietly tiptoe back away from “armean”…

He’s a little muddled…, and he’s not thinking clearly…

If he starts to approach, slowly remove your tie-dyed shirt and lightly toss it off to his side to distract him…

Don’t make any direct eye contact, don’t run, and don’t make any sudden movement or noises until he’s well out of sight…

(Ever since this country was founded, white guys *really* got the shit end of the stick and the rawest deal in America, so he’s understandably upset…)

______________________________________________________________________________

Whew…!! That was close…! I could use a toke…!

Come here, baby… Let’s do the nasty to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida …!!

And it’s about the fact that the ways of doings things are dated, and much of the radical Left is out of touch.

So Shields you go bro!

In the past fifteen years or so, northern california has been the scene of ruthless gentrification, basicly the wealthy would suck the Oxygen out of the air if they knew how. They also have successfully managed to drive all the ethnics into the bay and have them swim all the way to east bay. This should be the ground zero of class struggle. So where is it? Logically a strong Socialist party should rise from this area. So where the hell is it? And what have you guys up in Berkeley been doing? I’m sorry what was that? OH! You’ve been passing the bong around!

Northern California is quite intolerant under the guise of tolerance, unaccepting behind the mask of acceptance. The landscape is littered with five man parties, three and half of whom have fried their brains on drugs. And they all call themselves Left.

I’m repeating myself here but I will keep repeating myself until somebody gets it. I’m foreign born. I grew up around working class socialists, most of whom had never read Marx. They were in that camp (or parties) because they recognized socialism to be the best way to reach that holy trinity of Humanity: Freedom, Justice and Equality. Many of those guys ended up in mass graves. They gave me my color. Not some Professor who considers doing sex, drugs and rockn’roll in the sixties to be activism or “Left”.

Naturally I consider ninty percent of the Left in this country to be an absolute joke. Most of you guys are a product of the System. You think like the system. You have the uncanny ability to suck the soul out of any process and reduce it to a “system”. One you can file in a drawer. You do that with everything. Your organizations are inorganic, your leadership is inorganic and that’s one of the reasons they fail every time. You function like a corporation. Yet you claim you stand against the corporations? Hate to sound like a slogan but you need to think outside the system.

The Left is not outdated. Your thought process is outdated. It is not that the Left has failed. It’s that people have failed to understand what Socialism was meant to serve. (note the holly trinity above)

Oh and Anderson, don’t white me this or white me that. Where I come from there always has been and still is equal opportunity slavery. My people have been slaves too. So basicly there’s zero white guilt here. Don’t try to push me around with that one. The only color I really see is pink.

So you gone out to San Francisco, partying? (as in the non-political version) Good! Have a drink for me. I had to go to my FREAKIN’ SECOND JOB to make rent.

Thanks for your continued input Deadbeat to a more *valuable* dialogue (rather than the long back-&-forth debates you carry on with a couple of obvious morons like “lichen” and Max), but I must respectfully counterdisagree with you on a point where you respectfully disagreed with me:

Deadbeat said on November 14th, 2008 at 7:26pm: “I disagree with Mr. [Joseph] Anderson regarding a boycott of the elections. The big reason is that Obama received 95% of the Black vote and close to 80% of the Brown vote. This is an alliance that cannot be ignored by the Left. This alliance is symbolically embodied by Green Party Veep Rosa Clemente. IMO calling for an election boycott will alienate you from the voters who will end up choosing Democrats anyway.”

1) We’ll see what happens when all those people who voted for Obama see him continue the same ole DLC cum GOP RepubliCrat neoliberalist and imperialist policies that will continue to suck TRILLION*S* of dollars away from domestic social, economic relief, and safety net programs, let alone any new social programs (like true, single-payer, national heathcare), to, instead, the corporate elite and U.S. imperialist wars, occupations, bases, covert anti-democratic operations, and oppressive foreign regimes (like Israel, Egypt, Columbia, more or less Pakistan, whatever central Asian republics, and even now Georgia). Less than 24 hours after even the polls just closed, who does Obama pick as his chief-of-staff?: some old Chicago political machine arch-arch-Zionist and political ‘thug’. Where’s the “Change”?

2) What’s the point of voting for the Dems when they just continue to take their voters for granted, as having no other place to go.

3) What’s the point of voting for the Dems with, so that all they care about is getting elected, but their voters don’t have anything to threaten them with.

4) “This is an alliance that cannot be ignored by the Left.” What does that even really substantively mean? First of all, I don’t know if you can call more than at *least* a 15% *difference* an “alliance”. Both groups always vote majority Democrat, yet the Dems substantively ignore that vote ever four years. Besides, there was no grassroots/organizational “alliance” per se among Browns and Blacks. I’m Black and I wasn’t aware of any grassroots/organizational alliance per se, but the McKinney-Clemente alliance represents the kinds of progressive cross-cultural alliances that *should* be. However, both ethnic/”racial” groups had their own respective interests for voting Democrat: the huge Repub attacks on Latin American immigrants was the reason Browns voted Dem in such a high % — for Browns, it became an economic, even a very survival necessity, to eliminate or aleviate those attacks against them; whereas Blacks voted Dem because what, are they going to vote Republican, for McCain? — and because they wanted to see any reasonable and viable Black person in the White House ).

——————————————————————————————————–

Deadbeat: ” Therefore having an electoral arm is necessary in order to present yourself as serious to a large body of pragmatic voters.”

So, Deadbeat, your argument logically (whether you mean it or not, whether you’re pro-Dem or not) boils down to: the left has to support Dems because most everyone is going to vote Dem anyway, and therefore you won’t look stupid supporting a 3rd party, or participating in a nationally *organized* voter boycott for the reasons I mentioned above (November 14th, 4:00pm) where I gave *conditions*. Your argument here seems to me to be a rather poor argument. What kind of genuinely serious activist makes decisions based on whether people “take you seriously” at the time? Leftists are supposed to be motivated by moral beliefs, *principles* and, indeed *changing* the political consciousness of the nation/people — not by whether it’s popular at the moment/time (like being Abolitionist, pro-women’s suffrage, pro-Civil Rights (including things like interracial marriage rights), pro-ethnic & -gender institutional diversity, anti-war, pro-gay rights, or even being socialist). If the left doesn’t have the moral and intellectual fiber and fortitude to criticize and reject the Dems when the Dems give them *nothing*, then they *really* don’t deserve to be taken seriously.

_______________________________________________________________
[Well, I'll catch you (and maybe Brandy) tomorrow: I'm headed out on the town over in San Francisco this Friday night!]

It’s not about age or Alinksy, it’s about a rotten to the core system which makes the notion of playing the game a pathetic joke.

Obama not only got rid of the Afro, he got rid of his Reverend, and just about everything one can consider “black” in the name of being your president.

He handed it all over and he became what he is. Nader didn’t and that’s why he’s not your president. Nader is the unpolitician, no party, no makeup person just a pocket filled with a tattered Constitution and a mind that won’t quit even if he’s worn and somewhat beaten down.

(If all there was to it was to dress for success, then it would be easy, Brandy. You can look like a young Robert Redford, but the danger is what you believe, think, say, and how you say it. Otherwise, you can either be ignored or you can become president of the American Empire.)

If we could reinvent the “rules” we might have a shot a being free from the master.

True, as Nader (regardless of what one thinks of him) said: The Left makes no demands, but looks at the demands that Limbaugh put on McCain!

But fact is, if you run for office, you DO have to be articulate and not further negative stereotypes about third parties and the Left in general (it was Saul Alinsky who said, if cutting your hair will make people in the community listen to you, then DO IT), that rule is not a fair one, but that is the way it is, we either want to win people over or we don’t , but actually that was not my point.

My point is: that it is time, after the older people (Nader et all) have run two, three, four times, to step aside and allow the Clementes, the Mirimarkis, the Gonzaleses to take the lead. This is NOT happening. In my neck of the woods, the over 50 activist crowd is grossly overrepresented and the under 50 activist crowd is, well, non-existent with a few exceptions. Don;t take my word for it, ask the Granny Peace Brigade, a few of them lamented to me about the lack of young people.

Also, it has been beaten into us to know our history. True, we need to, but we also need to come into the 21st Century. Obama ran a tremendous grassroots campaign, we will never have his money, but we can have impact if we get our act together and become a bit more visionary with the new free and low-cost technologies.