2012 and vote for him: 1) Nobody in this country can get elected unless they
have already made substantial compromises with the status quo, overtly or
otherwise, so perhaps the best we can hope for is that the candidate won't be
absolutely hideous (which is certainly the alternative in 2012 and 2) a more
complicated and more salient reason is that Obama, within the boundaries of the
necessarily conventional framework he assumes, is trying to do what's best for
the country--something in which the alternative candidates do not show the
slightest interest--only right wing ideology and lip service. I base this
partially on the fact that Obama does in fact often *ignore* the Left--even when
the polls show that the public is *with* the Left. Richard Wolfe, the MSNBC
journalist and author of an Obama campaign biography (his is *about* the
campaign and not a product of it), emphasized Obama's amazing ability to tune
out all the media and pundit hype, whether or the Right or the Left, and make
decisions solely on whatever his internal criteria are for the good of the
country. I think those internal criteria, whatever they are, have been
mistaken sometimes, and Wolfe has been panned by many of my favorite lefty
bloggers on Digby and Daily Kos as a conventional Washington "villager" and
Beltway pundit, which I suppose he is, but I don't see him engaging in the kind
of hyperbole and hasty generalization I see coming from the likes of Chris
Matthews--or the overly cautious he said/she said style one gets from others...
Those of us who are in some sense on the Far Left, at least as per Michelle
Bachmann or Sarah Palin, need to look somewhere other than to electoral politics
to create more fundamental change. I believe that would be a movement based on
building alternative institutions and working within other progressive
movements, such as the unions, environmental groups, civil rights organizations,
community organizing outfits, etc.
Which is not to say that electoral politics should be neglected altogether. We
should look to build alliances, wherever possible, with the least of whatever
evils are available.
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