The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #72037 Message #1238563
Posted By: GUEST
01-Aug-04 - 06:55 PM
Thread Name: BS: Great Speech Mr. Kerry!
Subject: RE: BS: Great Speech Mr. Kerry!
I said Gore caved because it gave him a strategy by which he could discredit the left wing of the party AND the progressive movement that supported Nader in 2000, and thereby neutralize the left wing that they felt cost them the election.
The left DID NOT vote for Gore in 2000, and had they not been able to successfully demonize Nader and scare half the progressives away from Nader and the Greens this election year, while co-opting and recasting themselves as progressives they most certainly would go down to defeat this November. They had plenty of progressive presidential candidates this year to "prove" how progressive the Democratic party is: Carol Mosley Braun, Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich, and even though Howard Dean is no progressive, he did manage to get progressives to sign on to his campaign.
The progressive left has now backed themselves into a bargain with the devil corner. All those who were vehemently anti-war now have to live with a pro-war hawk for their man. That causes some dissonance for them, as can be seen this week in all it's glorious dysfunctional splendor on the Democratic leaning news sites like Common Dreams and AlterNet, where the Nader bashing has been most intense.
So now, they are risking alienating all those nice millions who came out and demonstrated last year against the Iraq war for being duplicitous and not standing by their principles. The just look like the mealy mouth weasels that they are--and I include all the media darlings in this: Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, etc. All of them have harangued Nader mercilessly and been dupes for the Democratic Leadership Council. It worked for them. Now all those people in the peace movement have to either go against their most deeply held values and do the politically expedient thing and vote for a man who stood before the nation this week and told the world he was sending MORE troops to Iraq.