Mike Ely has writen an interesting response to Michael Moore who has posted a letter online that ruminates over the Democratic presidential field. Moore poses the question that faces us as follows:
Twice before, we have begun the process to stop this man, and twice we have failed. Eight years of our lives as Americans will have been lost, the world left in upheaval against us... and yet now, today, we hope against hope that our moment has finally arrived, that the amazingly powerful force of the Republican Party will somehow be halted. But we know that the Democrats are experts at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and if there's a way to blow this election, they will find it and do it with gusto.
more beneath the fold...
Moore continues,
Do you feel the same as me? That the Democratic front-runners are a less-than-stellar group of candidates, and that none of them are the "slam dunk" we wish they were? Of course, there are wonderful things about each of them. Any one of them would be infinitely better than what we have now. Personally, Congressman Kucinich, more than any other candidate, shares the same positions that I have on the issues (although the UFO that picked ME up would only take me as far as Kalamazoo). But let's not waste time talking about Dennis. Even he is resigned to losing, with statements like the one he made yesterday to his supporters in Iowa to throw their support to Senator Obama as their "second choice."
What Moore then ends out saying makes a sort of sense, but only if you confine your political horizons to participation in electoral politics (and therefore the Democratic Party).
Mike Ely, however, in his new blog, Kasama argues, and I agree, that Moore's letter
captures, like a snapshot, the misery and the logic of many progressive people. Believing that change can only come electorally, many are reduced to poring over the differences among the various establishment candidates, trying to find a reason to pick one over the other.
I like Michael Moore. Not because I agree with him. In fact I often disagree strongly with him. But I like him because, like many Kossacks, he is seriously searching for a way to overcome the corporate grip on American political life in order to advance a progressive politics that would empower the poor and working class majority of this country and address the very urgent questions that will never be dealt with adequately so long as the corporate capitalists maintain their power. This is why he makes his movies. It is why he supported Nader, and also why he returned to the Democratic Party.
But as Ely argues,
Now firmly back among Democrats (as so many of Nader’s former supporters are), Moore confronts the core problem of this course: that the establishment of this party is fully and profoundly committed to empire and the system as it exists, while he and much of the Democratic political base is opposed to this Iraq war and genuinely motivated of many outrages and oppressions that fill people’s lives.
The REAL question, then is not whether to vote for Clinton, Edwards or Obama, but rather whether there is a real chance for the progressive base of the Democartic Party to actually take control of the party and turn it into a vehicle for substantive change.
Obviously most Kossacks think the answer to that question is "yes." But if this truly a reality-based community it is a question we must continuously return to.
The emergence of the progressive netroots since the 2000 elections is a genuinely important development that has obviously forced candidates to deal with. And yet, when the Dems took Congress in 2006 whose agenda drove their strategy: the progressive netroots who busted their asses to elect them, or the corporate interests that have always dominated both parties?
Many people here know all this and are furious. But what to do?
Ely argues that
This schism within the Democratic Party is one of the hottest faultlines of U.S. society — and it is the one that needs to ignite in order for revolutionary change to have any chance. A partial rupture in that faultline over Vietnam (in 1968) brought the whole 1960s to its highest boiling point — as LBJ’s successor HHH proved incapable of bringing millions back into the system, and revolutionary sentiments burst into open contention within a whole generation.
I imagine that there are a lot of Kossacks here who harbor thoughts like this. They are here for two somewhat contradictiory reasons. On the one hand they are actually interested in advancing a progressive agenda through participation in the Democratic Party because it seems like there is no other way, but in the back of their minds they know or sense that the Democratic Party is as much a rigged game as every other major institution in this society and that what is important about the progressive netroots is precisely the potential that its disgust with the leadership of the party will finally overflow and help fuel the sort of upsurge that occurred in the 60s and that seems like a precondition for real substantive change.
Ely is interesting guy to read. He was a long-running supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party and editor of their newspaper, who recently left that group and has subsequently written a very thoughtful critique of that party, its leader, Bob Avakian, and his claims to having the answers for the pressing issues facing humanity.
Ely is a close observer of American politics from an explicitly revolutionary perspective. The discussions on his site, which attracts mainly other organizationally unaffiliated but revolutionary-minded folks like himself, are lively, but with this piece he is raising an issue that I think many Kossacks are also grappling with and that would be greatly enrich by our participation.
He poses the question in a way that I'm sure many here will find provocative,
How do we answer the Michael Moores of today? How do we grapple with their stubborn and deeply-seated illusions? What is it that we see and they don’t? And, what may they be focusing on that many of us choose to ignore? What are the places where their hopes collide with what is possible? What are the breaking points where they realize they CAN’T support one of the major parties, and MUST (however reluctantly) seek other means and movements for raising their demands? How and where do we speak to them in language that they can hear, and in a message that forwards the revolutionary change that the world truly needs?
It seems to me that people are constantly coming to that breaking point here on this site, but then stepping away from the full implications of what they are realizing about the limits of the Dems and electoral politics in this country more generally. This is not surprising. The implications of this realization can mean profound changes in how one feels they must lead their life. But this can also be profoundly liberating.
