If there ever was a strong reason to lower your sights about the positive effects of this never-ending presidential nomination process and the need for even hardened politicos to take cover here it is.
Periodically I return to edit older blogs for spelling problems, technical glitches and to correct artless prose. Yesterday I was in the throes of such a process when I came upon a blog entitled Musings on Presidential Campaign 2008, dated March 7, 2008. The gist of that commentary, a response to a reader’s question, was to answer why I had reduced the amount of time and energy I had been spending writing on the mind-boggling but essentially trivial American presidential campaign. I had kept on that track pretty faithfully, except I went off the wagon once when there was a tempest in a teapot controversy over the relationship between Obama and ex-Weatherpeople Professors Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn. That is until I read a little article about the doings of one ex-drug addict (I assume) and drafter dodger (Vietnam) radio ‘talk jock’ Rush Limbaugh and his role in the just concluded Indiana Democratic primary.
In the real world it has not been a good spring. Fighting continues to rage in Baghdad. There are no timetables for troop withdrawals in sight, much less the necessary immediate, unconditional withdrawal that we fight for. The escalating war budgets, despite harmless Democratic parliamentary antics, keep getting funded. Fuel prices have skyrocketed. Previously ample and cheap food staples are starting to give the world economy the feel of Paris or Petrograd in their revolutionary days. Homeowners, their tenants and others are going to the wall during the relentless mortgage foreclosure crisis. And those are the good days. Into this mix comes one Rush Limbaugh who has presented a very simple idea. In order to give his beloved Republican Party at least the semblance of a fighting chance to win the presidency in November he has decided to muddy the waters of the Democratic Party nominating process by having Republicans, in states where it is permissible, vote in those primaries for Senator Hillary Clinton.
Well, nobody that I know, and that includes some very committed liberal Democrats, would have thought much of this sophomoric tactic except that in Indiana on Tuesday May 6, 2008 it is very possible that the tactic worked. At least the Obama campaign is acting like the small Clinton margin of victory was essentially based on this crossover vote. Of course, for the Obama campaign this meant something. It meant, in the coin of the realm of bourgeois politics, that they could not close the deal on the nomination.
But what about those of us outside and to the left of this process? That brings me back to my original point above from that March blog. Don’t look for relief from those quarters. This whole process now is about mudslinging and some antics that we would not accept from twelve year olds. But it also brings me back to the litany of problems that I presented above. If you want to address the real problems of this sorry old world then back away, way away from the Democratic and Republican Parties, their agents, apologist and hangers-on and come over and help us build a workers party we can call our own. Join us.