I told you so
I told you so
You wouldn't listen
But I told you so!
Hm. I actually feel better for having said that. But the thing to remember, now and forever (which as Mark Twain once said, really means about thirty years), is that this isn't about how I feel, it isn't about how you feel, it's not about whether Barack Obama is someone you'd want to sit down and have a beer with (though I wouldn't), it's not about whether we'd be better off if McCain had been elected (grow up). It's about what corporate / government elites have done to this country and to the world, and what they will continue to do unless they are stopped.
How to stop them is a vexed question, but it won't be through voting in more and better Democrats. It surely must start by not giving Obama or the Democrats any money; not working for their campaigns; explaining patiently, repeatedly, why they can vote if they wish but it's not going to bring change; and even explaining the same to our elected representatives. It should, I think, also include not being intimidated by Democratic party loyalists who'll attack anyone who doesn't think their candidate is the Living God. Beyond that, people must choose for themselves, what course of action to take, though it seems to me that non-violent, non-centralized direct action is the most promising approach. For one thing, it can be done on a low budget, unlike a two-party Presidential campaign, and as bmaz' article indicates, you can't expect the Dems to give you support for undermining their party.
It's not really a matter of attacking the Democrats (or the Republicans) from the "left." Attack them not for their position on an imaginary ideological spectrum, but for their harmful policies.
Reading the emptywheel article, though, I think bmaz is still a bit slow. Look at the quotation from Frank Rich, which I paste here with more of the context:
This can be seen in the increasingly urgent political plight of Barack Obama. Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger’s public image — a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it). The truth may well be neither ...Whoa, dewd, is that daring or what? Obama's "increasingly urgent political plight"? As long as Obama's planted solidly on the side of Wall Street and the insurance companies, I couldn't care much less about his chances in 2012. As I said, it's not about Obama or his corporate cronies, it's about the mass of humanity. As for "spineless timidity," I think it's mainly centrist liberals who see Obama that way; the left sees him as a shameless hustler -- a "vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him", as Adolph Reed Jr. summed him up during the campaign -- who's sedulously carrying out George W. Bush's third term. And we spotted him before he was elected. On Obama's campaign as marketing scam, we also pointed that before the election, though Advertising Age noticed it too.
And then, oh, then -- Rich caps his piercing analysis with typical Eric Severeid / corporate media balance: "the truth may well be neither" Obama as socialist tyrant nor Obama as spineless wimp intimidated by the CIA and Big Business. Only time will tell. By the time Frank Rich figures it out, it will be January 20, 2017. There isn't time to wait for the corporate media to catch up with reality, which won't happen before the Second Coming anyway.
(image credit)
