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[Updated and more or less final Venezuelan election results are in Comment 49.]
Not saying Metamars wrote a great diary — What Would it Take for Stein/Honkala to Break Out of the 2% Ghetto? Hint: Go Nuclear — today (the whole deformed rat thing just wouldn’t work), but here he’s basically right and what he says is important:
Progressives and populists seem almost constitutionally unable to exploit the increasingly alarming and even absurd excesses of the corporate state to mount an effective counterattack. The Greens are just another clueless piece of flotsam and jetsam, thrashing about in a sea of befuddlement. They have lots of company from which to either take the wrong cues from, or else no cues, at all.
And then you have leftist Hugo Chavez reelected with 55% of the vote in Venezuela. Unlike ours, it was an election that mattered, and the left won resoundingly despite nearly all the media opposing Chavez. (One Western big lie is that Chavez dominates Venezuela media, when in fact state-controlled media has an only 5.4% market share.)
Jill Stein is not an American Hugo Chavez, and neither is Rocky Anderson. Neither was Ralph Nader.
And Hugo Chavez is not a knight in shining armor. He exists in a real and still precarious Venezuela where you can’t be pure and perfect and survive. George Ciccariello-Maher comments in Counterpunch that “the social welfare of the Venezuela people has been dramatically improved through the Mission system and the groundwork has been laid for a qualitative leap to a political system that breaks firmly with the past. But the present remains heavy with the residue of that past: in the corruption, the opportunism, and the multitude of halfhearted revolutionaries that surround Chávez and threaten to derail or reverse the process.”
From day one Chavez’s rule has been for and empowered by the working poor and the working class. Can Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson say that? Of course not. Can the Green Party say that? Of course not. Could Ralph Nader say that? Of course not. More specifically, when the class conflict is out in the open and both sides recognize an election as an instance of it, that election is won by the bottom 80% (that’s of course why class is taboo in the U.S. mainstream media). Pepe Escobar makes this point in RT, stating that Chavez’s overwhelming electoral strength is built on a class war that both sides are well aware of:
It is basically urban middle class, which would love to spend more – go to the malls all the time and sip Martinis in Miami like they always do, in fact in Venezuela, against the poor. Forty-three per cent of Chavez government’s budget goes to social policies. So he has been building in past years a more [egalitarian] society. If you compare this to other countries in the developing world, it is a great achievement.
… And this opposition between the poor and the middle class that aspire to live like the middle class in Europe or the US, you find the same in Venezuela, Argentina or Brazil. There is class struggle [that] is very hardcore all over these important countries in South America.
My comment over at Metamars, fwiw (emphasis added):
Definitely agree on the following: “Progressives and populists seem almost constitutionally unable to exploit the increasingly alarming and even absurd excesses of the corporate state to mount an effective counterattack. The Greens are just another clueless piece of flotsam and jetsam, thrashing about in a sea of befuddlement. They have lots of company from which to either take the wrong cues from, or else no cues, at all.”
But have some sympathy. The terminal loser-ism of the left and pretend populists is a product of the massive forces consciously fighting for the top class against a basically clueless bottom 80%. Some Green PR gal/guy’s great attention-getting strategy is not going to change this society. At best it increases Stein’s vote into the middle single digits instead of the low single digits. Stein herself is an imperfect candidate, very poorly suited for attracting working class or working poor votes or anything really other than hipster cool college student and professor votes. But even if you found the perfect candidate, some ethical combination of Huey Long and Ralph Nader, that candidate [would] have a helluva hard time getting 10% of the vote in this system.
60 Comments
Excellent analysis here: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7325
Congratulations to the Venezuelan people, you avoided the Capriles version of the neoliberal nightmare that most of the rest of the world is suffering from! Hopefully now the revolution will be deepened, egalitarianism will advance, and the corruption, policing and violence problems greatly lessened.
Impossible. When was this “Day 1″? What was the date of this miracle of mega-bonding?
OK, he may have burst into national consciousness due to his coupe attempt. But that can’t automatically translate into campaign workers, and cooperation among the masses needed to propel him into elected office, and into a shared vision.
If you claim otherwise, then you need to tell us how we get an American Hugo Chavez without a coupe attempt. Or, will you tell us that we need some military dude leading a coupe attempt, here in the US?
In “South of the Border”, the former president of Paraguay says that there is a “new actor” present in Latin America, and that is social movements. Apparently, Oliver Stone wasn’t interested in details – he presented none in his film.
Aren’t you interested in the details of these social movements? *
As long as American leftists are so incurious as to what has worked so stunningly well for Latin American leftists, I don’t think that an Amerian Hugo Chavez would even be recognized as such, by them, much less accepted by them.
I am most curious about the American left’s incuriosity. Aren’t you?
* While I haven’t done any reading up on them, it has occurred to me that social movements coming out of thinly populated but highly connected (i.e. related) village populations may have a leg up from modern, industrialized populations, that have little relationships outside of politics, with one another. Not only not blood relatives, but not even friendly neighbors that you spend time with. See “Bowling Alone”.
Isolation works in the plutocrats favor, for sure.
Good thoughts. America thinks of itself as a ‘rich’ country divorced from ‘the politics of the bloody third world’ (as Chrissy Hynde would say). But not so much anymore. We’re getting third world enough to contemplate Hugo Chavez as a model. Okay, maybe we’re 4 or 5 years away from that.
Maybe the left revolution will start in a poor state like Mississippi or Louisiana. Wouldn’t that be a shock to the professorial left?
And yeah, of course, I think the Venezuelan social movements, the misiones, and Chavez himself are hugely instructional. That’s the basic point of this diary.
I don’t know what ‘misiones’ are. Does most of the FDL community know?
I have to go, but here’s a start on an answer …
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7277
I realize that you didn’t mean this, but most Americans I know, when they think of Hugo Chavez at all, think he came to power in a military coup. This is not true. He did lead a coup attempt in 1992, and was elected president six years later in an election that international election monitors said were clean and fair.
Since then, he has been re-elected twice. None of his electoral victories surpassed the percentage of the popular vote that Reagan received in 1984 or Johnson got in 1964.
The fact is that Chavez is a real, live socialist whose policies the majority of the Venezuelan people support. They like those policies, and don’t want to go back to the neoliberal policies of Chavez’ immediate predecessors.
What needs to happen in America to give us our own version of Hugo Chavez, who would be a definite improvement over what we’ve got, I don’t know. But I have the feeling it will involve something very basic, like widespread hunger. IOW, a coup attempt probably wouldn’t be enough here.
I’d been googling the term ,too. So many of the hits are in espanol, a long, long pdf, but besides the va one fairleft gave, the Wiki has some info on Bolivarian missions.
Populism is what we are talking about here. We’ve allowed that to become one of those dirty words that no one wants to talk about. It’s a mistake to allow that. Populism is precisely what we want, and need, and have needed for over a century now. Populism has been equated to fascism, when fascism is a movement by and for the 1%, and Populism is, or should be, the voice of the people.
Most people can be seduced by false ideologies that give them a way to vent their bitterness and rage at the unfairness of the society they see around them, that they live in and feel, but ONLY in the stark absence of a legitimate alternative. Hugo Chavez gives people a real alternative to such bitterness. Of course, he doesn’t exactly ‘give’ it to them. Most people know what they want. They may not articulate it, because cultural environments such as that in the US virtually forbid it, not overtly, but powerfully. Today, one dare not talk about the ‘needs of the poor’ if one wants to be taken seriously. One cannot speak of land reform, unless one has a death wish, or happens to be in a drum circle. We live in a society where discourse is incredibly constrained, though we refuse to recognize this. That is why hatefilled discourse that vents bitterness is able to thrive, such as racism, and elitism (where lefties dismiss all right wing grassroots types as racists).
We must have a breakthrough in discourse on the grassroots level. But the walls that keep people from talking to each other have hardened so much over the last century that they seem impregnable. If a lefty tries to talk to a righty, it won’t take long for the right winger to dismiss her or him savagely as a homo-commie-illegal-druggie. Meanwhile the lefty is dismissing the righty as a racist-redneck-inbred-alcoholic-fascist. WE GET NOWHERE THIS WAY. We cut our own throats as long as we continue to believe in the walls that have really been foisted on us by the 1%, for more than a century.
Most people want more economic fairness. Most people think that extreme disparities of wealth are wrong, and symptomatic of a sick society. Most people want peace, not war. Most people want a society that respects privacy and maximizes freedom, while adequately overseeing the public good. And so on. We have been trained to hate each other, and we need to break that training. The moment we begin to do that, a powerful Populist movement will start to rise. And this is an awakening that can happen very quickly.
Wendy and metamars:
Here are some other articles that comment on the misiones and look very informative:
(Julia Buxton) http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-protest/deepening_revolution_4592.jsp
(Mark Weisbrot) http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela_research_2008_03.pdf
The BBC does an inaccurate summary of the current realities in Venezuela, but at least features this fact: “Last year, Venezuela’s Gini coefficient fell to 0.39. By way of comparison, Brazil’s was 0.52, in itself a historic low.” The U.S. Gini (inequality) coefficient is now at 0.45, so basically since 2002 Venezuela has passed the U.S. by, becoming more egalitarian while the U.S. has gone the opposite direction.
It would involve a situation that diminished the top 10% significantly. Leaving them to scrape and grovel for the bare necessities.
But since these are the very people or government will protect at all costs, this is not likely to happen very soon.
IMHO a brilliant comment! …
Populism can be a feature of any sort of politics — socialist, corporatist, fascist, communist — but I think it should be associated as a political program with those governments that are of and for the common people but are still willing to live with a capitalist system. The idea is to ride herd on the capitalists and make them work for the vast majority instead of for their own selfish interests. That’s essentially what Chavez is doing, and the rich worldwide HATE it.
When to doctors and lawyers and college professors and corporate lackeys in engineering and computer science and other similar fields are also scrounging in garbage cans, then and only then will such a change occur.
I do not completely agree. I know a large number of people who are very OK with extreme disparities of wealth since they themselves are doing very OK under it. Most of them call themselves democrats and liberals.
Every four years the election campaign is a recycling of the “hate each other” lesson.
Thanks again for your comment (expand it into a full-scale post?!)
In Venezuela the revolution occurred without that happening. In fact it’s engineers and lawyers, the upper middle class, who are fighting hard against Chavez.
You’re looking to the wrong social class for your revolutionary change. I hope revolutionary change happens sooner, but it likely won’t be led by the currently marginalized left leaders. Probably the leader will be an authentically left (which means he/she’ll also be a populist) governor, from one of the states worst impacted by international capital and Obamney’s 2013 and onward austerity.
That’s the point I was trying to make. my bad for not being clear.
Incredibly good comment, Imka. There are many here who reflexively yell that they will never make common cause with those on the right that *do* understand that this is a class war, and can unite with…jeez, what do you call us now? Progressives, on the left? That failure to acknowledge common purpose is self-defeating and ignorant. Those who pretend that OWS protests were all ‘lefties’ are wrong, imo.
Yes, so far, some of it issue to issue, but it’s becoming more and more evident to Americans just how inter-related the issues actually are, and that the American misleadership is failing to address any of them. All comments by candidates and politicians are directed toward ‘restoring the middle class American Dream’, and the Democratic Party supporting cooptation groups like Van Jones’ and MoveOn are cynically acting as shields between true populism and the PTB.
The Awakening *is* underway, and we are apt to forget that it’s a global awakening, and one dedicated and underpinned as a true Spiritual Insurrection.
Thanks for the extra links on misiones, fairleft. This piece under your venezuela analysis link on ‘media lies‘ was good to read, too, as I did believe Chavez had shut down opposition media, and it bothered me a lot.
One of the things I’ve tried to bring to light in this forum is how we are becoming third-worlders in a banana republic increasingly, and how far advanced in understanding the causes the global Indigenous are about it. I’d say to metamars that’s why it might seem we’re ‘incurious’, but think how long so many working people, farmers, and disenfranchised have been experiencing for their lifetimes what many here have just begun to experience in earnest.
The folks like those at la Via Campesina, and the indigenous in Bolivia and other neighbors to the south began to search for causes during the great land grabs, advent of GMO agribusiness, toxic oil spills and chemicals poisoning their food, land, and water. They also know what a sham the latte liberal’s Green Economy and Green Capitalism amount to, and how foolish biofuels really are in terms of agricultural use.
So they’ve known for far longer than most of us what neoliberalism, debt-restructuring under the World Bank/IMF amounts to *for the 99%*, and increasingly assess capitalism in the same vein.
I am most interested in hearing the discussion you’re bringing about how a reigned-in capitalism is working under Chavez, fairleft. I’ve spent more time (not that it’s a lot) reading about Evo Morales and Bolivia; I like him better, silly as that sounds. ;o)
The US is just beginning to feel the results of austerity while the countries of the South were under it’s crushing boot twenty years ago. Too many Amerikans still think that Capitalism is the solution not the problem including most on the so called Left so long as they get their slice of the pie.
I doubt many of us will live to see one of our leaders call for Nationalizing of our oil, banking or industries but one can dream.
The points being made here are good ones, but I have a caveat. Negativity and saying something is not going to work seem to me self-fulfilling, or at least in some way desirous of that. And that has been the thrust of most of what metamars and fairleft have been posting the last couple of days, when instead they might enlarge on that “2%”, which I think is fair to do at this point.
I just finished reading a diary by Tom Thumb on Social Security, and that might be the ‘nuclear option’ metamars was suggesting – certainly I think diaries like his nuclear one might be helpful for future campaigns, but I am sure with the time constraints at present this one is set in the way it is going to go and simply needs support if we are to at least have some impact on what happens next month. Every vote (hopefully) counts, and some I think will be feeling why bother? which is a real shame.
A point I would like to make is that every country is different in what will galvanize action – for Bolivia it was the privatization of water, for Venezuala a poor people’s campaign that brought them into actual citizenry after decades of being totally ignored. For Egypt it was different from Tunisia, but being next door they saw and empathized with a martyred youth because of their youthful, victimized population. But they did their revolution their own way. And they didn’t know, at the beginning, that it would catch fire the way it did.
I think our people will catch fire on the issue of Social Security. Maybe not in time for this election, but we’ll do the best we can. Maybe it has to actually come into force, these savage cuts, and then there will be the nuclear reaction, there will. Because that kind of thing makes its own statement for everyone, clearly and unequivocally.
People are realizing what these corporate hacks have in store for us. And Jill may be no Hugo Chavez, but she is what we have right now and she needs our support. Listen to Cheri – she’s a populist and she’s on the ticket. She has walked the walk with the homeless, another nuclear bomb that will soon explode. The duopolists are not even talking about a huge segment of the population!
I really don’t think this is the time to say what is NOT working. It is the time to try. I don’t care if everyone is going to say the day after the election, see we told you so. That’s not important!
Shoulders to the wheel, everyone; shoulders to the wheel now!
But I do appreciate, fairleft, that you are having this conversation. At the very least, it allows us to chime in.
Recommended.
Too bad Cheri Honkala is not at the top of the ticket. I didn’t know anything about her (because until recently I had been avoiding electoral politics, period) but when I saw her on Moyers, I was very impressed. She seemed authentic and outspoken, much more like a real person and not like a politician. Of course we are all programmed to take points off for that, but maybe we can unlearn some of our kneejerk habits.
I agree with you, juliania, that the homeless are another nuclear bomb and I would add the working poor – who are basically one step away from homelessness. Gas has just gone up 20 cents a gallon here in California – literally overnight. Cities are going bankrupt. The safety net is shredded. Seems to me that parents who are unable to feed their kids might feel like there ain’t much left to lose.
I’m also pleased to see a discussion about how “latte liberals” (for lack of a better description; I am so tired of labels) are one of the biggest impediments to any sort of socialist policies. Instead they like to pretend there is some benign form of capitalism that rises all pleasure craft, that allows everyone to have an iPhone. Now if only those damn Chinese workers would SFTU and get back to the assembly lines.
juliana, you’re right that we should also do whatever we can to increase the % that Stein and other left candidates receive in November. But, otoh, I think that considering the 54.4% versus 2% thing, why that is, helps us plan better for the next 4-5 years.
Jill Stein is up to 3%.
http://www.ballot-access.org/2012/10/01/cnnorc-poll-again-includes-four-presidential-candidates/
How it helps us is by way of saying that we reject the plutocracy, for one thing, even if third parties serve as placeholders for now.
Please consider how long-standing the Bolivarian, Zapatista, etc. movements are, and what knowledge was gleaned and shared over time, and which alliances were made among related affinity groups to be where they are now (knowing that there are still many roads to travel).
I’m going to go out of a limb here and say that there may be a number of different tipping points that serve to light the spark in this nation, including those above, but one other besides those.
And that is that the Great Awakening will include the awareness that we really are in this together, and that so many of us have focused on our own financial well-being in all its ramifications: health care, housing, personal wealth, pension plans, credit availability, etc. *to our national detriment*. Only when we care about what our brothers and sisters are also suffering will we be emboldened to push back, which I believe was an enormous part of the Occupy movement, and will still be in the future.
True empathy for our fellow humans, and the planet itself had been hiding in the closet, and the poor were blamed for their own condition, even reading at ‘liberal’ sites often.
I’ve felt for many years that the lessons we’ve needed would be brought by third-world activist women (not to be sexist), but they often embody exactly the spirit, wisdom, and forward sight that will bring us into the light. In North America, it’s playing out among First Americans, both in the States and in Canada, even more. But there have been few over the decades, centuries, who have been in solidarity with tribes whose land was stolen, who live with toxic debris from uranium mining, water grabs, poisoned land and water, and now…border drone harassment, oil drilling and pipeline construction. They are kicking ass in their protests, many small, but brave and indomitable.
Sorry to trip out. Really what I came back for was to say that in this morning’s Liberty Underground newsletter, Jack mentioned that Capriles has been funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and Wall Street. You’ll know about it, but for others, here’s a piece I found describing the players. A bad list to be on.
Anyway, yes, juliania: shoulders to the wheel!
Great discussion, fairleft; I’m learning some things. ;o)
Thanks, Wendy. I think two things: 1, when the Tea Party people en masse realize they’re being bamboozled (which we on the left should be doing whatever we can to help them realize), and when 2, national-level left populist leaders emerge from the poorer Red states (and the Red states already are generally the poorer ones), THEN you’ll know something real is brewing.
Exactly. We are trained to think in terms of ‘right’ and ‘left’, and the majority of Americans still identify as middle class. We do not think of ourselves as the working class. We have been divided against ourselves very well.
If we don’t know we are the working class, how can we have a working-class hero/ine?
I would have to add a third thing: those on the ‘left’ will have to realize that the current ‘left’ party does not represent their interests and abandon it. And I think we should be doing everything that we can to hasten that day, too.
A fifty percent improvement since Sep. 7th!
Nevertheless, I honestly think she can do much, much better.
John Lennon is dead, but there’s still his significant other. Plus (perhaps more relevantly), a son who is also a musician.
I was speaking metaphorically. Mr Lennon may have claimed that title for himself, but he was no such thing. And don’t even start me about refrigerated fur coat storage at the Dakota. “Ima?gine no possessions..” might be easy, but doing it? Don’t make me laugh.
Bingo, though the original (Carl Denninger Tea People) may be more likely to,and already support the biggies in the discussion. Maybe I’ve linked this before, but… The astro-turf ones may be harder for now, imo.
Even at this site we keep falling for it, more’s the tragedy, and it’s hard to shake that knowledge. As a populace, we excel in delusional thinking, which is the largest part of the problem, in thinking that we’re ‘free’, that elections mean anything any longer. I admit there are dozens of areas at which BigPharma, advertising, corporate media, toxins in the air, water and food aid all that, but still, we need to massive Wake Up!
When we Occupy Mancos, CO (we’re on hiatus for the time being), it’s glorious when people stop and talk, ask questions, listen to the Other Explanation of the conundrum, and walk away…changed.
I wish more folks stood on their corners now, or did uncut flash mob fun protests, armed with simple pamphlets explaining the causes of the 2008 financial meltdown, the government’s response that increased Wall Street wealth, broke municipal budgets, etc., only punished US, even to the point we can’t buy the shit they’re peddling, much less afford to live with any comfort zone. And some folks are dyin’ from it all…so needlessly.
Thanks for the thoughts, hotflash.
Heh. While a bit hyperbolic, I reckon Obomba’s base (or its equivalent next term) will be the last to see the truth, and join the revolution. ‘Baby Steps are good enough!’
Well behaved citizens who have forgotten that they hold any power.
Sometimes my purpose in writing is precisely to make people laugh. I can’t be dispensing brilliant insights all the time!
Quiz question for the uninitiated: how do the Greens in fact operate? Do you know?
As I think Shakespeare said,
Juliania
I believe Juliana is exactly right. The fault is not in leaders like Jill, Rocky, and Stewart Alexander, it is in that we find excuses not to do work and back imperfect candidates. Whatever your favorite candidate or party is – as long now is the time to back them. As long as you don’t back the Uniparty, your work will not be in vain because it will be the basis for future change. Waiting for the perfect candidate with a guaranteed strategy gurantees the status quo.
:-) I’m afraid you’re mixing metaphors in a way I didn’t intend.
I like the Shakespeare quote, because people have a tendency to blame the elite classes exclusively for their problems, while typically doing nothing to fix them. I think their frustration at their own powerlessness also gets projected out onto their fellow plebes that have a different ideological predisposition.
But how often do you hear liberal rank and file blame themselves or their fellow liberals, or conservative rank and file blame themselves or their fellow conservatives? Even though it is they that have the overwhelming amount of votes, not the elite class.
In the case of Stein, she’s a reformer, supposedly standing for the poor and middle class, and not just comfortable physicians, like herself. Having good intentions doesn’t make her smart, strategically, any more than it would have made Mother Teresa a smart and effective politician.
I have not only suggested going nuclear as a short term tactic, but have also found Stein wanting in terms of articulating a long term strategy, and committing to it after Nov. 6. I really have no idea whether she intends to pack her bags and go home on Nov. 7, but it seems likelier than not.
If she goes home after Nov. 6, there is no chance of her taking my advice regarding a post election adoption of my proposed nuclear strategy. Also, that will be too late to affect the referendum results in California.
Since I’m not going to necessarily even vote for Stein, and may deliberately withold my vote unless I see what I recognize as smarter tactics and/or strategy, the idea of putting my should to work for her in conventional ways is a non-starter.
I have been intermittently entertaining trouble making thoughts about employing my strategy, myself, locally. If Stein and the GP benefit accordingly, all well and good. But the chances of this sort of “lone-wolfery” getting adopted, by osmosis, into a Green Party of which I’m not even a member is probably enough discouragement to prevent me from doing so.
It doesn’t help that, taking wendydavis’ hint, I emailed the Stein campaign, and heard exactly nothing.
If Stein wants not only my vote, but some volunteer work in a way that I consider smart, you can tell her that if she goes nuclear, I will pamphlet one of the local schools with the nuclear pamphlet. I don’t owe her my vote, and my attitude towards politicians, generally, is that they should be earning our votes; my attitude towards political parties is that loyalty is stupid, and counter-productive.
If Mother Teresa was running at the head of the Green Party, I would tell her exactly the same thing. Even if I was Catholic!
I do not believe that a political leader will save us. Richard Wolff in one of his updates wonders why people blame the government for economic problems. It’s kind of like bombing Afghanistan because a bunch of Saudis flew some planes into American buildings.
We have to build up a resilient, people-oriented structure for living, rather than rely on a strong leader. A strong leader can be killed, co-opted, bat-shit crazy or have a funny mustache. Idi Amin springs to mind, Ghengiz Khan, George III, Ivan the Terrible, Marat, Julius Caesar and I am sure you can think of any number of others throughout history who, while definitely effective and popular for at least a while, are not anyone you would like to *live* under.
And it is about living, not presidents or even parties. It is about grass-roots, empowered political structures that reflect the will of the people locally. The problem, of course, is how to avoid being ‘harvested’ by powerful interests with other ideas.
I agree. And even though it sounds like team obama’s, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, it’s a point well taken with respect to the left candidates.
Jill, Rocky, Stewart, it doesn’t matter. Support them. The media will always attack them and make them look like lunatics. We can’t discount the power of the media not only on us but on these candidates.
Well, who would you propose? I understand that Mitt Romney is very popular in some circles, and that Barack Obama is polling well, too. I doubt that there exists a perfect candidate for all situations and voters. I have previously said that Jill Stein is the lesser of three evils, but she is of a level of evil that I can accept, although I draw the line at murders and venture capitalists.
I doubt that Jill Stein would be acceptable to the powers that be, and if she even looked like she might make a showing in any state, she would find herself assassinated. I thibnk she is probably safe, though. Jill Stein is on the ballot in MI, as is Rocky Anderson (thanks to the Natural Law Party), do check out their platform.
I don’t wanna go all TBogg on yr ass, but what sort of candidate would be acceptable to you?
I first encountered that phrase in The Joy of Cooking, as an old French proverb. But they did it exactly the other way around — don’t let the good be the enemy of the perfect. Diff’rent strokes.
Oh, the point of the proverb is to keep working to get thing truly right rather than being content with something that’s just OK
I’m sorry she doesn’t appeal to you, metamars, but really it’s about the platform for me. At this point on the ‘appeal’ chart I’m gunshy, having fallen for Obama. I want someone who walks the walk. Jill Stein took no corporate funds, and she began her political career on the local level in Massachusetts, as did Cheri Honkala in Pennsylvania.
This might be an election where we voters actually have to use some initiative on our own, and one part of that is to go to the sites where these gals have been interviewed, to the speeches they have made, the actions in which they have participated. It’s all searchable. You guys are much more practically oriented on what makes for a viable ongoing political enterprise, and I bow to you on that, just a starryeyed voter, me.
“I have been intermittently entertaining trouble making thoughts about employing my strategy, myself, locally. If Stein and the GP benefit accordingly, all well and good. But the chances of this sort of “lone-wolfery” getting adopted, by osmosis, into a Green Party of which I’m not even a member is probably enough discouragement to prevent me from doing so.”
I would say that although I joined the Green Party on my registration to make a point, I’m not a party wonk either. As I said, it isn’t about parties at this point. And to one of the questions above, I remember somebody saying that at the Green Convention, everyone actually got to vote.
I do intend, since I did something similar for Howard Dean way back, to write up a blurb, maybe from one of Jill’s speeches, to distribute round the neighborhood as a flyer the weekend before the election. (It’s a small neighborhood.) I’ll encourage a vote for sure, and encourage a vote for Jill. Her people worked very hard to get her on the ballot in enough states to make a difference. That’s a huge step forward.
But you know, I am also thinking that what will happen after the election is going to be something different anyway, supposing one of the duopoly ‘wins’. The kind of organizing that will be going on in progressive circles, don’t you think, isn’t going to be a party thing but a movement. So, what Jill might do in those circumstances really isn’t an issue in my book. Something like Occupy is going to be carrying us all along, don’t you think?
A president who truly represented our best wishes for the country would have all the support they need to do stuff – Obama could have; he chose not to, had his chief of staff call us names.
Overall she does appeal to me. But my lining up to vote for her will not make much difference – it’d be more useful to threaten to withhold my vote, and to explain why, such that the memes of pursuing smart strategies and smart tactics has a chance to penetrate into the minds of various Greens.
But we need both strong movements, as well as strong parties. And I find it frustrating that we don’t have either. The Tea Parties (which are part movement, part Republican faction) have shown some political muscle, but they’re obviously not going to capture most voters’ support. Which is probably a good thing, since, for a lot of Tea Partiers, their agenda has been framed, and thus distorted by self-serving plutocrats.
Basically, almost all reform forces are anemic in the US. The two most hope-inspiring groups or organizations that I can think of are the National Nurses Union and Progressive Radio Network. IMO, PRN is far less effective as a galvanizing force than it could be – I suspect it’s major contributions are occurring behind the scenes, as well as in getting somewhat clever in bypassing the 1% owned lamestream media.
I don’t know all that much about NNU, but they at least are outspoken, and have gone beyond mere words.
Even in the case of PRN and NNU, though, I would not say that they are more “on” than “off” in utilizing their numbers. E.g., Gary Null and PRN certainly know about the GMO catastrophes. Also, at least in the case of Gary Null, he is doing a lot of work in CA to help the GMO labeling resolution pass. However, AFAIK, there is no push to get non-CA residents pamphleting their neighbors, even if there some effort to spread the word, virally, using the internet. Certainly Gary Null must realize that most of his audience has PC’s, access to printers, and most all will have proximity to a school. However, he has not put this particular 2 + 2 together, any more than Jill Stein has.
It’s very hard to assess the status of Occupy. Clearly, the Occupy X’s did not properly anticipate and prepare for their evictions. If they had, they would have reassembled, legally, starting almost the next day. Having a “leaderless” movement is no guarantee of tactically and strategically smart self-governance, either. And, in fact, having read many short interviews of occupiers in a NYT article, they had a tendency to be fuzzy headed. Certainly, if you compared them to the very articulate interviewees in “Berkely in the 60′s”, you would never expect better results than were had by the SDS.
Considering that even though so many articulate and otherwise smart activists don’t seem to have 2 ‘strategy brain cells’ to rub together, I am not surprised that fuzzy headed (again, even if well intentioned) occupiers were so lacking in ability to strategize deep reforms in the US.
Direct ownership is not how Chavez controls the media. In addition to the stuff highlighted in the Knight Center link you provided, one thing Chavez was doing a while back related to broadcast licenses. In many cases the broadcast licenses which allowed opposition media to operate were simply revoked and then reissued to Chavez supporters instead. So, sure, these media outlets are still privately owned … but Chavez ultimately gets to choose who that private owner will be. Empowering media freedom does not appear to be one of Chavez’s positive traits.
If we’re being honest, Chavez can’t claim that either. Looking at his whole career, the man hardly fits the profile of one who’s life-long passion is for the plight of the poor. From day one, Chavez’s idea of himself as ruler was about organizing members of the armed forces to support him in conducting a paramilitary coup. That didn’t work out too well. So on day two, Chavez decided to wrap himself in the poor and made another go of it.
A more telling question in this context is: “Would Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson or Ralph Nader be ever lead a group of soldiers to take up arms against the US Government in order to achieve power?” Obviously, of course not … it’s a comical suggestion. On the other hand, Chavez absolutely would – and did. There, in a nutshell, is probably the biggest difference between he and the American politicians you compare him to. Chavez is ultimately willing to take some serious brutally drastic measures in order to win. He embraced the poor when carrying their banner in a class war provided him a path to the power he had already demonstrated a strong lust for.
He certainly has accomplished some good stuff on their behalf (and dropped the ball on other stuff), but it’s pretty hard to honestly brand him an altruist exclusively motivated by a desire to help the underprivileged. Although the point as far as political potency is concerned is far less a question of authenticity than one of effectively personifying the popular angst that ultimately propelled him to power. The dynamic in which he achieved this seems kind of unique. Even if they were absolutely ruthless, in order for a Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson to play the role of Chavez … wouldn’t the American people need to duplicate the dynamics of Venezuela and play their parts correctly as well in order to achieve the same outcomes?
I don’t disagree that those seeking to provide a political alternative here in America really need to step up their game. However, it seems tenuous to try and draw the lessons you are seeking from the Chavez case. I suspect he would be equally (or less) successful to either Anderson or Stein were he trying to achieve the presidency in America. As such, I don’t see how looking at his success in a different nation entirely is particularly helpful to finding a solution to our own conundrum.
All that said, Chavez’s government certainly deserves kudos on one front … and I might as well toss it in here. Their system for physically conducting the election this time was, at first glance, downright impressive. The process involved casting an e-vote on a machine which provides a physical printout. Voters than verify that printout and place it in a traditional ballot box (of which a minimum of 50% are automatically counted to cross-reference results) which allows re-counts if necessary. Then to finish the process, the voter dips their finger in indelible ink to prevent re-voting. Pretty solid system it seems. More than a few states here in “The States” could take a lesson or two.
I’m not entirely understanding the criticism here. If there isn’t a GMO labeling resolution that non-CA residents can even pass, what would be the practical benefit from non-CA residents pamphleting their neighbors on the issue? Shouldn’t activists in other states who have been inspired by the CA resolution and Gary Null’s work take that inspiration and get such a resolution on the ballot in their own state so there is a point in passing out materials? (or at least offer a petition to place such a resolution on the ballot or something).
By what transitive property does the failure of activists in other states to do so become the responsibility of Gary Null? California seems like a pretty big bite for one dude to take on. Certainly he doesn’t have to spoon-feed everyone else at the same time? If there are no pamphlets flying off your printer … it seems crazy to blame that on the guy who’s busy working his ass off.
(My original 55% guesstimate turns out to have been correct) UPDATE: More or Less FINAL RESULTS
Chavez: 55.1%
Capriles: 44.3%
The point of the sentence is simply to propose a rough truth regarding Jill Stein. She’s certainly no worse than Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, who are also terrible personalities/candidates for attracting the votes of the bottom 80%.
Anyway, I propose anyone scary, someone that reminds us of Chavez maybe. As I’ve said above, I’m guessing such a person comes out of a poor state, the product of the white and black bottom 80% joining together and electing an authentic, anti-austerity ‘populist’ leftist. That future, that person, could be on the scene as early as 2014.
Looking at PollingReport.com, you get two recent results. The one you cite, where Stein has moved up to 3% from the 1% she polled in early September …
And this more recent one, which shows Stein with less than 1% (I think that’s what the “-” means):
You’ll have to document what you’re accusing Chavez and be more specific. Yes, there’s been a re-balancing of media ownership since the 2002 coup, where much of the media, looked at from a common-sense perspective, committed treason. A couple examples of the major media that advocated and helped carry out the coup have had their licenses revoked. Here’s a summary with context from Wikipedia, and you can find the links there:
That being said, Venezuela is a corrupt society, and favoritism in assigning of licenses to friends and close political associates of Chavez very likely has taken place. (The U.S. is likely no less corrupt, of course.) The big picture, though, is of a media still mostly biased against Chavez, but not advocating coups and/or openly just making stuff up, balanced by more neutral voices, and a tiny amount of openly pro-Chavez media.
Agreed, that’s the task now!
This diary is a ‘breaking news’ related thing, Chavez’s big victory, and I think Chavez and the current situation in Venezuela can actually give real leftists grounds for optimism and a smile. BUT YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. Every percentage up for the alternatives (except for the libertarian ones) to Obamney brings a good future closer.
I agree completely with your comment #20, btw … The Chavez reelection _was_ ‘breaking news’ and then I saw metamars’ diary, and one thing led to another. …
In my diary, that is referred to in this diary, I have laid out a case for why an anti-GMO flyer constitutes a nuclear option for the Jill Stein. Nowhere do I say that Stein should only use such a flyer in CA, though CA might well be a good place for a test run or two. Stein does not have a responsibility to push use of a nuclear, anti-GMO flyer throughout the US; however, if I’m correct about it’s utility, there’s a fantastic opportunity that’s being missed. This can be described as the opportunity cost of non-action. Just like that little kid in “The Sixth Sense” saw dead people, while those around him didn’t, this is certainly not the first such fantastic ‘opportunity’ (the kind that, in a better world, we wish we didn’t have) that is not being exploited by those most able to exploit it, that I’ve seen. E.g., I recently came out of my self-imposed (and imperfectly observed) retirement to write about another such opportunity, that nobody else was pursuing. And still isn’t, AFAIK.
Likewise, there is no reason that Null or his staff couldn’t author such a pamphlet, and push it nationwide. (In fact, it’d probably be easier for Null than for Stein. Stein doesn’t have 100′s of thousands of people – if not more – listening to her radio show, every day.) And furthermore, do so now, during the heat of the election, when politically lazy Americans tend to pay more attention. Obviously, for non CA residents, you’d have a version that wasn’t directly tied to the CA referendum. Also, if a flyer is associated with the Progressive Radio Network, it’s probably a bad idea to make it partisan, at least in the sense of making it read like it was written by the Jill Stein campaign. Instead, it could objectively ask people to vote “accordingly”, and state the history of Democratic and Republican legislators and Presidents in giving us GMO horrors.
By what irrationality have you mangled my words into this red herring? I have given Null as an example of blown opportunity, which I lay at the feet of poor or mediocre ability to strategize. Nowhere I have written or implied that Null has a responsibility to do something that other activists in other states have also failed to do. You are claiming that I said or implied that.
Did you even read my diary that this diary’s author refers to, in his first sentence?: What Would it Take for Stein/Honkala to Break Out of the 2% Ghetto? Hint: Go Nuclear ?
I’m sure that Stein is “busting her ass”, also. So did Mother Teresa, in her day. In what way does “busting one’s ass” translate into tactical and strategic smarts, which has been the point of what I wrote?
Also, a similar offer of reciprocity that I extended to Jill Stein,
goes for Gary Null. If he creates a nuclear, anti-GMO pamphlet and calls for his audience to print out copies on their printers and distribute it at local schools, I will participate.
Jill Stein is a loveable intellectual,
But Cheri Honkala and the Justice Party VP before he became a writer was a gang member on the hood.
The title should be not 55% to 2% but how many apples equal an orange.
http://my.firedoglake.com/richardkanepa/
Here’s more about the councils- it’s a lot more that just electoral democracy, its neighborhood or barrio participatory democracy.
Ubetchiam‘s diary on US secretly funding Venezuela’s news media.
I’ve read that its poison, it pumps out hate all day long just like ours.
This poster wrote 2 diaries on how it works in her neighborhood. She’s from hawaii but lives in VZ too.
The VZ misiones are similar to the idea behind local occupy movements, but VZ’s are supported by Chavez whereas our capitalist utopia can better profit off of us if we are atomized – and weak.
The left- we have problem with our thinking. … attachment to the “great man” idea, if we can only find some hero to save us we’ll make some progress.
it’s personality based, we just have to find the right leader, some sort of savior-messiah-ubermensch person.
It’s a pathological mental psychosis on a mass scale -the left has learned submissiveness and helplessness, and its reinforced through dembot thought-stopping cliches, bullying, and fear mongering. It’s self a reinforcing monster.
The left doesn’t realize that we have the ability to sieze and own power, and I don’t mean protests, building a social base but even better than the right has done while undermining the political party structures.
Teabagger Christianists don’t have this issue, and this is where some of their hate for liberals comes from: instinctively, no one likes a door mat or a weighted yoke. (old Republicans are wandering the wilderness just like us.)
When we elected Obama and the full compliment of supposed progressive democrats. we repeated exactly what happened with the color revolutions in the caucus. it was a PR coup.
Without the underlying strength of social institutions, its vacuous, and its a vehicle for some charismatic person with power ambitions. That’s what Soros and Julia Tymoshenko have said in different forums.
The error is internal, and we’re trying to make an endrun around it externally using a short term electoral strategy, but we’ve been eating our seed corn.
Movements pressure the leaders we have – all of them. we don’t have to play this stupid game they’ve rooked us into. There are better ways.
You realize that If Stein managed to get elected she’d be a hood ornament?
(though I’m voting 3rd party to help with funding next time)
Nice diary fairleft. I’m happy for Venenzuelans.
Caprilles stormed into the cuban embassy during the 02′ coup on Chavez.
the prosecutor Danillo Anderson ended up dead.
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/138015.pdf
This guy is from Google:
I guess this really means 6 years until Google’s form of right wing evil can get a government contract there.
His Bio..
Director of Google Ideas & Adjunct Senior Fellow at CFR. Author of the books Children of Jihad, One Hundred Days of Silence, & forthcoming The New Digital Age
James Petras says that the White House advised Capriles to put on the face of populist reformer instead of a right winger, and he was 100% endorsed by the big zero.
Populist reformer worked for Obama in 2008, despite the fact that, just like Capriles, it couldn’t be more obvious who he works for. We Americans are fooled too easily, or maybe we just don’t care enough. The only way to change that is for the PTB to turn up the heat, which they plan to do.