Meanwhile there is a strong progressive movement that sees nothing worth salvaging in the existing 2 Party system and its institutions. This movement is about the need to re-imagine and create new structures.

As with your request, Poilu, I’ve yet to get an answer. Deadbeat makes no distinction, and in fact blames the “left” for the success of Obama.

Martha,

Once again you raise excellent points. I particularly like your point about Biden sending his son off to Iraq to kill (let’s be straight about the mission). It is the hypocracy which makes the Obama/Biden ticket so toxic. I’ve said, above, that with all his bluster - and there is no mistaken his hawkish record - McCain may be less the interventionist than Obama, with Biden’s nudging. I recall the LBJ demonizing of the right-wing-libertarian Goldwater. That fear gave us a decade of merciless war in Southeast Asia under the LBJ administration.

Clearly from your link, Nader is to the right of me regarding the subject of prison. If you are a minority currently in prison and you speak out against the dismantling of the prison industrial complex, then I think there is really something wrong with you.

JE - Surely you’re not saying that my remarks imply that I support the republicans… I was simply pointing out that Joe Biden is a corporate / government boy, through and through. That is to say - he’s a murderous, greedy, savage son of a bitch who is responsible for considerable horror and misery here in “the homeland,” and around the world, probably even more than is Mr. Maverick, himself.
And, let me say it again - yes, I think Palin still has a heartbeat. That’s not to say she’s a sweetie or someone who truly cares about working people or the poor - or about women. As Max Shields remarks, above, she’s but a fly in the ointment. ( And, you ought to peek at Alexander Cockburn’s front-page piece at CounterPunch. )
I was, and I am comparing her to the other three folks running for a piece of the White House, all of whom could easily be described as serial killers and madmen.
I don’t really understand much of your post - perhaps you’re too angry to be clear. I do understand, however, that you’re upset that Palin does not seem to give a damn about women. I agree. But this does not mean that supporting Obama / Biden will solve the problems women face throughout each and every day here in the empire. The problem is structural; the problem is that we live in a world in which life and liberty, peace, happiness, true safety and opportunity for all is completely absent - by design! Property and wealth and power rule the world, and trump human life - and all life - all the time. In such a world no one and no thing is safe or respected…
Reproductive rights, and the right of women to move through life safely and with the respect of all people, is not and never has been contingent upon what happens with a bunch of slimy politicians. It all rests in our hands. Whatever rights women have, they have because ordinary women / people have been willing to fight for them. They’re ebbing away, now, because ordinary folks aren’t making their demands with as much passion and resolve as they once were. One reason they’re not fighting so hard is that they’re consistently bought off by the absolutely ridiculous fantasy that the democrats care about them and will, eventually, do the right thing. No, they won’t.

The whole structure is horror. The whole structure is murder. The whole structure is slavery on a world wide scale.
We don’t need Obama and Biden - we need your anger and passion organized and focused on what needs to be done… We don’t need politicians, we need millions of people just like you, willing to step out of the political / social structure, forever…

You seem to inhabit the very word “defensiveness”.

I have no problem with a progressive movement, and I agree with points Clemente made. But your cry of “Racism”, is a joke, right? Or do just fling around trash talk on a whim?

You do know that Matt Gonzalez is Mexican American.

That aside, I’m so glad you think prison is a bad place to be. May be if you took at Restorative Justice link I included above you’d get a sense of Nader’s position.

I do hope we can return to a civil discourse and stop throwing around names like racist - you don’t even know who I am or what color I am or if I writing this from prison.

But what you’ve said about Rosa is basically the same thing that Edwards and Dean supporters said about Kucinich, and what Kucinich supporters say about Nader; the pecking order of unelectability goes all the way to the end, even though we are obviously not “winning,” and won’t until we can change electoral policy, change the media, change the terms of the dialogue.

I don’t think Gonzales was looking to push the difference between the Nader/Gozales ticket and the McKinney/Clemente ticket. We all recall the re-alignment that Nader and McKinney joined into with Ron Paul. I suspect/guess that was the overarching view taken by Nader/Gonzales.

For those of us who are not about to vote for the establishment candidates we have a look at the alternatives - in my State Nader will be on the ballot and McKinney won’t.

But simply calling everyone who is not interested in aligning with a small sub-culture (even if agreeing with manyof its principles and values) ignorant is why Clemente will help to get Nader that many more unaffiliated and disenchanted partisan votes.

Obviously that is simply my sense. I’m unaware, but would be glad to be corrected, of any offical GP platform that speaks to such an alignment with a “hip hop generation”.

To be clear, I agree that Clemente has differentiated herself to some degree from Nader/Gonzales. Whether the abolition of prisons is a position that would have much support if it was not a privatized apartheid system is questionable.

But Nader would not direct this issue as one of abolitioning prisons per se (to use just one example) but re-thinking justice in America. After all there are legitmate victims of crime. He would talk about Restorative Justice, something he has supported for years. A means of local “truth and reconciliation” and eliminating capital punishment. http://behavioralhealth.typepad.com/markhams_behavioral_healt/restorative_justice/

This is simply one example of how it is not enough to identify a problem but to change the narrative and offer real solutions. I think Nader/Gonzales do that better than any other candidate out there.

I didn’t know you were her cardiologist. Perhaps you might want to ask the women who were raped in Wasilla and had to pay for their testing kits about the status of her pulse.

Lumping every crypto-fascist into the same category doesn’t make you a radical…It does point to your inability to recognize how minor differences in policy can equate to major differences in outcome insofar working class peoples’ lives are concerned.

So many self-proclaimed leftists are every bit as indoctrinated as your average “Joe Six-pack”…the only difference is the commissars. Ironically they’re are strikingly similar.The main difference and perhaps only difference is they’re in the minority. It’s the same pseudo-intellectuals and false prophets appealing to leftists’ sense of self-satisfaction for not buying into Corporate America’s psych ops.

Now if you could figure out the difference between authenticity and exhibitionism…you might be actually be effective getting shit done…but you’d rather use half-truths that appeal to your ideology and reinforce your self-righteousness.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken. Being against anti-intellectualism does not make you an intellectual and being against irrationality does not make you rational.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/why-wont-obama-go-for-the-knockout/#comment-29212

Deadbeat : Perhaps you missed my original post — its parent thread did fall off the main page shortly afterwards — but I would appreciate your addressing the points I raised therein, since your frequent wielding of the term “left” remains remarkably vague without clarification.

We cannot solve problems or even think we’re on a sincere track to do so, if we keep making them all about some artificial spectrum. Which is why “hip hop generation” gets in the way of Clamente’s solid points. It’s not about her great awakening around a coined phrase (which puts most folks on the defensive because they’re not one of the “hip hop generation”). It’s about thinking clearly through a problem to its root cause - perspicacity!

I think Gonzales, while he may not be as adament in style is not tied to political schisms but lets the ideas fall where they may. While I like a little more spice in my drink, I think he provides a broader sensiblity and thus a sense of how he would identify and solve problems.

I don’t sense that as strongly with either McKinney or Clemente. Their voices are important, and should be integral to moving forward, but those differences need not turn into walls.

The fact that what she says resonates with a “non-hip hop generation” people (like me) seems make they label implausible when facing a national audience.

But without a doubt, and I think the bigger issue here, is these two (Gonzales and Clemente) should have been on the stage (as should have Nader and McKinney). As Gonzales stated, Nader has a significantly larger national support base than Biden. That alone should provided reason (though such reason does not guide an elite monopoly).

I think Gonzalez perceptively pointed out that Palin had called Biden on Biden’s primary remarks about how proud he’d be to run with McCain and his support for a Kerry/McCain ticket in 2004. Not a peep from anyone - not Biden, not the moderator, not the media (at least nothing I read/heard).

The whole series of debates is a shame. Tweedle-Dee talking non-talk with Tweedle Dumb. I can’t find a point made by any of the establishment candidates that isn’t essentially more of the same. The differences are inconsequential. The Republican’s main issue is how “liberal” Obama’s voting record is, and the Dems pick around the edges both choosing war and intervention as a means of conducting foreign policy, both yielding not an inch to the public when private property and Wall Street elite interests are at stake.

Palin is just a fly in the ointment. Our problems are deep, structural, and the worse is yet to come and these establishment candidates are on the good ship Titanic.

I have to say that I was impressed with Rosa Clemente’s appearance on Democracy Now! Juan Gonzales asked what I thought was a key question about the difference between McKinney/Clemente and Nader/Gonzalez.

Clemente clearly positioned herself to the left of Matt Gonzalez who was visibly taken aback. Clemente spoke about how the “hip-hop” generation was forming alliance with younger Palestinians calling for a 1-state solution. She also spoke about the increasing effect of the growing prison system upon people of color. She was very impressive.

Also to Danny Ray, people of color will not be so quick to support Sarah “Hockey Mom” Palin. As Rosa Clemente points out that the future demographic of the U.S. is more like her.