(”The demand to renounce illusions about a situation is in fact a demand to renounce a situation that requires illusions.”–St. Karl)

To my brother the Other Michael – and to the folks for progressive politics en masse:

Our politicians have not failed us – we have failed to put up the right politicians – our failure then, is to the people. The principle of critical exploration and expression must always come first. Then a choice is made based on political reality. Thus, it has boiled down to Clinton and Obama. Or, as Michael put it, life under yet another Republican imperialist, domestic conservative and 4-8 more years of Bush as the ghost of Nixon cum Reagan hiding in the Oval Office pantry. OK, he didn’t quite put it that way, but that’s the essence.

Hillary Clinton, despite her vain attempts to leash Bill, is running on President Bill Clinton’s illusory “happy days are here again” regime. I have already outlined the failure of Bill Clinton’s presidency that runs the gamut from a failed human rights record, militarism and a faux prosperous economy. For more see this excerpt from Howard Zinn’s book, A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES at: http://malalatete.typepad.com/mal_a_la_tete/2007/11/reconsidering-t.html.

She fails as a feminist, so her “the first woman president” is purely gender bias-based symbolism. You only vote for her if in the end you are looking at the paranoid centered foreign policy of Senator McCain – or the corporate state’s use of religious lunacy via Romney. (Make no mistake that Romney will cater to right wing Christians in every domestic policy – and to the love and bemusement of the Corporate State that understands how to control citizens against their own best interests via wedge politics to their own benefit.)

And you only vote for her if you believe she will give progressives enough of respite to better organize for a more dominant Congress and Senate and to put up a more progressive ticket for 2012. As you gag.

Even so, prepare yourself for a US interventionist, imperialist war machine ramped up. Prepare yourself for a continued government in lock step with the “security forces” of reaction.

Then its Obama. There are only two reasons to vote of Obama and they are both subjective.

1- He has, despite the hyperbole, energized a new wave of democrats and independents, thus, creating a new base of progressive education.
2- He is an African American, the first to reach this stature since Martin Luther King, Jr. That can translate into is a president whose ears are open to the plight of the poor – and people of color – working and middle class people and an anti-war population.

That means that progressives can not only organize in that energized base, but can drive their positions into the White House through this base. Let us be reminded that under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson the Civil Rights and Anti-war movement, along with a growing acknowledgement of the failure of the capitalist economy, grew stronger, not weaker. Nothing was more evident than in King’s 1968 speeches on the issues of this inequitable economy.

The question will be how we will confront any resistance from the White House on these progressive positions. Kid yourself not: Obama’s campaign and philosophy owe a great deal to the Corporate State. But because of his roots, because African Americans and people of color are the least represented in positions of power, he is most likely to be forced into being more accessible, more malleable. I do believe he will be more resistant to the temptation to reengage the State’s agents of oppression than Clinton, thus will allow us more liberty to organize and mount means of change.

It is what it is then.

Said Saint Mother Jones: “Don’t mourn, organize!”

1) You boycott the election and contribute to the potential Democratic defeat, because in a Democratic victory “nothing will change for the good”–not the war, the Supreme Court and federal judges, health care, New Orleans, the tax structure, attention to communities of poverty and of color, access to quality education, fair and just immigration response, torture, labor rights, an EPA with moxie, etc; or

2) Hold your nose and vote for the last Demo man or woman left standing, and get on with your activism, or

3) Go to Costa Rica, pretend you’re a Buddhist, and do your own number. (”The demand to renounce illusions about a situation is in fact a demand to renounce a situation that requires illusions.”–St. Karl)

Any one of the three will require convoluted explanations to our children.

After DK and JE dropped out, I voted absentee for Obama in our primary. And in the general, if I have to, I’ll vote for Clinton.

Please discuss.

I have followed your blog for years now and I generally understand your point of view.
One thing that really puzzles me though is your support for Dennis. Sure he was a good candidate but he never had the staure of a president. People would never take him seriously.
His main task was to get some of his policies followed up by the real candidates.
Dennis has dropped out now so please get over him.
I know that it would be hard to support Hillary, she is just too polarising.
But what is wrong with Obama? I would have expected you to rally behind him.

Of course the corporate owned media didn’t help, they were scared shitless of Dennis, It just goes to show how clueless most people are when it comes to politics. It’s all about money, and the big wig donors don’t want Dennis because he cares about the people and not the corporations.