Cobbists attack Nader

[Glick is an old confused radical.  A year ago, he was defending the
"sympathetic", "progressive" elements of the Democratic party, and now
he's an outspoken Green Party Cobb supporter. bit obscure i know, but good
showing of what's wrong with the left.]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Louis Proyect
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 09:28:43 -0400
Subject: [Marxism] Reply to Ted Glick's "Thinking Past November 2"

Ted "Realo" Glick's full article can be read at:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/10glick.cfm. I am
responding to selections below:

Glick: In late June in Milwaukee I was very encouraged when the Green
Party chose the Presidential candidate who I thought was the best
available option for 2004, David Cobb. But I was also impressed that it
was able to do so in a healthy and mature way, democratically, with much
debate and occasional sparks, but with relatively little overt rancor
between the pro-Cobb and the pro-Nader delegates.

Comment: Democratically?!??!?!! Haven't you read Forrest Hill and Carol
Miller's "Rigged Convention; Divided Party How David Cobb Became the
Green Nominee Even Though He Only Got 12 Percent of the Votes" on
Counterpunch? The least we can expect from you Demogreens is to engage
with such critiques rather than sweeping them under the rug. Your smug,
self-congratulatory posture flies in the face of the case being made by
Hill, Miller and others that the Green realos abandoned
one-person/one-vote democratic procedures in order to come up with an
impotent slate that would not discomfit the pro-war, anti-gay marriage
Democrat from Massachusetts.

Glick: In other words, the Nader/Camejo campaign is willing to risk
disaffiliation, at least, if not a seriously divided Green Party
nationally, for the short-term purpose of getting Nader on the
California ballot. And there are a few other states where something
similar is occurring.

I happened to spend yesterday at the New Jersey shore. All day, on the
way down, on the beach, and coming back up I kept thinking about why
they would be doing this.

Comment: I would say that the Medea Benjamin, Ted Glick, David Cobb
forces are welcome to the burned-out shell of the Green Party, which is
destined to go the route of the New Party and every other half-assed
attempt to temporize with the Democratic Party, the burying ground for
radicals. In your meditations at the New Jersey shore, did it ever occur
to you that Nader and Camejo run because they consider the occupation of
Iraq and trade agreements like NAFTA to be inimical to working people?
Rather than examining their motives, it is incumbent on you to explore
why the section of the left that you are associated with has collapsed
like a cheap suitcase.

Glick: It can't be because they believe Ralph Nader has any chance of
either winning on November 2 or getting the 5% of the vote needed to get
federal matching funds. Nader is currently polling at 3 or 4% in
national polls; in California a Field poll released this week had him at 2%.

Comment: The fact that he is running at 3 to 4 percent has the
Democratic Party running around like a chicken with its head cut off. It
is really pathetic that people like you are running around after the
chicken trying to scotch tape its head back on.

Glick: A second possibility, and I fervently hope this is the reason, is
that they are under so much pressure, the campaign is so intense, what
with the demands of raising money and getting on the ballot, the attacks
from the Democrats and everything else, that they have temporarily lost
sight of the bigger picture and are doing whatever they can to get state
ballot lines wherever they can, however they can.

Comment: I think that they have a grasp of the big picture. That's why
over a thousand people attended their rally in San Francisco. Meanwhile
the Cobb-LaMarche campaign is not only beneath the radar screen; it does
not even get reported on in venues that are favorable to ABB. It is the
kind of campaign that Browder ran "against" Roosevelt. At least
Browder's followers were building the labor movement. Pat LaMarche's
main accomplishment seems to be raising money for apolitical charities
and getting arrested for drunk driving.

Glick: I really hope that what is happening is not an opening salvo in a
less-than-principled campaign on the part of **some of** the pro-Nader
forces within the Green Party to confuse and disrupt the efforts of the
Cobb/LaMarche campaign, a kind-of "rule or ruin" approach to politics.

Comment: Disrupt the Cobb/LaMarche campaign? That would be akin to
waking the dead.

-- 
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

[more on Glick:
<http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2004-April/005986.html>.]
_______________________________________________
heads mailing list
[email protected]
http://ballistichelmet.org/mailman/listinfo/heads/
http://ballistichelmet.org/donate/