Re: "Nero fiddles while Rome burns"

Thank you, John O'Brien, for your comments. As far as DSA: in East Bay DSA
I am reliably told that there aer 3 caucuses in power: One is the
"Communist Caucus", which in reality is an anarchist caucus and doesn't
believe in participating in elections on principle; the second is a Maoist
caucus which believes that since the Republican and Democratic Parties are
both capitalist there is no difference between them so why bother if one
cheats the other out of a victory. (That's the basic position of all the
"socialists" who opposed voting for a Democrat in 2024.) The last one is
the Socialist Majority caucus, which is run by union staffers, in other
words the union bureaucracy. Since the bureaucracy has ignored the issue,
so does this caucus. One thing they all have in common is a common hatred
of any serious, democratically-run political discussion. I am reliably
informed that all the main DSA chapters except one is like that as is the
national leadership. I have no experience that would indicate otherwise.

As far as the Kuttner article in American Prospect: At least it deals with
the threat although it underestimates it. For one thing, there is no
mention of possible use of ICE and CBP to hold down the vote. For another,
there is no mention of the many election deniers in place on election
boards. In any case, the strategy of the Democrats will be to take these
steal attempts to court, where the Supreme Court will be the ultimate
arbiter. It's true that on a number of secondary issues they have not ruled
in Trump's favor but on the most important one they went above and beyond
the call of duty. That was in their 2024 ruling that nothing Trump did
while president could be criminally charged. In other words, they made sure
that he could return to office, and I think it would be foolish to assume
they will do anything different this time. But yet, at the end of the day,
the entire strategy of the Democrats rests on taking cases to court. Given
the number of election deniers in office on election boards, I think the
federal court system will likely be swamped. It's true that legally all a
local election board is empowered to do is add up the totals and pass the
totals on. Legally, they have no authority to "certify" the result, nor to
refuse to do so. I think they will violate the law, and that's where the
legal challenges will come in.

In the end, what would really be necessary is to prepare to shut down the
country through work place stoppages, but that would mean turmoil inside
the unions. That must be avoided at all costs, of course!

But I will say this for the Democrats: At least they are raising the issue.
That's more than socialists - including "Marxists" - are doing. How can
they raise it, after all, since in 2024 they took the position that the two
parties are more or less the same, and they have never admitted their huge
blunder since then?

JOhn Reimann


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