"soon we'll find out who is the real revolutionary" - Zimbabwe, Bob Marley

Defeat, Dissent and the Bush Machine

Bronner and Jacobsen comment: "Most of today’s fellow travelers hitch rides with the Democratic Party. But where it was once assumed that critical intellectuals should aim to illuminate, or expose, the confusions of sly politicians, stand with the more radical spirits on the ground, and push and prod the establishment to the left, these truculent champions of progress adopt the same assumptions and the same fears as the candidates on the stump. Like the rest of the Democratic Party, with some notable exceptions, Dubya’s fellow travelers initially supported the war--a smart tactic up to the giddy moment that the President considered it safe to proclaim 'mission accomplished' and now, shocked and awed by the Iraqi debacle, shake their heads and ruefully say: 'sorry." A critical note on Christopher Hitchens, Todd Gitlin, Michael Walzer, and others of the mainstream 'Left'.

Takis Fotopoulos argues that whether Bush or Kerry the domestic and foreign policies of the USA will remain basically the same. The real question is what stance will the US Left take.

Serge Halimi offers an overview of the record of George W. Bush as president of the USA. Includes a few notes on the John Kerry alternative.

One more reason to abolish it.

I understand the impulse to ensure Kerry becomes president. I don't want four more years of Bush as president, but that goal has led many to have a fundamental blindness about what opportunities and crucial issues there are beyond expelling Bush from the White House. Worst of all, it has led to a fundamental breakdown of communication.

Only on some sort of solid and inspiring popular organizational (and movement-cultural) basis can it take on the in-fact elitist Liberal elements who have surrendered and/or abandoned the populist agenda and joined the Neocons in deriding the issue of social and economic justice as obsolete "class warfare" and in taking the people's economic issues off the table.

Robert Pollin's "Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity" provides a snapshot of Clintonomics that should be required reading for those in the anybody-but-Bush school. It's a taste of things to come. Greg Bates applies Pollin's analysis to the economic policy of Democratic Party presidential hopeful John Kerry.