Albert said “words don\'t tell us what the candidates really believe, ... And more, ... even if the candidates\' words told us what the candidates really believe, that still wouldn\'t tell us what the candidates will do.” This is certainly true. On farm policy, for decades conservatives have supported lowering and removing market price floors (backed by supply management) and increasingly replacing some of the lost market income with massive subsidies. U.S. farmers have then lost money vs. full costs on the farm program commodities pretty much every year 1981-2006. Therefore we lost money on these exports almost always for a quarter century. So it’s not ideology that dictates what they actually stand for. If they can support this, they can support about anything, excepting, as Albert says, certain social issues. Democrats, led by Harkin and Gephardt, but also Wellstone and many others, opposed this (ie. supported New Deal, non subsidy price floors, which would end dumping) prior to 2002, but then all switched to the Republican side, no doubt because as Ag Chair, Harkin wanted something winnable. At least once, in about 1985, conservative Republican Grassley joined Harkin-Gephardt in voting to eliminate commodity subsidies and force agribusiness (ie. Cargill, ADM, Smithfield, Tyson) and foreign countries to pay above cost. The key, then, is in how you get them to vote justly. This then ties in to Presidential politics. In Iowa four years ago, Kerry won as Democrats joined up to attack front running antiwar candidate Howard Dean. Dean was running against most of the Democratic Senate and House. They couldn’t oppose the wars and war related policies because they voted for them. Had the peace movement been more successful early on against Democrats in Congress, Dean would not have faced such massive last minute attacks, and Kerry would not, perhaps, have been the default Iowa winner. Likewise, during the 1980s, Babbit, who stood alone among Democrats for farm subsidies and against price floors did poorly in Iowa, while most Democrats favored the Harkin-Gephardt farm bill. This time, with Harkin supporting a Republican “Freedom to Farm” (Contract for America) type farm bill, albeit greened up, most Democrats did the same. To me it is clear, however, that the peace movement did not have an effective Congressional strategy. I’ve found no mention of such a strategy on activist web sites and seen no articles emphasizing that Congress is who actually makes these decisions. I do not see where the peace movement has demonstrated the skills to implement such a strategy. What I’ve seen in many places is the passing motorist strategy (holding up signs) or the symbolic demonstration for media attention. I see few letters to the editor or commentaries that even mention Senators and Representatives by name. I conclude that presidential politics could be changed if progressives and the left had adequate skills and used the seriously. I refer to the kind of skills I’ve listed at my blog, “How to Win: My Organizers Checklist” http://www.zcommunications.org/blog/view/1822, and my comments at http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/01/10006/. See also my comment “We do exist,” http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18181#9381. If anyone has seen where the peace movement and others on the left have these skills in abundance, I’d like to see where it is. We need to get up to speed, then we have work to do, each in our own Congressional district.

I wasn\'t complaining or groaning. I was just saying that alot of people attribute to Obama progressive qualities that he dosen\'t have. I remember when Normon Solomon, with Medea Benjamen and Daniel Ellsberg, came to my college campus in 2004 to argue that folks shouldn\'t vote for Nader or other third party but should vote for Kerry in the interests of defeating Bush. I asked him if he wasn\'t precluding any vote for a third party in the future, because every election is going to be the same situation: we can\'t vote for third party because we  must help Democrats defeat horrible Republicans. He seemed to accept my analyes and said that there needed to be a "movement" to pressure a Democratic president when he or she tries to do the same things as Republicans. Well I don\'t see such a movement arising in the Obama campaign, the leftists supporting the campaign seem to do alot of denouncing the Republicans, but I don\'t know how much better awaremess and   education about political realities among Obama supporters they are generating. It would be nice if we had a viable labor movement in this country through which voters could have a decent education about politics. As it is the education that the weak AFL-CIO unions give out for the most part is based on denunciations of Republicans and unthinking support of Democrats. An important bill in congress, which has majority support in both houses,  the Employee Free Choice Act, would give stronger protections for workers trying to organize a union. The bill still dosen\'t have the 60 votes to overcome Republican fillibustersand Bush has threatened to veto it. I can imagine a President Obama supporting it if it had a little more support in the Senate, probably reluctantly. That bill might be a good tool to revitalize the labor movement and to counter all the anti-union tactics tolerated by both political parties that have been used since the Reagan years. The labor movement needs to be revitalized, churches perhaps should be utilized too. I was interested reading an article by Michael Yates, the Marxist academic, where he refers to his experience as a workers education teacher. It would be nice if Syndicalist tendencies would be revived. I\'m of the "hard left." I favor revolution as a final goal  and I wish more politically aware people on the left would too.

I have to fully agree with Mr. Albert on this issue.  The fact of the matter is that elections are not won on facts or even policy - just image and worthless points that get people inflamed like gay marriage or abortion.  The real policy decisions that affect people\'s lives are not in the picture.  These things are diliberately not reported by mainstream media or even spoken to by the candidates.   I, for one, do not see my life changing significantly if either McCain or Obama wins, and it won\'t change for people overseas either - look at Obama\'s full support of US coca erradication campaigns and his denunciation of Chavez.  The constituency mainly affected by the winner - middle class home owners and up.  The 40 million plus in poverty in this country won\'t see any difference, and don\'t care about home owners going into foreclosure. 

Yes, I would like to see a black man be president, but at the same time we get a female VP if McCain wins and that\'s pretty progressive too.

Albert is right - real change comes from the bottom up - never from the top.

Thank you, Mr. Krumm. Someone gets it. We have to face the fact that we are not going to have a radical reformer in the White House. Okay? Little victories count. Think of the analogy of the starfish on the shore: there\'s a large pile of starfish and this one guy is throwing them back one by one back to the ocean so they\'ll live. A man walks up and says, "you\'ll never get them all back, you\'re wasting your time, just quit." Little did he know that each starfish, one by one, was being saved; he was right, they all won\'t survive. But this one will, this one will, and on and on. But if we despair and say, Well he\'s not a real progressive so let\'s either bitch about it or even support a no-chance candidate, that is a recipe for disaster -- it is in effect a vote for McCain. Hold your nose if you must. The stakes are too high to throw up our hands and say that because we don\'t have the populist progressive we want who will fundamentally change the system -- and, yeah, we don\'t -- voting for Obama (read, voting against McCain in the only way we have available) still matters. There is a clear choice this time. Obama is just one man. He will need a movement behind him to be that change we really *can* believe in. If we just resign ourselves to moan and gripe, all we will be doing is alienating people and bolstering the forces of reaction.

Hi Michael,

The reason leftists--even parecon supporting, Chomsky reading leftists--get excited about presidential elections has to do with the strong sense that the little differences between the candidates can/might amount to some big differences on the ground in a couple years. Not radical changes, of course, but little changes that matter to a lot of people.

If, for instance, Gore had been elected, we would in all likelyhood still be a capitalist empire doing evil around the world. But there\'s a good chance the Iraq war would have never happened.

I wrote briefly about this when Zinn had an article on Election Madness last spring:

 

www.zmag.org/blog/view/1396

This early, i really can\'t tell which i would side with, but i am leaning towards obama. Furthermore, the GOP base is not even warming up to mccain (of course, i could be wrong) and even though it\'s still early in the game, this just proves to show how we see our candidates to-date. i know i will get burned for this, but i think mccain is a warmonger. i get the impression that he doesn\'t care to what happens to our troops in the middle east and the other parts of the world. Can’t we just all get along? i think it is time for a purification; i think it is time for a change; i think it is time for obama time. Now that the candidates are set for the US Presidential Election, Barack Obama and John McCain are beginning to set the tone for their campaign., and i just want to share a video that i saw in pollclash that Joe Biden has now been officially introduced as Barack Obama\'s Vice Presidential selection, anyway you can see the video in http://pollclash.com

Okay, he does exude this messianic image, the savior swooping down from on high to save us all but if you had listened to his nomination speech tonight he kept stressing the need for national service and sacrifice, that it "isn\'t about me". I think this obsession among the hard left for a purity on the issues we on the left care about is going to hurt our chances of putting the best shot we have at the moment for a progressive in the White House. He\'s not running for Pope.

as usual, i couldnt have said it better myself

"I have to say I am not sure. But here is one hypothesis. We are, naturally enough, incredibly desirous of improvement of society. But, we tend to have no deep abiding belief in our own capacity to bring about such improvement, much less a whole new system. So - when elections come around, we get sucked into them due to hoping that someone will make things better for us, via a shortcut that doesn\'t entail long and arduous struggle and lasting commitment, a shortcut that brings rewards sooner rather than later. "

Exactly! Great point! I\'ve noticed some leftists who seem to show more passion about elections than other issues, particularly relating to the vote for Nader or lesser evil issue of 2000 and 2004. I think some us, including myself at times, can\'t completely rid ourselves of what we have been taught in school, that elections are substantially important and voting is what you do when you want to change things, etc.

It\'s true people take things canidates say too seriously though they also don\'t look beneath the slogans. I read that Tom Hayden was saying the other day that no protests are needed at the convention because Obama opposes the war. Of course, he opposes the war but on strictly tactical grounds. He calls maintaining a US troop presence in Iraq but does not want to call the troops "combat" but "anti-terrorism advisors" or some such thing.