[Peace-discuss] Will I.P. elect McCain?

[Jenifer Cartwright]

The fact that a ban on affirmative action has never lost makes me question the stats that say the electorate is to the left of the government. Terrible news, terrible for all of us if the prediction holds true.
 --Jenifer
 

--- On Fri, 8/1/08, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Will I.P. elect McCain?
To: "peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Date: Friday, August 1, 2008, 7:43 PM

"On Sunday, McCain came out in favor of an Arizona civil rights initiative
that 
would outlaw any state discrimination either for or against folks, based on 
race, gender or national origin. Obama said he was 'disappointed' with
McCain 
and told UNITY he favors affirmative action 'when properly structured.'

"The Arizona referendum banning preferential treatment based on race is
also on 
the ballot in the swing state of Colorado. It won in California in 1996, in 
Washington in 2000 and in Michigan in the great Democratic sweep of 2006. It
has 
never lost, and may just win McCain Colorado, and with it the nation."

There would be a certain paradox in McCain's becoming president as a result
of 
identity politics -- which begins with the notion that the categories of
gender, 
race and class are fixed.

Self-described progressives in the last generation have replaced campaigns 
against economic inequality with campaigns against discrimination within 
economic groups -- as inequality increased.  Thus it was considered a victory
to 
get women into West Point or people of color onto the board of General Electric

(instead of abolishing those institutions).

The old Left goals were quietly abandoned with the onslaught of Neoliberalism, 
thirty years ago.  Redistribution was shelved in favor of
"recognition." (It's 
true that a few, like M.L. King, went the other way, but they were marginalized

-- with prejudice, in his case.)

Some people noticed what was going on: see, e.g., Walter Benn Michaels'
"The 
Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore
Inequality" 
(2006).  But a President McCain would be a rather large chicken come home to 
roost.  --CGE



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