[Peace-discuss] Dr. NO on guided democracy

[John W.]

You have to admire a man with the courage to blog a year into the future. :-)


At 04:01 AM 1/28/2008, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

>[From the blog Digital Citizen by Jeff Nicholson-Owens.  --CGE]
>
>2009 01 25  Clinton and Edwards get their wish: “a more serious 
 smaller 
>group” of candidates
>
>Sen. Clinton (D-NY) and John Edwards (former Democratic Party senator from 
>North Carolina) got what they wanted—Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced 
>today he was dropping his presidential bid. The corporate media mentions 
>Kucinich’s name now chiefly to draw attention to his competitors for his 
>House seat; no need to let issues like challenging the Iraq occupation, 
>threatening Iran, corporate hegemony, or the ongoing lack of fairness in 
>mass media get in the way of covering a horse race that might rid the 
>media of an agitant.
>
>Now the Progressive Left is free to support their favorite pro-war, 
>anti-universal single-payer health care candidate of their choice without 
>interference from the “not serious” candidates
again
just like they did in 
>2004. Rather than object about poor choices by organizing for a third 
>party or independent candidate who reflects the values they claim to hold 
>(the values they go on about 3 years out of every 4), they can rationalize 
>their Democratic Party vote by arguing the margins of difference between 
>the remaining Democratic Party candidates. They can tell us how important 
>this election will be, despite how worse the same indicators will be in 4 
>years as a result of consistently voting the least worst. No need for a 
>grass-roots campaign of birddogging every candidate who voted for the Iraq 
>war and the Iran resolution, no need to hound one’s elected officials to 
>co-sponsor and vote for HR676 (the Conyers-Kucinich single-payer universal 
>health care plan).
>
>And what do you know: the New York Times accurately “projected” back in 
>July 2007 who would be left in the Democratic Party race: Clinton, 
>Edwards, and Obama. It’s a good thing the other Democratic Party 
>contenders with something different to offer weren’t excluded from any of 
>the televised “debates” (high-bandwidth audio, low-bandwidth audio, 
>video—currently unavailable, transcript), or else it would be too obvious 
>that the corporate media is trying to manage the election, rigging the 
>choices to guarantee a corporate-friendly outcome.
>
>    ###