[Peace-discuss] The left in election 2008

[C. G. Estabrook]

So far as the progressives and the left are concerned, Palin’s useful function 
has been to detain them from misgivings about the Democratic ticket which 98 per 
cent of them are going to vote for. From the vantage point of 2008 I wouldn’t 
blame Al Gore or John Kerry from feeling that maybe there’s been a double 
standard at work here, between the rough treatment they got from the left and 
from radical environmentalists, as compared to the well-mannered silence about 
Obama’s call for a 90,000 increase in the Armed Forces, his endorsement of 
nuclear power, “clean coal”,  warrantless wire-tapping, tort reform,  real ID, 
groveling to the bankers and the Israel lobby and so forth. K St loves Obama. So 
do the defense contractors.  They love Biden too. Just to refresh your memories 
of what a progressive platform actually looks like, take a look at the website 
of the Nader campaign.  Like the U.S. senators’ knowledge of foreign policy, the 
bar these days for what the left finds bearable is awfully low. The more the 
left holds its tongue, the lower the bar will go.

--<http://www.counterpunch.org/>

In an interview with Real News, Naomi Klein takes MoveOn and others to task for 
failing to pressure Obama, who "does not have an anti-war position, not in 
Afghanistan, not in Iraq," and, discusses what a Bloomberg article describes as 
Obama's 'Tilt Toward Rubinomics.'

--<http://www.cursor.org/0808_archive.htm>