[Marxism] --RE: Suddenly, a dangerous turn

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Gary writes: 

"But here I would by way of apologia pro vita mea, try and work out why I
have disliked Obama so much.  I can only think it is an Irish thing.  I
truly suspect that Obama is at heart very much a liberal open even to some
elements of radical discourse. But he has hidden that and sloughed off any
sympathy he may have had with touchstone issues such as that of Palestine.

"In terms which an Irish person could identify with he is a 'traitor'.  He
has gone over to the other side.  He has sold out.  That for the Irish is a
real no-no.  Naive perhaps but it is a long term part of the Irish psyche to
hate traitors and informers more than the enemy."

Well, that would certainly be true if Obama were from that tradition. But he
doesn't come from that tradition.

His politics are --at best-- those of a petty-bourgeois democrat. And
--frankly-- in the U.S. context at his level of bourgeois politics, looking
for anything save perhaps the vaguest ambiguity around the edges on policy
towards the middle east is hopeless -- even if one assumes the candidate
fully and truly and sincerely was determined to change that policy once in
office. 

But as for being a traitor or having gone over to the enemy, as that might
be conceived of in the context of the Black community in the U.S., I don't
think that fits Obama at all, in part because so much of the Black push for
political representation and equality has taken place in and through the
vehicles of "the enemy," i.e., their Democratic party. Obama is well within
the mainstream of this historical movement or motion or push, which is a
real thing despite all the problems and issues that arise from it being done
within a bourgeois party.

As for some of his speechifying that people view as platitudes, you have to
consider the social context which is where much of the content in those
statements come from. For example, it is one thing for a white person to say
we have to go beyond race, quite another for a Black person who is still
identified with and part of the Black community and its institutions to say
so. The difference in what that content is (including, yes, its limitations)
Obama made clear in his address on race at the beginning of the week.

I agree with Gary that Obama's refusal to disown Wright "was quite
remarkable" for a bourgeois politician. 

And today that refusal to cave in to the baying wolves of the white press
won him the endorsement of probably the best known and highly regarded
Latino political figure in the country, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who
had also sought the presidential nomination. Richardson has long been
extremely close to the Clintons --he was the highest-ranking Latino in Bill
Clinton's administration--, but he said that, after Obama's speech on race,
he had decided to endorse the Illinois Senator. I hope to write more on the
Richardson endorsement and its significance in another post.

Joaquín