[Marxism] US Elections And Effective Strategies

[Mark Lause]

I gave serious consideration to McKinney early on, depending on how
that campaign would shape up, but have gone strongly for Nader.  In a
nutshell....

1. Nader is well within the range of supportable politics in terms of
what he advocates.  Most of what he says is on the money in terms of
class politics, while he advocates absolutely nothing beyond the pale
of our principles.  On this basis, many of us supported his earlier
efforts and I don't think anything's changed.

2. As to the scale of the impact, Nader-Gonzales is far beyond what
any of the other third party and independent candidates can do.
Setting aside those that seem to have no reason to run for president
other than to boost the profile of their particular group (or, to be
fair, use the magic word "socialism"), you have left Nader and
McKinney.  Simply put, the former's mounted an organized, coherent,
serious national campaign that's established organizations in all but
a few states.

3. The Nader campaign is also most likely to leave much more in its
wake.  McKinney's own Power to the People coalition doesn't seem to be
much more than a name, while the GPUS, running McKinney, has imploded
by stages to where many of the state organizations are simply run by
Progressive Democrats; as predicted, the state officers so eager to
foster the McKinney nomination in Ohio are now openly defending Obama
and the entire Democratic ticket.  Meanwhile, the Reconstruction
Party, friendly to McKinney, declined to launch itself nationally
while Obama was running and the Peace and Freedom Party of California
(having endorsed Nader) did decide to go national in the course of the
campaign.

We are not talking about establish yet another nominal "third party"
but laying the foundations for such a movement in establishing
serious, independent watchdog organizations in the states and
Congressional districts.  Not chat shops but organizations engaged
directly with larger numbers of people than radicals have mobilized in
a generation.  In this economic climate, such ongoing efforts have
tremendous potential.

ML