I keep thinking about a conversation I had back in 2007, when one of the progressive organizations came out and endorsed Obama. I was so mad, I called the executive director (who I know) and said, “Why would you endorse this guy? You know he’s not a progressive.”
“Yeah, we know that,” he said. “But he’s popular with young voters and we think he’ll bring a lot of new, progressive congress members with him. So we’ll have the Chicago machine running the country for eight years! It’s a trade-off we can live with.”
“Who’s this ‘we,’ white man?”
Never underestimate the degree of cynicism that goes into these decisions. The rest is just marketing.
How many of us have any real awareness, muchless control, over what happens with some reverse-matrix abstraction thing they’ve got going on? After all, we may find a few breadcrumbs here and there and an inkling or two. But that’s it.
At the same time, we look at competing timelines and big picture stuff and though we may lack some degree of agency in one set, we have considerably more in another set. So ultimately, knowing there’s a reverse-reverse-matrix in play, that can only mean that really, they’re just screwing themselves.
blahblahblah it’s the interface that matters. wait’ll they see what’s next.
Susie, I had an almost identical conversation with a city councilwoman here 3 years ago, minus the calculated cynicism. She thought it was just wonderful and amazing that so many young people were excited about Obama–and didn’t see that he had no record that would indicate that he was interested in maintaining that constituency, let alone any other D constituency.
Well, we were right. Why doesn’t it feel more satisfying?
Being Cassandra is never satisfying. That’s why it’s a curse.