Not The End?
Tomorrow, a key round of primaries will be held. And it looks like, barring some miracle, that the Republicans and Democratic Elites will finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief as in my opinion the insurgent campaign of Vermont Governor Howard Dean will basically come to an end.
I believe Dean should drop out as these primary battles only further drain resources that would better be devoted to what the main goal of the party should be--defeating George Bush and his henchmen.
But even in this apparent defeat, I see some positives. And these positives need to be built on if we are to steer this country from a path that I see as ending in a revolution.
To begin with, we need to realize that Dean's early success in fund-raising and organization sent a message to the Democratic Leadership. That message is we are tired of the party being a lapdog to the GOP and its continued shift away from its core of activists in exchange for corporate money. So we need to make sure we continue to send this message through sites like MoveOn. We also may need to look at making efforts to cahnge the leadership by working to elect progressive Democrats into office. To do this, we need to stay together. Dean meetups should become MoveOn, Mother Jones, or Nation meetups.
Related to this, we need to keep the young people who have been drawn into politics by Dean's campaign involved. Should this "War On Terror" become a new "Cold War", there will be a need for people who are capable of keeping up the opposition over the long-term. Also as the media falls further and further into the hands of a few corporations, these young peoples' technical skills may be useful in building a kind of "micromedia" to combat the CEO-controlled media.
Finally, Dean himself needs to maintain visibility. He has become a kind of figure for the anti-war community. He needs to keep his profile up. He should the college circuit, see if The Nation or Mother Jones could use him as a columnist or even tap into the same force that elevated him to the early Democratic lead.
We didn't fail. We simply got a late start. I believe 2006 is a reasonable target to try and really show our power and begin the long road to breaking the cycle of empire and war and getting the United States back into the world community.
Daily Report
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Fireworks Erupt Over U.S. Role at Genocide Conference -
Over the weekend, Yahoo reported that at a conference on genocide is Sweden an AUstrian diplomat criticized the US's alleged use of the conference to lobby against the International Criminal Court. -
Might the Lapdog Get Hung out To Dry?
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According to the (UK)Independent, British Prime Minister Tony Blair fears that British intelligence about the WMD prgram in Iraq may be further questioned.
