One Day to Go

With the New Hampshire primary one day off, NPR is still at it: it’s crack political team, including Don Gonyea, the reporter whose reporting, for years, consisted of repeating Bush press office statements, is still making it a Clinton v. Obama thing. But they and the rest of the corporate and corporate-friendly media may be too clever by half – for a change. Let Clinton and Obama tear each other down. Better yet, let Obama knock Clinton out of the water. That would be no mean achievement. This morning’s (January 7) polls suggest there’s a chance that will happen. But we mustn’t hope prematurely. Instead, lets do all we can to make the people of New Hampshire rise to their historic responsibility. [Needless to say, there’s no remotely plausible reason why this should be their responsibility; why out lunatic electoral system assigns inordinate political influence to them, as it did to the Democratic voters of Iowa. But these are the conditions that prevail.] With the prospect of a Clintonite (that is, a kinder, gentler and infinitely more competent Republican) Restoration quelled, then perhaps we can have a more serious political discussion – not about “populism” (Edwards) versus happiness and niceness (Obama), but about just where (not whether!) in the class struggle the POP, the Party of Pusillanimity, can and will come down. We live in a world devastated by eight years of Cheney and Bush led, Democrat facilitated, murder and mayhem; we face the prospect of environmental disasters, economic decline, and other imaginable (and yet unimaginable) catastrophes. If there’s to be any chance of a soft landing, a radical change of course is necessary – NOW. As best one can tell at this point, an Edwards presidency will be more propitious for that end than an Obama presidency. Or, what comes to the same thing, it will be less Clintonite.

So let Edwards hang back for now (if he can’t yet surge ahead). Let him team up with Obama in New Hampshire against the Clintons. His war of attrition with Obama can intensify later, so long as the money – the lifeblood of American “democracy” – holds out. It’s a shrewd strategy. Lets hope it works. But, even if it doesn’t, it may help push Obama in the right (that is, the left) direction. Then the task will be to keep him there.