Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Chomksyfication Continues Apace

Gonzalez, who would have become the first Green Party to win the nonpartisan mayor's office, ran a stronger campaign than anyone anticipated, an effort Newsom termed "extraordinary.''

"We had enough supporters to win this election,'' Gonzalez said at his concession speech Tuesday night at his Mission District headquarters. "We didn't win it, but we didn't lose it either. ... I look forward to working on the next progressive campaign in this city...''

Gonzalez captured the attention of voters in their 20s and 30s who had shown little interest in electoral politics in the past. Like Howard Dean's run for president, Gonzalez's campaign relied strongly on the Internet to spread the word and to raise money, and it incorporated the traditional get-out-the-vote tactics of precinct walking and phone-banking along with poetry readings, rock concerts and yoga workouts...

Gonzalez's candidacy in the runoff election coalesced the city's progressive movement -- winning the support of tenants groups, homeless activists, environmental organizations and social justice advocates who have dogged Brown since his 1999 re-election and reached their greatest power a year later when Gonzalez and a majority of other anti-Brown candidates won seats on the 11-member Board of Supervisors.


The Democratic Party's lamentable tactic of turning itself into the embodiment of big city machines based around racial grievances and ethnic tribalism is now turning against it, as the Green Party makes inroads in these constituencies. The Green Party, by the way, is the mainstream face of what some have called transnational progressivism but is really old-fashioned Leftwing totalitarianism. Anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-semitic, anti-globalization, and, and I don't think there is much argument about this even from the Party members themselves, pro-terrorist). Most of the Boston Green Party leaders that I knew were ex-(and some not so ex-)communists. I don't mean that as hyperbole, they were card-carrying members and felt free to tell you so. What this points to is the continuing Chomksyification of the Left. As is always the case with Leftist movements, they inevitably gravitate towards their most radical constituency. In this case, despite losing the race, the Green Party has established itself as a force in San Francisco politics and the Democrats are more and more going to have to bed to their will. What is happening here is nothing less then the emergence of a new "remade" (in Al Gore's words) Democratic Party, remade as a Leftwing totalitarian party along the lines of the European Left.

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