oh man. if Medea Benjamin were there we might actually have a Democratic House Leader doing some leading, not that they'd let her be the leader of course.

when the people lead, the leaders will follow.

Folks here might want to take a look at the NYT article today "lofty Promise of Saturn Plant Runs Into G.M.'s Fiscal Reality". Two key quotes: "The Saturn plant, like other efforts at G.M. to battle foreign competition, became a victem of the company's short attention span." and "Workers have got to be asking themselves, What do we have to do?... "The social contract was that if we build a quality product, we're going to have jobs, our kids are going to have jobs, and the plant will still be in town."..."Now, that idea is gone."

Those "partnership" concessions weren't the answer, and they weren't worth the trouble...

Ugh. No Medea Benjamin. WHile I respect her political leanings and her drive to take action, not to mention her willingness to take part in direct action, I find her strategic understanding to be colored by activist glasses. She couldn't build a membership organization like a union or a community organization to save her life. All of her organization-building effort go into creating something of which she is the face and startegic director, then she goes out and claims to speak for the people.

My problem with her is that this orientation leaves her totally unaccountable to anyone else but her and several of her closest friends. Would she make a better Rep than Pelosi? If you go by votes, probably. But she won't be able to be anything other than a voice in the wilderness because she doesn't really understand what it means to really build something through which marginalized people, working people, can speak with their own voice.

This is probably too high a standard, but my own experiences with her is that she wants to use other people's work to advance her own issues, she has the attention span of a gnat in terms of sticking with issues, and her work is all about her, not about bringing masses of people together to build power.

While this would be a protest candidacy with no hope of winning, it would be a whining embarrassment of a campaign.

Back to the subject,Mission Accomplished Part Deux:

Bush's speech had useful info, if you know enough about what
is really going on. I get my info from respected alternate news sources. So here's what I wrote to the editor of the local outpost of Big Media, which only ran a couple of AP articles:

"To the editor

I thank you for your articles reporting and analysing President Bush’s very important speech on the Iraq War November 30 in Annapolis (full text available at www.whitehouse.gov) but your readers should know he told us, in his way, a lot more than your articles reported. First of all, he said our troops will stay there until we’ve eliminated all terrorists; and it was evident that he equated terrorism with all resistance to the US military and the government we have fostered in Iraq; and since the occupation by US forces incites Iraqi resistance and attracts terrorists from virtually all Arabic-speaking countries, it is a vicious circle that must go on indefinitely. Secondly, President Bush didn’t mention that most of the successes by Iraqi forces that he mentioned were done by paramilitaries, all of which are loyal not to the government but to a particular leader or a religious or ethnic sect; thus we are using one sect against another, which sounds like a method for generating a civil war and a divided country; for all we know, that may be the true goal. Would it be easier to coerce weaker autonomous regions into denationalizing their oil reserves than a strong, united Iraq? Thirdly, he talked about “marginilizing” the 93% of insurgents who are not terrorists; and how else would that be done except by capturing “suspects” for indefinite imprisonment or death using the paramilitaries’ death squads as we did in El Salvador?"

I should have added, "Does anyone believe that Bush would give up on maintaining the military bases that are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars?" and could have added more, but does it seem to any of you that I found the crux of useful info, or if not, what else would you pull out of it?

I'm so glad to hear Mr. Tasini is challenging Ms. Clinton.

To NathanHJ: there was a time when I might have agreed with you about Medea. But since 9/11 she has contributed mightily to expanding a peace movement in many directions with much less of the egocentricity you charge her with. She is a lady with a million ideas a month, a few of them good, all of them going toward the same end, curbing US adventurism. That can look flighty or it can look like creativity. These days, I think Medea has been on the creative side for awhile.

And -- some of the characteristics you charge her with are precisely what makes a good candidate -- willingness to risk a lot of shit, for example.

Janinsanfran, let me be clear that I am not castin aspersions on Benjamin's character or her dedication to progressive politics. I'm casting aspersions on her modus operandi, which comes from organizational experience I had in trying to work with her. Post 9/11, too I might add.

Certainly she's gained some focus since the Iraq War started, but I still don't see anything that builds the infrastructure that masses of people can use to weild power. I see a lot of carefully orchestrated media campaigns (which is not a bad thing, since those are hard to pull off and have a real impact, but it doesn't build an organization to take advantage of the power thus created) and I see a lot of piggy-backing on other people's work and getting the credit instead.

I do think she's willing to put herself out there and I don't think she's a total ego maniac. I just think that she thinks she's always the best person to be the face of whatever issue she's trying to promote. She's definately not an organizer, she's an activist. She has no base. She has no accountability to anyone but a close circle of friends.

She would run an agressive challegne to Pelosi, but as I've seen her races before and I'm just not impressed. I can't see more than 40% TOPS voting for her and if she runs as a Green, the percentage won't top 25.

She's just not a threat and won't be unless she's grown as a campaigner and can figure out a way to unify SF's fractious and fractured progressive base.

Nathan,

According to your analysis, Medea wins:

Benjamin 40%, 39% Pelosi, 20% Repug, 1% Libertarian.

Whether you think she's an ideal candidate, the mere suggestion that she might enter the race has already made a big difference. As Tasini points out, it may very well have forced Pelosi's hand to come out against the war.

I would imagine you're dubious about the connection; I would have my doubts too if I hadn't seen exactly the same thing play out several times. For example, in 2002 when Rosa Delauro came out against the war in response to a Green Party challenge by Charles Pillsbury. The response of centrist Democrats to a challenge from the left, particularly in traditionally liberal districts is always to move to where they know their constituency is-i.e. to the left. Their natural tendency, as Pelosi has shown is to move to to the corporate right where the money is. If there is no serious electoral pressure from the left, there's virtually no limit to how far they will move to the right as Lieberman has shown.

Bottom line: that's why we need two hundred Medea Benjamins.

John,

Totally not disagreeing with the impact that a challenge to the left can have, even to a totally safe incumbent.

Just talking specifically about Media (sic) Benjamin. There are protest candidacies and then there are protest candidacies and for me personally I do not find Benjamin to be a credible messenger. Plus having seen her in action up close, I'm also dreading it. The fact that this is the best the left can do in SF is disheartening to say the least.

On the math: the 40% was for a primary challenge (so inside the Dem Party), in which case she loses. But I will say here that 40% in such a primary could totally be spun as a win. Lefty challenges sitting Minority Leader on war, etc. etc. etc. The 25% number was for 3rd party challenge (Green probably), in which case Pelosi wins with minimum 54% of the vote. I think 25% is optimistic at best and I would be surpised to see Pelosi get less than 60% in 2006.

But in politics, despite all the safe Congressional seats around, I've learned to never say never.

I'd support a call for 200 credible challengers from the left. Not so sure I could live with 200 Medea Bejamins. Too many SF-style unaccountable, baseless activists give me hives.