Re: [sixties-l] The future meaning of this electoral crux

From: Peter Levy (plevy@eagle.ycp.edu)
Date: 12/03/00

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    Having recently watched the Supreme Court hearing on the Gore-Bush dispute
    I am not sure how so many can consider the two parties so similar.  ON one
    pole sits Antonin Scalia, Wm. Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas.  ON the other
    pole Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.  The former group has been
    struggling for years to re-take the court. The judicial revolution they
    seek to unleash goes well beyond reversing Roe v. Wade.  Ironically, they
    will probably rule against state's rights in this case but that is because
    they have no intention of allowing Al Gore become president when they are
    so close to securing a firm majority in the Supreme Court.  Thomas' bias
    is so great he had the gaul to remain silence throughout the
    hearing/arguments.  In fact, I predict that fifty years from now our
    grandchildren will want to know how veterans of the New Left could have so
    inaccurately misperceived the power of the right in this country, during
    the late 1960s and again at the turn of the century.  
    
    ica
    
    cm
    
    On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Michael Rossman wrote:
    
    > It seems neither a coincidence, nor a simple irony, that this national moment
    > of perfect, tepid indecision comes as a climax to a process of convergence,
    > proceeding now for generations, between the two (official) poles of our
    > bipartisan system. (Please, friends, spare us pontification about the "radical
    > differences" between putative Gore and Bush futures, in deference to longer
    > perspective!) 
    > 
    > Might this be _the_ climax to this process? I suspect that in fifty years, our
    > children will be able to look back on this as the time when this convergence
    > began seriously to reverse, as the two-party system came finally to implode
    > and open to metamorphosis, via such reforms as proportional representation and
    > prioritized voting. In view of this dynamic, proceeding and pending, it seems
    > to me that action and committment to revitalizing the two-party system as such
    > - which of course is what further and future support of the Democratic Party,
    > even by "subversion from within", amounts to -- is fundamentally mistaken and
    > counter-progressive, however worthy may be the immediate goals.
    > 
    > 	Michael Rossman  <mrossman@igc.org>
    > 
    



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