I wanted to keep you up to date with academic thinking the the other coast, John.
The Loser Left
Mark LeVine, a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, has a revealing piece on the left-wing Web site AlterNet.org. The headline reads " 'Bush Wins': The Left's Nightmare Scenario." The "nightmare" he describes, however, isn't actually Bush winning, but America winning in Iraq:
In this . . . scenario, the war is over quickly with relatively low U.S. casualties, some sort of mechanism for transitional rule is put in place, and President Bush and his policies gain unprecedented power and prestige. From my recent conversations with organizers and their latest pronouncements, it is clear that this possibility has yet to be addressed. Waiting much longer could spell disaster for the antiwar movement. . . .
In such a scenario, especially if there is no major upsurge in domestic terrorism, the antiwar movement will find itself publicly discredited and politically marginalized; remember the Y2K dooms-dayers? . . .
If the movement doesn't move with full effort to lay the groundwork for a Bush Wins scenario the massive organizing and consciousness raising of the last year could well prove fleeting, forcing the movement to start from scratch in mobilizing public opinion a year or two down the road.
opinionjournal.com |
