[Marxism] Stopping Trump
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * In addition to the Truthout piece posted by Lou a few days ago, this is a pretty good article as well. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-chicago-protest-213728 Earlier in the week Clay stated that the evidence for his claim that the UIC Pavillion protest was counter productive would come after Tuesday. Now Clay claims that since Trump has not been completely shutdown, the UIC Pavillion protest was ill considered. Clay's threshold for "success" of the action is so high it is truly bizarre. None of the 3K students inside thought that it was at all realistic that Trump would drop out of the race after a successful protest inside UIC Pavillion on Friday. The "shut down" was regarding Trump speaking at UIC (at their university, on their campus) not at a national level. No one set the bar for success at the UIC Pavillion as high as Clay has claimed it is. Also, the results of the primaries last Tuesday show that Trump didn't meaningfully increase his support, he didn't get a "victim of disruptive protester" bump. In fact, data from a Rasmussen survey shows that majorities or pluralities across all major demographic variables blamed Trump for the violence at his events more than the protesters. This isn't a simple replay of 1939 or 1968. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/march_2016/voters_fear_more_political_violence_blame_trump Many thanks to Lou and Phil for moving the discussion from a comparison with the SWP's take on events at Madison Square Garden in 1939 up to the CP's take on Goldwater campaign of 1964. At this rate we can have a fact based discussion of the 2016 Anti-Trump UIC Pavillion protest starting sometime in late April. Phil asks "Why do so many leftists always go for the easy targets - Goldwater, Trump - instead of the crucial targets?" By Phil's definition of what a real leftist is there are not 3K leftists in a city of 3 million people. So the question is silly on its face and does not apply in the slightest to the people who protested Trump at UIC. The UIC protest wasn't organized by the CP or the ISO or any other left party. The Anti-Trump protest at UIC was the first step into social movement street politics for the majority of the people protesting. This fact has been noted repeatedly. It is silly to expect people whose politics are a mixture of identity politics and Sanders style Keynesianism to jump automatically to a systemic understanding of the greater danger posed to the working class by HRC than Trump. In reality, Phil's question and Lou's response is merely sanctimonious preening in isolation and irrelevance. The majority of those 3K students who protested against Trump don't even know the Marxist left exists because the Marxist left is so small, so isolated and so irrelevant. Keeping in mind the Marxist left's miniscule size and utter lack of influence with working class people can help Marxmailers avoid asking such plainly silly questions. Sean Noonan _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Stopping Trump
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On March 15th Clay Claiborne writes: “I said that the protesters rode into an ambush but I will reserve my verdict on the effectiveness of their "riding into an ambush" until the outcome of the immediate battle - the vote in IL today. I never said I was withholding my verdict as to whether it was an ambush until the outcome of the vote.” On March 16th Clay Claiborne writes: "There seems to me to be a big disconnect where a section of the Left lives in an alternate reality in which they don't even have to consider whether this on that militant tactic might actually help Donald Trump get elected president and in which they can brag about having "shut Down Trump up" while for 3 days before the election the mainstream media was saturated with Donald Trump and his minions, and the subject that assured he would continue to be the focus of attention in this critical period was precisely that protest. "Shutting Donald Trump Up" can now join "Stopping Obama from bombing Syria" as another of the great victories of the Left's imagination." __ Clay has claimed that the UIC event was a Trump ambush. If it was an ambush it didn’t work. Clay then claims that the threshold of success for the protesters at UIC had to be to completely “shut Donald Trump up” and since Trump has not been completely shut up, the UIC Pavillion protest was ill considered and driven by an “alternate reality” and the “left’s imagination.” So first off, I reject the charge of bullshit. Clay's meaning is clear. Second, the elections result and subsequent survey data is in. Trump did not substantially increase his support by his putative ambush. Majorities and pluralities across all demographic groups blamed Trump for the violence at his events and his numbers didn’t get a post-protest victim of protester bump. Shutting Down Trump at UIC always meant at only UIC Pavillion on that one day – not completely and forever. It was nothing like “Stopping Obama from bombing Syria.” Clay goes from treating Trump like a strategic genius setting up ambush events so as to capture a bump of blowback anti-protester support to disparaging those protesters for not meeting a goal that he unilaterally imposes on them in order for their tactic to be measured a success. Clay follows Rachel Maddow, President Obama, Nate Silver, Trevor Noah and other establishment liberals in aiming his fire more at the protesters doing their first street politics than at Donald Trump. Sean Noonan _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stopping Trump
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 03/20/2016 10:48 PM, Sean Noonan via Marxism wrote: Now Clay claims that since Trump has not been completely shutdown, the UIC Pavillion protest was ill considered. I challenge you to back that up with a quote from from my emails. I have no time for the lies and "mis-understandings" of some on this list. No time for BS! Clay _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stopping Trump
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Sean Noonan via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > Clay then claims that the threshold of success for > the protesters at UIC had to be to completely “shut Donald Trump up” > I never said that and you have failed to produce a quote of me saying that. The other distortions I don't have time to deal with. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
