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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumLove Me, Love Me, I’m a Leninist (Clinton’s camp thinks it’s time for voters to step into line...)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/hillary-clinton-dnc-bernie-sanders-lenin-democracy/Love Me, Love Me, Im a Leninist
Hillary Clintons camp thinks its time for voters to step into line and stop criticizing their candidate.
by Corey Robin
Now that theyve discovered the notion that a political party, faced with a dangerous political enemy, should suppress all internal criticism of its putative leader lest she be harmed by that criticism, and that the party should refrain from fractious internal debates lest it be ill-equipped to defeat the enemy, I wonder if liberals are rethinking their views on Lenin.
The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organisations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party.
Actually, by the standards of todays liberal, Lenins strictures come off as relatively benign. He at least called for universal and full freedom to criticise the party unless and until that criticism threatened the unity of an action decided on by the Party.
Whereas the Democrats havent even yet decided on Clinton, and were already being told that any criticism of her in anticipation of that decision will threaten the partys ability to act upon that decision once it is made.
Speaking of that language of harm the New York Times headline reads, Bernie Sanders, Eyeing Convention, Willing to Harm Hillary Clinton in the Homestretch, and the article repeats the charge Im reminded of the language Justice Scalia used in the Bush v. Gore case in order to grant a stay to the Florida recount.
The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [Bush].
Despite all the obvious differences in the two situations, Im struck by the similarity: in both cases, its being argued that democratic rules and norms should give way to indeed, might harm the personal needs and concerns of the candidate.
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Love Me, Love Me, I’m a Leninist (Clinton’s camp thinks it’s time for voters to step into line...) (Original Post)
Karmadillo
May 2016
OP
Autumn
(45,120 posts)1. I'm already in line. Behind Bernie.