The Romney/Ryan Honeymoon and What it Means for the Left

There is much ado about Mitt Romney's recent Vice Presidential pick, Paul Ryan.  It is all too common for a Vice Presidential pick to have a "honeymoon" effect on the polls; Mitt Romney picks his VP and, voila, he comes from behind and is now polling above President Obama according to the latest Gallup trial heat (47 v. 45 as of 8/19/12). [1]  One of the most troubling aspects of the "honeymoon" effect is that Paul Ryan happens to be one of the most radical right-wing voices in the Republican party, and yet he is still popular.  He's young, handsome, and filled with "ideas," (read:  tax cuts and destroying any social safety net) but shouldn't the crazy substance persuade people away from the attractive exterior?  Why does his presence on the ticket help Romney at all?  Shouldn't this be troubling to anybody who doesn't want to see the public discussion digress further and further into debates we had (and the left won) thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years ago?

Leftists typically have little concern for the trials and tribulations of the Democratic Party.  So what if one of the major capitalist parties wins or loses?  While it is true that an Obama victory in November will not bring about worker control of the means of production, it should concern any politically interested person what the majority of people in the country believe and where they stand on issues.  The further left the nation gets, even a hop, skip, or jump to the left, the further left they are willing to look.  While many other factors abound, voting in the more liberal politicians that the Democratic Party has to offer can influence the political discussion of the moment.  When we aren't debating about contraception rights for people, we can talk about the issues that are important to our cause for worker emancipation.

While the myth of the "spontaneous awakening" of the working class is exciting, it does not happen to be the way history unfolds.  In Spain, workers had been practicing and talking over organizational models for quite some time before "spontaneously" participating in the libertarian socialist Spanish Revolution-era Catalonia.  The Russian working class had been actively debating and discussing before the Soviets "showed up over-night." In other words, the left must be aware that our ideas have to be mulled over in public.  The atmosphere has to drift further left so that it isn't so crazy to talk about the merits of worker democracy on national television.  Will an Obama re-election help so very much?  Maybe not, but a Romney/Ryan presidency will devour the national discussion into dialectics of "small welfare or no welfare," and "flat tax or regressive tax?"  This is a ticket that talks about government mandating citizens to buy health insurance like it's The Great Leap Forward.

So what does the left do about it?  Vote for Obama?  Campaign for Obama?  Maybe not.  What the Left can do is attack Romney/Ryan from our own unique perspective, and do what we can to prevent the discussion from getting any further right.



1.  "Election 2012 Trial Heat:  Obama vs. Romney," last modified August, 19, 2012. [Here]