Carl Davidson, 60s-Era Radical, Denies Obama Endorsement

Why would any left-wing activist - especially a founding executive of the '60s-era radical group, Students for a Democratic Society - go to all the trouble of launching a "Progressives for Obama" movement, and then turn around and declaim any formal endorsement of the Democratic presidential nominee?

It doesn't make much sense, but that's exacty what '60s-radical Carl Davidson did yesterday in a comment at Goat's Barnyard, "All That Is Old Is New Again":

Today I run 'Progressives for Obama', a web site completely independent of him. We distance ourselves from him, and he can do likewise. Technically, we don't even endorse him; we simply say he's our 'best option.' So there's no need for him to reject what's not there. We do want people to vote for him, mainly as a way to end this horrible, unjust and stupid war.

Goat's Barnyard had posted on Daniel Flynn's penetrating essay at City Journal, "Obama’s Boys of Summer: A Who’s Who of 1968 Radicals Supports the Candidate."

While Davidson denies endorsing Obama, his website, "Progressives for Obama," prominently displays this statement:

All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grass-roots participation drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives...

There's more at the link (and here and here) - and if that's not an endorsement, maybe I need to go back to school for some postmodern (re)education.

But check out a recent article on Davidson's support for Obama, "Radical from '60s Stoked by Barack: Students for a Democratic Society Leader Now Webmaster for Progressives for Obama":

He didn't bomb the Capitol or rob banks like his contemporaries in the Weather Underground.

But Carl Davidson, a former vice president of the Students for a Democratic Society who traveled to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro and still praises the dictator today, is another proud radical for Barack Obama, serving faithfully as webmaster for "Progressives for Obama."

He joins his old SDS collaborator, Tom Hayden, who traveled with Jane Fonda to meet with Vietnamese communist leaders during the height of the Vietnam war. In fact, Fonda, too, Hayden's ex-wife, is part of Progressives for Obama.

Obama recently came under scrutiny for his relationship with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, two leaders of the communist revolutionary Weather Underground responsible for bombing the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations and other targets in the 1970s.

Ayers and Dohrn, now married, went underground after she was charged with instigating riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 and after several of their fellow SDS Weatherman associates were killed when bombs they were building blew up in a Greenwich Village townhouse. One of those killed was Ayers girlfriend at the time, Diana Oughton. The group was planning to bomb Fort Dix Army Base in New Jersey.

Dohrn publicly celebrated the group's maiming of Chicago prosecutor Richard Elrod in the Chicago riots. In 1970, rich kid Ayers, son of the chairman of Commonwealth Edison, explained what the Weather Underground was all about: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."

Following the mass murders of actress Sharon Tate and others by disciples of Charles Manson, Dohrn had this to say: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!" Dohrn went on to suggest adopting a "fork" salute might be appropriate for her fellow homicidal maniacs.

Perhaps Davidson's ashamed of his past leadership in an organization pledged to the overthrow of the United States? Perhaps he's realized that his support for Obama might ultimately be a liability for Democratic Party hopes in November?

Indeed, the history of America's domestic enemies on the left llustrates how agressively these radicals have sought an "image makeover." At one time, folks like Davidson proclaimed themselves the "new left," only to discard that label when it became synonymous with bomb-throwing nihilists.

Today's "progressives" are simply unreconstructed revolutionaries who have jettisoned the in-your-face nomenclature of earlier days as too provocative for the mainstream:

By the '70s, many '60s veterans had concluded that working 'within the system' had become a viable option. As a result, many leftists stopped using rhetoric and slogans that had marginalized them from the political mainstream. Labels like 'radical', 'leftist', and 'revolutionary' sounded stale and gratuitously provocative. And so, gradually, activists began to use the much less threatening 'progressive.' Today, 'progressive' is the term of choice for practically everyone who has a politics that used to be called 'radical.'

It's no surprise that leftists are embarrassed by their own history of extremism. They seek not only to divorce themselves from their predecessors, but to cleanse themselves of the slimy ignominy of revolutionary agitation. This cleansing effort is so schizophrenically hypocritical that we see the same types of people who decry the label "radical" turning around simultaneously to demonize the right as "pseudo-fascist."

And in the case of Carl Davidson - who's a perfect specimen of this shameful history - he'll declaim endorsing Barack Obama's presidential campaign while simultaneously championing it.

This is fundamentally dishonest, but that's a key characteristic of a great many on the far-left.