>Katha Pollitt:
> > ...
> > I just think there are some things you can get from electoral
> > politics, and some you can't. rolling back capitalism is not
> > something voting is going to get you.
> > ...
>
>People continue to talk as if voting "gets you" something like
>an outcome (e.g. "Democrats move to the left.") But it doesn't.
>In any election larger than a village, any single vote has a
>vanishingly small material effect; yet one constantly speaks
>hereabouts as if it mattered greatly, so much, indeed, that
>crafty compromises and cost-benefit analyses of candidates
>are warranted. Even Katha is doing it. Would anyone care to
>explore this mysticism? What does your vote _actually_ get
>you? I'm especially interested in those who are prepared
>to vote for a candidate they concede is repugnant.
Simply put, the reason why most of us don't agree with you is probably that few of us are anarchists, so we don't think of voting as a matter of "an individual" casting "a single vote" this way or that in separation from everything else. It's a question of political _campaigns_ & how to use them. Even those who may not vote for any candidate might still have a reason to try to _organize votes_ to beat down a right-wing direct referendum initiative, for instance. So, you'll never convince all leftists to look askance at voting _altogether_.
Yoshie