> Here's Katha Pollitt's remarks in response to a question about her
> latest column in _The Nation_. Yoshie
>
> As for the second alternative, vote for nader to build the Greens --
> I don't see how the greens will ever be a significant political
> force, capable of winning elections above the city-council level.
> Only 11 percent of people in this country describe themselves as
> "liberals" (and that's what the Greens are -- not socialists). In a
> winner-take-all electoral system like ours, third parties are always
> marginal.
So maybe we need to build a 3rd party *and* rabble-rouse for a system of proportional representation, simultaneously. This is truly the political equivalent of being unable to walk and chew gum at the same time. It's fascinating, how this whole culture is still stuck in this Fifties timewarp: the US Empire is dead, we're bleeding money to the new metropoles, but folks act as if history ended in 1952. And maybe that's entirely appropriate for a former metropole, living off its accumulated loot, its memories and its nostalgia: the sins of our imperial past are coming home to roost faster than an IMF adjustment package.
> congresspeople. Remember, the communists, with a whole lot more moxie
> and discipline than the greens
We Greens have plenty of moxie, probably too much for our own good (we get some wiiiiillld personalities... I'm qualified to say this, because I'm one of them). I thought the point of Resistance movements was to move beyond military-style discipline, but I guess 1968 didn't happen, either. Back to the cross-of-gold issue, comrades!
-- Dennis