>I disagree with Doug, however, in his general maximalist approach to this
and
>other elections, always seeking the politically correct candidate on every
>issue.
I'm glad you, Doug, and Nathan brought this stuff up. What seems to be the case to me is the existence of a "spectrum of habits of compromise": at one designated end: those who won't compromise their expressed values at all; at the other designated end: those who compromise their expressed values absolutely (not exactly liars, but those who have absolutely no problem compromising their values for what others see as negligible or negative "gains"; a contestable point itself, I know. Don't get upset Nathan; I'm not necessarily characterizing you as someone like this!). Points along the spectrum represent different degrees of compromisers.
Leo, you and Nathan make a good practical argument for compromising on candidates/votes: making do with what's politically feasible. However, have you ever thought that you yourselves want a "purity" of your own i.e. a winner? Nobody likes to back the underdog, especially when he is clearly outmatched, so why not pick the lesser of the (two?) evils who is most likely to win i.e. out of a bad lot, the one candidate who has the record/platform you can stomach (this is a bit extreme, granted, but makes my point) or even like, and for whom you can forgive any peccadilloes who is also the most likely one to win. So your "less than perfect" candidate wins, and may or may not work on that "less than perfect" platform with which you might not be happy, but can accept as a "building block" for more progressive work. However, that "less than perfect" platform could be undone more easily by someone else voted in later or could even be rejected by the "less than perfect" candidate for whatever reason (case in point: the federal Liberal Party ran on, among other things, a promise to scrap the Goods and Services Tax, our version of Britain's VAT; when they got in, they didn't do it, and gave a vague reason that it was "unfeasible" to scrap the tax).
Those of us who prefer less compromise in our voting habits (well, me, in any event) prefer to vote for politicians/policies with which I agree, keeping in mind the record of the party (most parties with any chance of winning federal elections so far are all allied to capital; I vote for the NDP, our version of the German SPD, simply because I don't think a more socialist party can get anywhere near Parliament at the moment, and they've never been the ruling party; I want to see if they can put their money where their mouth is, or if they will screw over the working class the same way the provincial NDP did), and simply hoping that other people will "see the light" and vote our way too. So far, it hasn't worked, but I've never been disappointed so far to find that the party I voted for lied to get into power or lied about how it conducts it's business (I'm not talking about the Democrats, Nathan) or conducts it's business in such a way as to make it unsavoury to me (now I'm talking about the Democrats) and worthy of my mistrust.
You pragmatists might win much more often, but what you win doesn't seem to me worth crowing about overmuch.
I'm sure I'll have more to say later when my hastily written work gets picked apart.
Todd