Mina Kumar wrote:
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>
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> Apocalyptic "let the worst leadership get in power because then the people
> will rise" logic really scares me. It's kind of dismissive of the people
> who get trampled on in the meantime, the people for whom the difference
> between bad and worse makes a profound difference in their life.
>
This is _not_ the logic of opposition to the Democratic Party. That party _is_ the "worst leadership" -- for example, had Gore been elected a new war against Iraq would have been likely. Had Bush won the 1992 election, we might still have "welfare as we [knew] it." The point is that even fairly minor reforms (or continuation of still existing reforms) depends (now) on the rise of mass movements. It wasn't Roosevelt and the Democrats that gave us Social Security -- it was mass movements that threatened to demand much more in the way of old-age pensions.) It wasn't Wagner and Roosevelt who gave us the Wagner Act -- it was the mass struggles of workers which threatened to overflow acceptable channels.
Voting for a Democrat is _not_ voting for the lesser evil: it is giving aid and comfort to the greater threat.
It is an illusion that all opposition to the supposed "lesser evil" is a repetition of the very special circumstances of Germany in 1932. The Democrats are radically different from the SPD. Bush is radically different from Hitler. And we don't have anything remotely like the KPD.
Carrol