Nathan Newman wrote:
>There are plenty of good arguments for why
>the Democrats are not always great; the question is whether a third party
>strategy is viable under the present electoral system where no third party
>has been able to get a serious toehold since the Republicans emrged during
>the apocolypse leading up to the Civil War.
-Of course the US Democratic Party is partly responsible for that electoral system. - They could have attempted to change it to a preferential system that would -enable Green voters to give their second preference votes to the Democrat -candidate. Presumably their rationale for not doing so is to blackmail all left -wing voters into voting for them, or waste their vote. If you are right that -voters defecting from the Democrats to vote Green is what cost the Democrats -the election, then it has proven to be a failed strategy. Not the fault of the -Greens, who haven't achieved sufficient political influence to make such a change.
Yes-- moderate Democrats would rather see Republicans elected than lose the two-party dupoly. They actually like taking leftwing voters out of the pool since it forces Democrats to move even further right in order to defeat Republicans.
The issue is not "Democratic strategy"-- who gives a f--- about that. The question is progressive strategy in electing the best overall government we can for our issues.
If voting Green would improve the political system, I'd do it in a second. In fact, I have done so in the past, until it became clear that it was a failed and useless strategy, especially since the Greens have no strategy to make it useful. I'm a big fan of preferential voting and pushing through such changes is about the ony credible goal out there for the Greens. Although the result would still be largely the same -- the Greens still wouldn't be getting lots of election wins an in fact, moderate candidates (as opposed to the DLC institutionally) would love the change in the end, since they could run independent runs and do quite well.
Folks act as if running under some different label at the ballot box will suddenly change electoral dynamics of having to get 50% of the vote to win. The compromises are not with the "Democratic Party" -- that amorphorous network of 435 candidate-based parties in each individual district -- but with those who vote. Changing the electoral, mobilizing large numbers of new voters, and educating them on the issues is the key to political change, not farting around on changing the color of the party banner to green.
The NAACP mobilized orders of magnitude more new voters than the Greens in the last election. That is serious political change that is meaningful.
-- Nathan Newman