On Wed, 9 Jan 2002 15:04:57 -0500 "Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org> writes:
> People on this list either engage in breathtaking ignorance or
> disingenuousness, as if they had never heard of a parliamentary
> "rule." For
> those who have never heard of the beast, it means that nothing can
> even be
> voted on unless a majority agree to allow a vote. Any controversial
> idea or
> proposal dies in the Rules committee long before any vote ever
> happens.
>
> So the "Democrats" only can propose a controversial idea and get a
> vote if
> they have the agreement of the most conservative members, who hold
> the power
> to team up with Republicans and block the vote. You could have 45%
> of the
> Congress stone-cold Marxist-Leninists and never see a single vote
> occur on
> anything remotely progressive.
So basically you are telling us that the game of electoral politics
is one that is rigged in favor of the so-called "moderates." I don't
think that is news to most of us here.
>
> Plenty of Democrats (as opposed to a nonexistent "the Democrats"
> which does
> not exist as a singular) have proposed nationalizing the oil
> industry --
> check back in the 70s - but there weren't the votes to bring it to a
> vote.
>
> Legislative fights happen on the 50-yard line because the moderate
> players
> located there get to set the rules that the ball never moves more
> than 10
> yards either direction. You could replace 100 Democrats with
> Greens, Blues
> or Reds of whatever shade and that basic fact would not change.
>
> And until folks learn enough about the legislative process to
> recognize this,
> most of the leftwing analysis of electoral politics in America will
> remain
> disconnected from reality. The median Democrat in Congress is for
> single-payer health care, massive increases in social spending, for
> gay
> rights, abortion funding for poor women, radical labor law reform,
> and almost
> every progressive wish list item imaginable. The problem is
> electing more of
> them to overwhelmn the conservative Dems and moderate Republicans
> who define
> what gets voted on and passed today.
And how do you propose to do that when the whole electoral process is rigged in favor of the so-called "moderates"? In practice the election of more Democrats means simply the election of more moderate-conservative Democrats at the expense of Republicans. This as you correctly note has little effect on the ideological balance of Congress. So why should leftwing people waste their resources on trying to elect more Democrats then? It would seem to me that their energy and resources would be better used in things like revitalizing organized labor, and the revitalization of social movements like the civil rights movement, the feminist movement and so forth. It is precisely when such movements are at their most vigorous, that electoral politics will be most responsive to progressive concerns. Otherwise, you can elect as many Democrats as you please and the end result will be a big null.
Jim F.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>
>
> >
> > As with most statistics, the interesting information is not what
> the
> > split
> > in parties means in any year, but the trend over time. And what
> is
> > most
> > interesting is that in mid-century and immediately after, it was
> > hard to see
> > any clearcut divide between the parties, as conservative Dems
> mixed
> > on the
> > graph with liberal Republicans. What is interesting is that the
> > defections
> > of Southern Dems to the GOP visually reveals the increasing
> > polarizaiton of
> > votes between the parties.
> >
> > Nathan Newman
> >
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