-...and in the interim, vote for Democrats who'll support the war. -Demos, as opposed to mere Dems, can scare the ruling class if they're -big enough. Demos brought down a few regimes in Argentina (not that -the US government is as weak as Argentina's, of course).
The last paranthetical is the key one, since if a demo is a threat to march on the White House and Congress and bodily throw them out of office, then demos are useful, since they allow the threat to substitute for the act. Demonstrations, pickets, whatever are useful only when they do less harm to those targetted than what is threatened if demands are not met. But a demo which threatens only more demos and nothing more is an empty threat.
>Large demos
>made the Vietnam war much more of a political problem than it would
>have been otherwise.
Did it? Or did the demos get the media attention and the quiet door-knocking and convincing of the public do the real work, so that politicians were moved against the war out of both moral pressure by constituents and fear of losing their jobs? Tip O'Neil, who was the first major Democratic Congressional leader to come out against the war in late 67 noted that it was when his working class constituents started writing him letters that he moved on the war, not when the school kids were demonstrating in the streets.
>Why the either/or approach, anyway?
Because that's how it's been treated in most antiwar organizing. Lots of mobilization for demos, little for grassroots outreach. All preaching to the converted, little reaching out to the convertable.
Demos are more fun than door-knocking, so a lot of activists delude themselves that they are more effective. You go to a gathering, everyone agrees with you, it makes you feel good-- what a great succeess!
I am all for voting against Dems who vote wrong on key issues. My argument is to run in the primaries to boot them, as happened to Menendez out in California over fast track, and happened regularly during the Vietnam era to pressure Congress to change their votes. When antiwar folks like Dellums were elected out of Oakland, that sent a message to other Democrats that they should change their votes on the war or they might be replaced as well.
-- Nathan Newman