>Nathan is a real puzzle. He isn't stupid. He isn't a coward. He has very
>few reactionary positions (the only one I can remember is his offensive
>support of U.S. war crimes in Yugoslavia). He has an activist record to
>be proud of. So his absurd attachment to the DP is hard to explain or
>understand.
Yet my attachment is merely a more articulated version of the attachment of millions of progressive voters-- black, latino, union, feminist, even socialist. You seem by your statement to be explaining all those millions of Democratic votes by some combination of stupidity or cowardice. It is precisely because I understand and identify with those millions of other voters that I believe that third party politics is so doomed. It's just unconvincing as a strategy and, by definition, if it can't convince those millions of progressive voters, it can't suceed no matter how nice it might sound in the abstract.
Even if I could be convinced personally, on balance, that third party voting would be better, that reasonable attachment to the Dems means that there is a collective action problem barring third party success, since everyone will not jump at once, and as long as most people are not jumping, even fewer will jump. So third party voting is and will be restricted to the small group of folks willing to ignore the basic reality of the irrationality of their third party voting.
In a sense, I have the reverse puzzlement of Carrol. Most folks on this list are intelligent but refuse to recognize the inherent collective action obstacle to third party success. Even if they personally like the idea, since it can't succeed, their dogged support for it is puzzling. So much intellectual firepower is deployed to argue for Nixon's relative merits, yet very little is deployed in strategies for making the lesser-evil reality of the two-party system work better for progressives. I hardly think the political reality of Democratic leaders is ideal as it is, but also just see the irrationality of organizing around a strategy that is inherently self-defeating. So the third alternative is to figure out how to strategically make the best of the real options in the electoral realm that we have available.
-- Nathan Newman