Because they are teleological and Daschle does nothing to bring about the desired end...he merely prevents an undesired end....whereas, Nader promised to bring about a new end....  Nathan Newman <nathanne@nathannewman.org> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <DHENWOOD@PANIX.COM> Nathan Newman wrote: >Nancy Pelosi is far to the left of old Rayburn and a good deal to the left >of Tip O'Neill on social issues, yet she easily won election as majority >leader. I could point to the median voter in the Democratic caucus and >their leftward move from decades past. -That's all very nice, but why do all these left Dems have so little -influence on either policy or political discourse?...They've got slightly less -than half of Congress, but you'd never know it. Yes-- and one vote short of half of the House means you've got nothing. You can't even get a vote on a bill. As I've repeated, you want influence by progressives, elect more Democrats so they actually can control and set the agenda. Imagine a Congress where John Conyers ran the J udiciary Committee, Charlie Rangel ran Ways & Means, and so on. Gingrich got influence by getting Congress for the GOP in 1994, so he could set the agenda. Nader ran in 2000 and set no agenda from his 3% of the vote and wouldn't have set the agenda from 15% if a Republican got elected. Daschle gets to set the agenda in a negative way because he can block legislation with a filibuster, which he has repeatedly. He blocked ANWR, blocked judges, blocked the Dec. 2001 tax cut, blocked the bankruptcy bill, and so on. But third party fundamentalists won't even praise him for blocking all that bad legislation. -- Nathan Newman </BLOCKQUOTE> <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/finance/mailsig/*http://tax.yahoo.com">Yahoo! Tax Center</a> - File online, calculators, forms, and more