dano wrote:
>
> I must say though that I don't actually believe that since most
> voters - aside from the few remaining Nader followers - understand
> both the gravity of the situation and the fact that Nader not only
> has no chance but also that a vote for Nader is in effect a vote for
> Bush. And that dark reality is enough to convince the realists that
> Nader is not even worth listening to.
>
Every time I see this argument, or any argument like it, I have about a 40-second period of rage in which I want to vote for Bush!
Nevertheless, I will cast a blank ballot as usual, except for the local Green candidate for state representative. It is a lie of course to say a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. Actually, it's probably not a lie but confusion grounded in fear and hysteria. Consider the following:
Bush 52 votes Kerry 52 votes Nader 1 vote
The Nader voter (who otherwise would have stayed home) has no effect on the race. You seem to think that I OWE a vote to Kerry. Only on that basis could you say a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush. Neither I nor any other citizen owes a fucking thing to any politician. It's their job to convince us. What makes you think I owe anything to either you or Kerry.
The 13th amendment abolished chattel slavery in the u.s. Peonage is also illegal. You must be daydreaming about all Nader voters being your 3rd generation debt peons, who have to pay off their debt by voting for a warmonger every four years.
When I see an attack on Nader from a leftist, even when true, I get the same 40-second rage in which I think I will vote for Bush. Because when you argue on the basis of Nader's merits or demerits you are either ignorantly or deliberately lyine about my motives. My support for Nader has nothing to do with Nader's personal merits or demerits but is simply a vote against the two imperialist warmongers.
An example of the way the DP demoralizes and further scatters those who might actually begin the work of forming a left in the u.s.: On this list several posters have cited MoveOn as an example for the left -- but MoveOn is entirely concerned with weaning people away from active politics into the passivity of merely giving away their vote to a warmonger. How can that be a model for involving people actively in resistance?
Now I have argued vigorously on another list (where all but a very few are anti-ABB) that the contradiction between ABBs and non-ABBs is what a great revolutionary called a "contradiction among the people," not an antagonist contradiction. But ABBs like you are trying to make it an antagonistic one by the sort of quite outrageous arguments you offer for Kerry!
I know a handful (but a very small handful) of ABBs on these lists who can urge their position without falling into the kind of vile attack on Nader supporters which your post represents. I believe them when they say that after the election they will devote themselves to anti-DP politics. But those who attack Nader as you do, those who make personal attacks, as you do, on Nader voters, don't give us much confidence that you will be with us in 2005.
It should be a difference in empirical judgment of what is needed this fall. You are turning it into a question of principle, coming close to Lacny's vile suggestion that anti-ABBs are traitors.
On election day I better cast my blank ballot before opening my e-mail, because if I were to do so and read a post like yours, I probably would vote for Bush.
Carrol