[lbo-talk] Targeting Only "the Likely Voters" -> Attacks on the GP

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Feb 17 13:26:51 PST 2004


Doug:
>
> A lot of Greens and other varieties of American leftists don't see
> elections as a path to taking power, but as a way of making a point.
> As I keep saying about Nader's last two runs, if he'd used the runs
> to build the Green party they could have made sense. But if he's just
> "making a point" - which is what he'd be doing with an independent
> candidacy this year - then he'd be better off writing a book.
>

I understand that, but this is a very infantile way of "making a point" a sort of "to piss off my mom I will cut my finger." Given the nature of the US political system, GP would "make a point" much more effectively if it formed a nominally nonpartisan bloc willing to support any political candidate with the right policy proposals, regardless of political party affiliation.

That was the clever strategy of Tony Mazzochi of the Labor Party. The fact that LP was a flop was due not to its poor electoral strategy but the fact that the clout of organized labor is nearly zero - the unions have almost no capability to tell the rank and file how to vote (the rank and file is more receptive to socially conservative agendas than union appeals), all they can do is to contribute money.

The Greens and assorted lefties, by contrast, have a much greater persuasive power which they can strategically use in close-call elections - if they did not waste their energies on running candidates attracting less support than the margin of statistical error.

Wojtek



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