Shane wrote:
> Brian really ought to read the US Constitution. It is grossly false
to say that there will be "a real election" come Nov. 4. As far as
the presidency is concerned, there will (assuming no coup d'etat)
be 51 separate elections for members of the electoral college.
You don't vote for a presidential candidate. You vote for your
state's electors--and only for those. Your vote has no electoral
influence outside your state.
I know that. The 51 small elections make up the one large real election I was writing of. I thought that would have been apparent and did not want to insult the list by being pedantic.
> This is also grossly false.
No it is true. Votes for Kerry will increase the likelihood of his election, while votes for Bush will do the same for him. That the probable outcome can be predicted beforehand does not alter the mechanisms involved.
> In all those states the actions of Left voters have precisely *zero*
effect on the probability of electoral-college victory for either duopolist
candidate.
Of course they have effect. If all leftists in New York did not vote or voted for a minor candidate, then Bush would get New York's electoral votes.
To make your argument work, you have to redefine these votes as having *zero* effect. But they do have an effect: they make the prediction of candidate X winning those electoral votes a reality.
> Those opposed to both duopolists, if forced to choose between "A" and "B,"
have no way to decide except by flipping a coin.
As I said in my post, those people who believe that a second Bush administration and a Kerry administration would be functionally equivalent need not read further since my analysis applies only to those who believe that there would be a functional difference between the two possible administrations.
> This is an arguable, though dubious, position.
Dubiousness aside, what empirical evidence do you have that Bush 2 would be functionally equivalent to Kerry 1?
> An equally arguable position is that, by replacing an incompetent moron
with a competent hack, US imperialism will greatly improve its international
position and thus result in even greater suffering throughout the
world.
But the issue of US imperialism is not the only one that will be taken up by the next administration. Do you believe/have evidence that the policies of Bush 2 and Kerry 1 will have the same functional effect in the queer and black communities?
> But voting is a *symbolic* action--it takes place by use of
symbols (choosing between *names*), proceeds by way of
symbols (counting *numbers* of votes) and "results" in
symbolic effects (the *faces* presented on TV to represent
US imperialism).
No, voting is not symbolic. I agree it uses symbols, but that does not make it symbolic. It is an action that has consequences.
Since you are hoping for the "historic transition to a communist world order," can you tell me how the concrete act of voting for a minor candidate in 2004 leads to this concrete result in the future?
> This is shocking coming from a professed Buddhist. Buddhist
logic is not two-valued, it is four-valued: A, Not A, Both A and
Not A, neither A nor Not A.
As a Buddhist I am a radical empiricist. If there are more than two possible outcomes to the elections, please tell me the evidence you have to support this fact.
> Again *four* possible outcomes (if no coup d'etat): Ubu/Dickhead,
Kerry/Edwards, a "national unity" government under (de facto)
Colin Powell, withdrawal (maybe forced) of one or both tickets
and choice of a different face altogether to symbolize the US empire.
At this moment, what evidence do you have for the realization of your third and fourth outcomes?
> In sum, the only electoral choice that makes sense, for a Marxist,
is to use the symbolic action of voting to advance, however
marginally, the prospective emergence of an independant
working class political alternative to the capitalist duopoly.
Symbolic voting advances nothing. A symbolic vote transmits to those in-the-know what the vote meant. If you are out-of-loop the vote is meaningless.
Symbolic votes are a lot like Symbolist poetry:
"Symbolist poets like Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine took the view that a poem was a self-expressive gesture - self-sufficient and self-justifying. It did not refer to anything outside of itself, was not really `about' anything but its status as language and its expressive potential."
When a symbol has one meaning (like a stop sign) then it is useful. But votes for minor candidates are not reducible to a single meaning. They could mean:
a) an anti-war protest vote b) a dilletante's disdain for Kerry and Bush c) an attempt to be non-conformist and not follow the crowd d) a mis-pulled lever of mis-punched ballot
etc., etc.
Once again you engage in redefinition. For you, votes for minor candidates are messages to future selves and votes against US imperialism. But for this to be true you would have to get everyone to agree to your definition before the election.
If you are unable to do accomplish this, then a vote for a minor candidate has no fixed meaning: it is whatever someone wants it to be. As Humpty Dumpty once said: "Words don't mean what they mean. They mean what I say they mean."
I do not think that trafficking in symbolic votes with multiple meanings is a useful way for a leftist to spend her time.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister