>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>If history is any guide, the Greens (and others) will not be able
>>to change the American electoral system
>
>So then a vote for the Greens boils down to a form of
>self-expression, which is what a lot of American politics, esp left
>politics, is fundamentally about. That's what Mitch Cohen and his
>gang of booers were doing at the SSC, too. No organization, no
>strategy - just a gesture of purity that could help re-elect one of
>the worst presidents we've ever had.
My argument is not that "the Greens (and others) will not be able to change the American electoral system"; it is that "the Greens (and others) will not be able to change the American electoral system, and the Green Party (or any other Third Party on the left) will not be able to replace the Democratic Party, by agitating for Instant Runoff Voting and proportional representation in abstraction" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040315/005844.html>). And I offered a strategy of forcing political change: focusing on substantial politico-economic issues that would deepen the divide in the Democratic Party, rather than issues of electoral process like IRV and proportional representation; and running a strong anti-war/anti-occupation campaign in the battleground states where Arab and/or Muslim votes are concentrated. If the Democratic politicians feel their political lives are threatened, they will offer political changes, such as the adoption of IRV.
The abuse of invectives is certainly a problem at LBO-talk, as a person who wrote to you mentions: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040315/005868.html>. The quality of discussion doesn't improve even without any invectives, though, if you refuse to engage the argument of a person with whom you presumably are talking. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>