WS: Politics is an iterative process - or as you note later in your posting it takes two to tango. Candidates do not pop up from the middle of nowhere. They are creatures of opportunity. If they see an opportunity by attracting certain interests - they will undoubtedly use it.
Privatizing social security is a case in point. Advocating it head on is a form of political suicide, yet narrow business interests pursue it. Some politicians sense an opportunity and lend themselves as conduits of those pursuits. Their advocacy creates momentum that attracts new politicians and emboldens the original proponents, etc. But if you looked at the issue form a rather static point of view that privatizing social security is unpopular - the likely conclusion would be that no sane politician would address that issue.
I do not see why the same process will not work with the left causes. Of course, it is utterly unrealistic to expect a total overhaul of the existing order, but nobody in the 1960s expected the Goldwater's strategy of the Republican overhaul of the South would work either.
That fact that labor and progressive organizations have so little pull in the US politics is caused in part by the sheer strength of business interests, but also by the sheer weakness of these organizations. Unions cannot deliver votes, periods. The blue collar sector (union and non-union alike) is more moved by NRA's appeals to protect guns and hunting rights or by the appeals of organized religion to protect family values and fetal tissue than by left wing appeals to save jobs, environment, and civil liberties.
Which brings us to the point that a substantial share of the US society - rich, poor, and the middle - is fairly conservative. There are historical reasons for that - one being that this is the nation of immigrants, and immigration strengthen the role of organized religion. Organized religion was often not only social institution that immigrants brought with them to Amerika, but also the only one they could more or less freely practice here (e.g. African Americans).
Another reason was machine politics that often cut across social classes and putting labor on the same boat with their bosses. The notorious helping hand that AFL_CIO lent to CIA in "stomping out the reds" in labor movements overseas is a continuation of this tradition.
Yoshie:
> electoral investments. In the case of Nader/Green voters, activists,
> and organizers, they do not have any willing partners in the dominant
> parties who can and will actually produce political profits for their
> causes.
>
WS: Yoshie, lets be brutally honest. No sane person of ANY political persuasion would put any eggs in that basket. They are a bunch of goofballs that cannot be taken seriously by any measure - and my previous posting illustrated that with my own experience. I guess Doug reported similar experiences from NYC.
Yoshie:
> No political profit, no political investment.
WS: I thing you got it backwards. It should read No political investment, no political profits.
It should be emphasized, however, that not all expenditures constitute investment. You can throw a lot of good capital (both social and financial) on ventures amounting to Disneyland rides. Dot.coms and third party efforts (except those that intended to be vote splitters) are cases in point.
Wojtek