>>No political profit, no political investment.
>
>WS:
>I thing you got it backwards. It should read No political
>investment, no political profits.
Capitalists don't invest in any venture unless they expect to make the investment yield profit in the near future. Expectation can be dashed, of course, and individual investors can go bankrupt, but expectation precedes investment. If voters are to act as interest groups trying to get policy outcomes (profits) out of investments (organizing, donating, voting, etc.), they must be able to expect profits before making investments -- if not immediately but at least in the near future.
>Candidates do not pop up from the middle of nowhere. They are
>creatures of opportunity.
We will see if the Democrats will respond to dangers/opportunities presented by Arab-American voters in the battleground states, who can make or break the 2004 election.
>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.
Union membership makes a smaller difference than Black community identification; but 62% of the voters who are union members voted for Gore, 34% for Bush, 3% for Nader, 1% for Buchanan in 2000; and 59% of the voters who have a union member in the household voted for Gore, 37% for Bush, 3% for Nader, 1% for Buchanan (at <http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/epolls/US/P000.html>). Moreover, in 2000, 16% of all voters were union members, and 26% of all voters had a union member in the household, which means that unions have a larger share of the votes than union density in the work force suggests (of all wage and salary workers, only 13.5% were union members in 2000, <http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2001/Jan/wk4/art02.htm>).
The problem with trade unions and liberal NGOs is not that they have ceased to deliver votes -- they still do. The problem is that they have kept investing in the Democratic Party, even after the investment began to yield net losses:
* union density peaked in 1953 (at <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/actrav/publ/128/3.pdf>); * the GINI index was at its lowest in 1968 (at <http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/el97-03.html> and <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Stats_incpov.html>); * the real hourly earning peaked in 1973 (at <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Stats_earns.html>); * the real value of the average AFDC grant peaked in 1977 (at <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Welfare_and_wages.html>).
Should trade unions wait until union density declines to a single-digit figure or less before diversifying political investment (cf. <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040223/004351.html>)?
>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.
Encourage more Jews and Asians to come to the United States, then. Among Americans, Asian- and Jewish-Americans are the most likely to identify themselves as secular: 21% of Asian Americans say they are secular, an additional 9% of them, somewhat secular, double the respective proportions among white and Hispanic Americans (at <http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/key_findings.htm>); 27% of all Jews who are Jewish "by religion" say they are secular, an additional 17% of them, somewhat secular, and about 25% of all Jews say they have no religion (at <http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/US-Israel/ajis.html> and <http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_judaism.html>).
As a matter of fact, many nations in the world are more in favor of keeping religion separate from government policy than Americans. Asked if they believe "religion is a personal matter and should be kept separate from the government," 55% of Americans say yes, and so do 75% of Czechs, 73% of Turks, 73% of French, 72% of Slovaks, 71% of Malians, 71% of Canadians, 70% of British, 68% of Senegalese, 68% of Germans, 67% of Japanese, 67% of Italians, 66% of Brazilians, 65% of Poles, 64% of Indians, 63% of Ukrainians, 62% of Ugandans, 61% of Nigerians, 60% of Kenyans, 60% of Tanzanians, 59% of South Africans, 59% of Guatemalans, 58% of Venezuelans, 56% of Lebanese, etc. (at <http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/185.pdf>.
That said, voters' views on religion are hardly the decisive factor for all racial/ethnic communities. Black Americans are the least secular and yet the most politically progressive of all racial/ethnic groups in the USA (at <http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/key_findings.htm>). And for most immigrants (with the exception of the rich and right-wing exiles), the issue that matters the most to them is not religion but immigration policy: "Due in part to the anti-immigration rhetoric of former California governor Pete Wilson and several other Republicans in the 1990s, the Democratic Party has enjoyed solid majorities of Hispanic support in most areas outside Miami's Cuban community. Latino voters in 2000 backed Al Gore over George W. Bush, 62 percent to 35 percent" (Juliet Eilperin, "Battle Emerges Over Latino Votes: Democrats, GOP Woo New Citizens," _Washington Post_, July 10, 2002, A06, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46382-2002Jul9?language=printer>).
>>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.
You mean what you said at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040322/006598.html>? That's where you reveal yourself (like Doug, Jon, John Thornton, etc.) to not be a party organizer. When organizers see incompetents who can't give directions or public presentations, they think what they can do to help them get retrained so they can do their jobs or, failing that, to take over their tasks so things will get done. -- 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/>