> The more Nader/Green bashing, the more power to the the DLC wing of
> the Democratic Party.
I don't get that at all. My position is: "Nader has a perfect right to run, but no one should vote for him." (This is not, in my view, "Nader/Green bashing," whatever you may call it. Sure, he's a little weird, as a person, but so am I, I guess, and most of my friends.) How does that empower the "DLC wing" of the DP? I don't see any connection at all, but maybe I'm just too dense.
> In any case, the axiom of "the more Nader/Green bashing, the more
> power to the the DLC wing of the Democratic Party" holds true with
> regard to the relation between rank-and-file Democrats + those who
> give "critical support" to Kerry on the left and the DLC Democratic
> politicians on the right. The DLC wing of the Democratic Party can
> count on no electoral defection from the Anybody But Bush/Nader crowd,
> so the former can take the latter for granted and move safely to the
> right to court undecided centrists everywhere, conservative Southern
> white Democrats, disaffected socially liberal and fiscally
> conservative Northern Republicans.
(1) AFAIK, there ain't no conservative Southern white Democrats to speak of any more -- they've all become Republicans. Or are you still living in the '60s? (2) Why shouldn't "disaffected socially liberal and fiscally conservative Northern Republicans" vote Democratic? Oh, I forgot, Ralph is counting on them for at least half his support. (3) As for courting "undecided centrists" -- doh! That's what capitalist parties do for a living. As I said, assuming that Chuck's fantasies of a "nice, bloody revolution" aren't likely to come true any time soon (thank the Lawd, say I), the capitalist parties are basically what we have to work with (and essentially only one of them). Given the one-past-the-post, Electoral College system we have (yes, this repetitious hectoring on this point is beginning to bore me to tears, too, but since you Nader people don't seem to acknowledge reality, I have to keep at it), when it comes to presidential campaigns, each party has to stretch both its arms out and grab as many voters on both sides as it can.
Bush and Kerry have the same problem -- grabbing what they can to the left and right, while keeping their bases happy. Bush may be in a more advantageous position to do it, being the incumbent, having bushels of cash for commercials, and having this aw-shucks, Texas Ranger image that seems to snow so many voters. But his managers have to balance off the profit from throwing red meat to their rightists and NASCAR dads against losing the right-leaning centrist votes, suburban Soccer Moms, etc. Similarly, Kerry's people have to figure out how to come up with the right kind of blather so that they can appeal to a good number of center voters and at the same time keep the Deaniacs in the corral. The resulting mush will undoubtedly disgust us on this list, but my argument (which I notice that you did not bother to respond to) is that the DP is the only political force we have at this time that is strong enough to turn back the increasingly totalitarian RP that Robert Kuttner pointed out.
> The DLC Democrats can also count on the ABB/N crowd in 2008, 2012,
> and later unless the Republican Party undergoes a revolution and
> nominates John McCain, Colin Powell, Olympia Snow, Christine Whitman,
> or some such moderate Republican who doesn't scare the ABB/N crowd,
> which is an impossibility.
Hey, let's not worry about 2004 at this point! We can't even be too sure of what will happen in the next few months, to say nothing of 4 or 8 years from now. Maybe there will be a revolution, after all.
> and most importantly because it's far more cost-effective to spend the
> same amount of money on registering politically like-minded voters and
> getting them to vote for the candidate one prefers than a third-party
> candidate on the opposite end of the political spectrum (especially
> given high rates of abstention among those who rank third-party
> candidates the highest on the scale of preference on either end of the
> political spectrum).
In other words, most third-party voters are basically not seriously interested in politics -- they vote on whims. (To be fair, a lot of major party voters do, too.)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.