At 6:59 PM -0700 4/5/04, R wrote:
>this "strategy" has too much of the ring of adolescents rebelling against
>their parents.
|You don't understand. The purpose isn't to force them to reform their
|party, but to reform the electoral system, so that the crucial votes
|of those who vote for minor parties can be garnered for the major
|parties rater than being wasted. So long as they think they can
|extort these people to vote for them, rather than the party of their
|choice, they won't be interested in reform. But if they realise that
|this won't work anymore, it becomes in their interests to support
|reform.
right or wrong, they're not going to reform either, bill.
> of course, it's the only thing the major parties understand.
>they aren't long on understanding or patience regarding people whose
>opinions are different from theirs. they, like shrub, are on a mission
from
>god.
|I have no idea what this is intended to convey.
what don't you understand?
>i'd suggest a better strategy is organize and provide a decent alternative.
>the actions of the left have too often been absorbed by the democratic
party
>during the 20th century.
|Again, you are being somewhat vague and incoherent.
sorry, but there isn't enough space in posting to explain this. i'm not sure what you don't understand.
|Of course you are
|perfectly entitled to argue that electoral politics is fundamentally
|a waste of time. I tend to agree that its usefulness is limited
|myself. But some reforms of capitalism can at least be effected
|through that strategy, provided the system isn't totally corrupt.
i don't believe electoral politics is a waste of time. and don't argue that it is a waste of time.
|However, where the electoral system tends to disregard the votes of
|minor party candidates, as happens in the US, then this is more
|difficult. So getting electoral reform is a precondition for
|effective minor party electoral politics. But of course you have to
|figure out how to do that through the major parties, since they have
|all the power under the present system.
one doesn't have to do this through the major parties. that's a dead end.
currently, they have most of the power. that's currently what is wrong with the US system. and as i mentioned above, the democratic party has a history of coopting the left.
|In those circumstances, voting for minor parties isn't a waste of
|your vote, because they can count it and easily deduce that under a
|preferential voting system, they would have received the benefit of
|that vote and it would have carried them to victory. Whereas under
|the existing system they were defeated.
|You are making it a matter of simple self interest for them to
|implement the change you want.
|However, that works best when the minor parties are still very
|insignificant. Its no use waiting until they are capable of getting
|20 - 30% of the vote, because then they pose a threat to the actual
|supremacy of the major parties and keeping them down becomes a matter
|of survival. But so long as they can only pull in 5%, this isn't an
|issue. They aren't a serious threat, the only issue for the major
|parties is how to add that 5% to their own support.
|At present they rely on extortion, telling people that they have to
|vote for the major parties or else their vote will not be counted
|towards the result. So long as that continues to work, so long as
|people bow to the extortion, they will stick to that. But if people
|start voting for the minor parties despite the threat, causing one or
|other of the major parties to lose elections that they would
|otherwise have won, they will quickly be forced to think about reform
|of the system, because it will be their own votes, in the form of
|second preference votes, that are being wasted.
|This isn't merely a churlish rebellion, still less is it anything to
|do with revenge. It is a carefully thought out strategic plan.
i disagree.
> let's not let that happen again. let the DLC have
>their party, and let's create something better. or is everyone on the left
>too pooped out?
|But there's no point creating a party with better platform if the
|electoral system discriminates against it. That's just beating your
|head against a brick wall. Much better to beat their head against the
|brick wall.
|Bill Bartlett
|Bracknell Tas
let's not beat anyone's head against a brick wall.
R
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