brad,
you can be angry as hell at that part of the ABB crowd that attacked nader unfairly. that still leaves a significant segment of the ABB crowd that believes they can make a case for ABB. if you fail to engage them, but instead respond with hate and animosity, you may be doing no better than those who attacked nader.
> Look Doug, your are simply wrong when you say that nobody's going for
> independent progressive politics in this "very conservative
> country". Since when have we had the party apparatus that the
> Democrats have at their disposal? Our chance has nowhere near come
> up yet.
is it possible you have your reasoning backward? we (or you, if you think i am not in the same progressive camp as you) do not have a party or apparatus *because* the country is conservative and we (or you) have no support.
of course we (or you) will never have corporate support, since opposition to such is part of our (your) platform (in some sense). but can we (or you) even match the viral growth of ABB folks like moveon.org, which if i understand it correctly, raised millions of dollars from individuals (again IIRC, their initial growth, at least, was driven by word-of-mouth rather than big money from soros or backing from celebrities), or the dean campaign?
i do not know the answers. which is why i have asked questions on this (and other) lists. i appreciate the answers from yoshie, carrol and i respond with my thoughts, in return. i am yet to be convinced of the error in the reasoning of the "pragmatist"s (in quotes since that remains to be conclusively shown), including some of the posters to this list (doug, wojtek[sp?], others).
--ravi