combining responses to yoshie, hari kumar, james heartfield, michael dawson (and implicitly carrol, whom MD quotes)...
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Ravi wrote:
>
>>a) bush is a particularly vicious menace to the world and replacing
>>him with kerry would make a small but significant difference (i will
>>throw in a simple example of something that may improve:
>>environmental protection).
>
> John Kerry voted against even Kyoto in 1997, even though Kyoto itself
> was a very weak protocol severely circumscribed by the market
> principle (cf.
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/06/day-after-tomorrow-greenwashing.html>).
>
what about the bush govt efforts to open up various national parks for drilling and other invasive activities? i believe kerry would roll them back. i am sure you will agree that in small ways, kerry will be better for the environment, than bush.
> Here's a paradox: it is difficult to put left-wing candidates on the
> ballots in the general elections, to say nothing of electing them,
> for the highest offices, whether they are members of the Green Party
> (who need to overcome restrictive ballot access), the Democratic
> Party (who need to raise a lot of money to win in party caucuses and
> primaries), or something else; and it is much easier to elect
> left-wing candidates, whether they are members of the Green Party,
> the Democratic Party, or something else, for lower-level offices, but
> lots of lower-level elections are non-partisan elections, so it
> matters much less to voters of which parties candidates are members.
>
> In any case, though, if you want to aim only for good and clean
> government at local levels, it is indeed advisable to focus on
> lower-level elections, but if that's your only goal, it doesn't seem
> to me to be absolutely necessary to build a third party.
>
> The difference between the programs of the Democratic Party and the
> Green Party (or the Labor Party or any other party on the left that
> existed in the past and may come into being in the future) is the
> clearest at the level of national politics, not at the levels of
> school boards and city councils.
>
> So, it all depends on what you want the Green Party (or any other
> third-party on the left) to do. If your sole aim is good and clean
> local government, by all means focus on local elections, though I'm
> not sure why you need a third party for that purpose. If your aim is
> to build a political party that is an electoral arm of social
> movements such as an anti-war movement, a Green movement, etc. that
> have political agendas for social change at the national level (which
> cannot be addressed, much less achieved, at local levels), it doesn't
> make sense to run candidates only for school boards and city councils.
yoshie, i never said school boards and city councils. i explicitly included "state" level in my list. you could run independent or third party candidates for congress, for instance. for state governorships, perhaps. etc. my guess (and admittedly its a guess) is that these are easier campaigns to run (both from the monetary perspective and the effectiveness of grassroots door-to-door campaigning) and a win here and there can be consolidated (as opposed to the 2-3% nader gets which will buy us zero clout anywhere). brad meyer i think makes similar points in his response.
also, imho, in a modern democratic society, it takes a while for even slightly radical notions to take root among the majority. again i am a bit green (no pun intended!) in the area, but i do not see anti-war or green as movements, as much as i see them as just a better way to live as a community. the task, from that position, is to convince the majority of the correctness of these positions. its an evolutionary approach and i suspect it may be the only one that works.
i am not responding to some of the other material, which despite being interesting, are not relevant to the two points i raised in my original post.
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James Heartfield wrote:
>
> My difficulty with the anti-Nader criticisms is that they are all
> couched in technical rather than political terms.
>
what is wrong with using technical terms? cannot political terms be expressed technically? wouldn't technical rigour (without turning it into its own form of mumbo-jumbo) not just help us find the answer, but also avoid some of the unnecessary name-calling that these threads descend into?
> If you keep putting of building an alternative, then you will always
> be a cheerleader for the lesser evil.
why cannot accepting (not cheerleading) for the lesser evil lead towards the alternative we wish to bring about? what better strategy? can anything else even be shown to work?
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Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> The Green Party is running 435 candidates for 74 types of offices in
> 40 states in 2004. Out of 435, 57 are running for seats in the US
> House of Representatives, and 7, the US Senate. Green candidates for
> Congressional races are found in 21 states: Alaska, California,
> Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan,
> Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon,
> Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont,
> Washington, and Wisconsin.
>
that is cheerful information. now, given that nader has no hope of winning, in any plausible universe (set of circumstances), wouldn't all the money being donated to his campaign, all the efforts being spent on it, be better off diverted to one of the above? in fact, doesn't nader's run (even though he is not a green) give leftists a bad name among left-leaning democrats, and hence lower the changes for local candidates?
> Anyhow, can you cite any case in a capitalist democracy where a party
> kept running candidates only for local elections for decades and then
> eventually became a dominant political party?
as others have asked, there is no example of the opposite either, is there? in fact, if you were to look in certain other union style nations (i am not using the word 'federal' since we may segue into a debate on what that word exactly means!), you may find that local parties have indeed gain national prominence through exercising their local clout. i believe the rise of the telugu desam in india, may be an example. perhaps even the BJP.
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hari.kumar at sympatico.ca wrote:
>
> I know, that many of you say that it is just such a terrible thing to
> contemplate - that Bush might get in.
> But - Why do you seriously think that Kerry getting in, would enable
> you to organise for anything beyond the Dem muzzle?
>
hi hari! i'll attempt an answer to the above question: let us concede to you that kerry getting in does not help us at all to organize for anything beyond the dem muzzle. the question remains: isn't it still worth defeating bush?
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Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> There are a lot of things that have not happened in the USA -- *not
> even once*. Just to take one example, never in the history of the
> United States has there been universal health care. Does that mean
> that we shouldn't struggle for it?
>
yoshie, the question is not whether we should struggle for it, but "how"?
> <http://www.gpnys.org/archives/000069.php>). The reason why 91% of
> Americans who thought that Nader was the best candidate didn't have
> the courage to vote for him was they were isolated from one another
> and therefore trapped in a kind of prisoners' dilemma.
yes but doesn't that dilemma arises because the presidential election is a winner-take-all?
> The political
> payoff of more than 30 million Americans voting for Nader/LaDuke and
> the Green Party would be momentous: it would have made the Green
> Party a party that would rival the Democratic and Republican Parties.
but where's the payoff? bush would still be president. and the greens would have as much power as they do now, in govt.
> However, most of them, not being Green Party members, didn't even
> know that there were about 30 million other Americans who thought
> that Nader was the best candidate; and even if they had, most of
> them, being atomized individuals, couldn't have gotten any
> reassurance that all or most of them would actually vote for him.
> So, the majority of them either stayed home or voted for their second
> choice or even third choice. How do we break down the invisible
> walls that separated 30 million Americans on the left from one
> another, unable to cooperate on the basis of their more or less
> shared political understanding? By making them visible to one
> another and creating channels of constant political communication
> among them. How do we do that? By organizing a political party
> rooted in social movements and recruiting Americans on the left to it
> -- or, more specifically, by making the Green Party a party that
> grows out of, and in turn helps grow, social movements and recruiting
> Americans on the left to it.
perhaps i am being illogical, or perhaps i am getting cynical, but i believe that talk of social movements is a bit wishful. as someone else pointed out, we cannot get the few actually socially active members of lbo-talk to agree with each other (or even address each other with respect).
today, on the pro-democrat (pro-kerry) air america radio, the morning show hosts actually ridiculed as mainstream an event as columbus day. that's a bit of a sign of progress. i feel it may be invaluable for us to co-operate with such people. these may be the only channels to reach the people.
> If the Democratic Party politicians had really wished to avoid any
> potential of Nader/Camejo alone or together with other tickets on the
> left swinging the battleground states to Bush/Cheney in 2004 or in
> the future, they could have taken an initiative for electoral reforms
> to diminish or eliminate the chance of an insurgent campaign becoming
> the kingmaker. Liberalize voter registration laws (more liberal
> voter registration laws -> more youth and working-class votes). <...>
>
> <a long list of very good suggestions snipped>
>
> Or they could have all voted against the invasion of Iraq, the
> Patriot Act, tax cuts for the rich, etc. Or they could now pledge to
> withdraw the US troops from Iraq on Day One if John Kerry gets
> elected. Or they could promise universal health care. There are
> numerous actions they should have taken or they could take to steal
> Nader/Camejo's thunder.
>
stealing nader/camejo's thunder, in the above fashion, would be at the cost of losing a large chunk of centrist democrats -- at least by the calculations of the party. i do not see that calculation as particularly wrong (but educate me with analysis, if you can). the list of reforms you propose are excellent. it is important to note that they can be ranked in order of feasibility. one approach leftists could take is to divert energy from the nader campaign, and spend it on joining ranks with democrats to achieve some of the easier items in that list.
> Rank-and-file Democrats ought to stop and think about which is really
> in their interest: attack Nader/Camejo, the Green Party, or whatnot
> as "a spoiler," thereby letting the Democratic Party politicians off
> the hook, or point out what the Democratic Party should have been or
> should be doing?
i have no sympathy for the nader attackers. that said, aren't you assuming above that "rank and file democrats" are leftist? it could be that their ideals are already close to those of the democratic party: some sort of capitalist free market govt with a decent safety net for the "losers", with a range of progressive/affirmative provisions thrown in.
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Michael Dawson wrote:
> Is Carrol right here? It seems true to me that certain things only DP
> presidents can do, like Slick Willie's "welfare reform." Will Kerry
> gut SS? Why or why not?
>
> Yes. And if Kerry wins there will be a serious threat to social
> security. We can't depend on Monica any longer to save it.
>
> Carrol
>
surely you both agree that bill clinton gutted welfare because he believed he had to do so, in the face of a republican leaning populace and govt? is the critique then that the democratic party/leaders are unprincipled power seekers? didn't the democrats try to stay principled (yes, i write that with a straight face ;-) and i expect you to read it using a very cynical and strange understanding of 'principled') with someone like walter mondale?
further, i question whether dole would not have gutted welfare or SS (bush could well have had his way with SS if not for enron, etc, no?).
--ravi