> Because Michael suggests that Kerry supporters on LBO-talk won't even
> bother to come out to vote if polls look too good or too bad: "If the
> polls were all saying Kerry would win, a lot of us wouldn't make that
> extra effort to get up early and take a bus to another state. If they
> all said Kerry was losing and we believed them, many of us would skip
> the bus because we were dispirited -- because we would hate the idea
> of spending 12 hours in the cold when we were almost sure we were
> going to lose" (at
> <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20041025/
> 024538.html>). That indicates a very low level of motivation, rather
> than the conviction that their lives depend on the outcome, so it's
> doubtful that they will refuse to let Bush win, no matter what, by any
> means necessary, ballots or streets. Like I said, though, I'll be
> very happy to be proven wrong -- I just won't count on them.
I don't think Michael was necessarily thinking just of LBO-talk member when he used the pronoun "us." But I'll let him explain his own words. In any case, it stands to reason and common sense (commodities which are in short supply in political discourse) that many of those Kerry supporters who believe that their lives depend on the outcome *will* work hard on GOTV. Not all, of course -- many have jobs they can't just walk away from, or choose not to express their support of Kerry in that particular way. Perhaps they think just voting for him is sufficient commitment. And I'm sure that most Kerry supporters won't be up for fighting on the barricades, a la the Commune of Paris, if he loses by a narrow margin. They aren't revolutionaries, and he isn't a revolutionary leader.
You seem to have the rather strange idea that all people belonging to a certain categories, such as Kerry supporters, have to behave the same way, and in fact the most extreme way, or you "can't take them seriously." But people have all sorts of ideas about how to be serious besides yours.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________________________ It isn’t that we believe in God, or don’t believe in God, or have suspended judgment about God, or consider that the God of theism is an inadequate symbol of our ultimate concern; it is just that we wish we didn’t have to have a view about God. It isn’t that we know that “God” is a cognitively meaningless expression, or that it has its role in a language-game other than fact-stating, or whatever. We just regret the fact that the word is used so much.
— Richard Rorty