Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>
> And even if we succeed in rebuilding the movement against the
> occupations, it will be killed by the Democratic Party again in 2008,
> if we don't build an alternative on the electoral front.
I agree with the first part of this, of course. The DP exists primarily to kill off mass movements. But while building electoral alternatives probably should be pursued, I don't think we can depend on that route to blunt DP hegemony. Rather we have to concentrate on demonstrating, on one hand, the power of mass resistance activity and, on the other hand, exposing within such movements the irrelevance of DP power to achieve their purposes. If any substantial change in the whole history of the u.s. has been achieved through electing supporters, I don't know of it.
I would prefer not to make predictions but focus on what we know: the DP's principled support of imperialist war and of domestic stability (the latter revealed so dramatically in Gore's refusal to challenge the Florida vote in 2000). Discrediting of the DP will have to proceed rather than be the result of building a major "alternative on the electoral front." Electoral work must be presented not as aiming at electoral power but as being (like mass rallies and demonstrations) one more way for a mass movement to make itself visible.
The vote for Nader (and other third-parties to some extent) will give us a preliminary count of our forces. And that is how we should look at future electoral efforts in the immediate future.
Carrol