<HTML><HTML>In a message dated 10/21/04 10:49:56 AM Eastern Daylight Time, lbo-talk-request@lbo-talk.org writes: Doug wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Why do you find it so hard to understand why someone might decide to vote for a Democrat and to work with Democrats without becoming one? Your world is so black and white. </BLOCKQUOTE> Everyone who works with Democrats isn't necessarily a Democrat. But he problem with isolated radicals is that the Democrats usually have very stringent conditions for working with them, one of which is usually toeing their line. Take, for example, the branch of thew Democratic Party that Lacny has cast his lot with: the union bureaucracy. If you take a job as an organizer with a union, you're expected to do as you're told. If you think a given contract is a wretched sellout, but your local president tells the workers to endorse it, you must endorse it. If they say that a given trade-union struggle (e.g. that of the newspaper unions in Detroit several years ago) was a vidtory instead of the crushing defeat that it was, you must tell the rank and file the same thing. If they decide to endorse a particular Democratic candidate, you must promote that candidate as well. In short, you follow orders or get fired, just like any other job. You are working for the bureaucrats, not with them.  </HTML>