<HTML><HTML>In a message dated 10/29/04 3:59:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lbo-talk-request@lbo-talk.org writes: Yoshie wrote <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">John Kerry is likely to be the next POTUS.  Will Mr. Tariq Ali be advocating a vote for the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, on the grounds that "you have to punish him, and the best way to punish him is to remove him from office" and "[t] here's no third party"? -- </BLOCKQUOTE> I asked Tariq Ali the same question in a slightly different form when he spoke recently in NYC. If your position is always to vote out incumbents who start wars, I said, would you have advocated a vote for Nixon in 1968? (Humphrey wasn't an incumbent, but he was Johnson's handpicked successor, and it was the Dems who started and prosecuted the Vietnam War.) Ali answered, "No, not in that instance." and  went on to say that the important thing now is to get rid of Bush. My point: Ali wasn't giving his real reason for urging a Kerry vote, which isn't some tactical rule about removing warmongering incumbents, but a belief, shared by most Kerry voters, that the Democrats are the lesser evil. </HTML>