I'm pretty sure it is not productive to get into this debate again. We really do have well-mapped out positions that everyone knows and no one moves from. Unless we just like repeating what we spent a lot of the summer and fall saying, why do this again?
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> >Jim Farmelant wrote:
> >
> >>The real thing to bitch about is all those
> otherwise intelligent
> >>and able progressives who think they are
> accomplishing something
> >>significant by stumping for Democratic candidates,
> and not building
> >>independent social movements which are not
> beholdent to the
> >>capitalist parties.
> >
> >Uh, who are these people you're talking about? No
> one here is
> >against building independent social movements -
> quite the contrary.
> >Why this delusional perseveration?
> >
> >Doug
>
> I'm surprised by the depth of your denial. Is there
> something deeply
> embarrassing about advocating voting for the
> Democratic Party as the
> lesser of two evils, which the majority of (broadly
> defined) leftists
> -- including LBO-talk subscribers -- did? Many US
> leftists --
> including yourself -- aren't against building social
> movements,
> provided that social movements are NOT independent
> in electoral
> politics, i.e., NOT running candidates to the left
> of Democrats and
> risking increasing the chance of electing
> Republicans. Essentially,
> that's the default model of politics on the left in
> the United
> States: a combination of politics of protest and
> interest-group
> organizing in non-election years and support for the
> Democratic Party
> in election years. Why not own that as your model?
>
> John Kerry's defeat -- against the least popular
> incumbent since
> Richard Nixon -- should make US leftists realize
> that refusing to
> challenge the Democratic Party electorally runs the
> SAME RISK of
> increasing the chance of electing Republicans as
> running candidates
> to the left of Democrats, for submission on the left
> and dissolution
> of social movements in election years make Democrats
> move to the
> right as Kerry did, making themselves
> indistinguishable from
> Republicans and leading low-income voters to stay
> home and many white
> middle-income voters to think that they might as
> well vote for
> Republicans rather than Republican Lites.
>
> If running candidates to the left of Democrats and
> becoming resigned
> to the Democratic Party's rightward march both run
> the risk of
> electing Republicans, why not choose the former, as
> the former at
> least gives leftists a better chance of
> consolidating our strength,
> conducting political education, etc.? The latter
> makes leftists lose
> worse than the former.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
> * Bring Them Home Now!
> <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/>
> * Calendars of Events in Columbus:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
> <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, &
> <http://www.cpanews.org/>
> * Student International Forum:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine:
> <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio:
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
> ___________________________________
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