That may be your hypothesis, but it proves how totally isolated you were from what was going on last fall. I have never seen so many volunteers not only walking door-to-door, but volunteering weekends or more to go to other states UNPAID to do this work.
That single comment by you, Yoshie, makes everything you say about Democratic activists absolutely worthless, since you obviously have zero empirical evidence to back up your statements.
>Why shouldn't activists concentrate on electing antiwar politicians
>as a more effective use of their time and money than going to a
>random rally with no strategy. What's your argument for why
>someone should go to a rally against the war? What is the plan?
-Democrats in the Senate didn't even filibuster the bankruptcy -"reform." Why would they -- except the few usual suspects on the -margins of Congress -- do anything to bring the troops home,
Ah, the bankruptcy bill. Notably as long as Dems had control of the Senate leadership, they made sure it never came to a final vote. You want proof of why Democratic power matters, it's that bill. You can point to the final vote, but you have to ignore Clinton vetoing it, and the Dem Senate leadership preventing its passage to make your blanket statement. Final votes don't matter; what matters is all the maneuvering up to that point.
Just looking at the slew of anti-worker legislation that would never have come to a vote with Dems in control of the Senate just proves why electoral politics matter.
You care about isolated decisions and symbolic votes, because all you care about is symbolic politics: rallies, speeches, etc. But for those who care about actual policies and results, there are clear differences in policy when Democrats are in control of government versus when the GOP has control.
Nathan Newman