Shane Mage wrote:
>
> Doug wrote:
> >...a social democrat pairing up with a libertarian goldbug? It
> >would have comic potential, no doubt about it...
>
> Both Kucinich and Paul made effective--and very funny--presentations
> on the Colbert Report
>
> > but the joke would be on us.
>
> How so? Faced with such an alternative would La Clinton be laughing?
> And wouldn't even an incoherent antiwar/civillibertartian alternative
> be infinitely superior to the all-too-coherent imperialist/bigbusiness
> programs of Clinton and McCain?
Doug really is buried deep in some poli-sci grad seminar. Hence he is deeply incapable of seeing politics as a process (though of course he will say this is a slander). That is, he knows of no way to judge a candidate but by what the results would be if that candidate were elected and his/her policies implemented.
But the important part of _all_ elections is the kinds of human relations and reactions that develop during the campaign, and that is the ONLY not just the most important aspect of any third party campaign.
Doug also can't resign himself to the self-evident fact that during most years -- most decades -- what leftists do has no impact on governmental policy. He will of course, either stupidly or malignantly, interpret this as my saying what leftists do is not important. That of course would be nonsense. What leftists do determines human history -- but only under the most strange and unexpected conditions does that impact materialize in immediate results. What the Bolsheviks did between 1905 and 1917 (i.e., during the years when nothing they did had any results) determined the 20th century.
Were Paul & Kucinich to run on a third-party ticket in 2008 I KNOW that during the discussion of the campaign I could transform the fundamental political perspectives of two or three members of the local anti-war group. The very incoherence of the campaign would open up new vistas for discussion. And that is what left politics, 99 years out of a hundred, are all about.
Bitch can go on from here if she wants to. She is excellent at explaining my central points.
Carrol