> I'm not opposed to lesser evil arguments - I'm
> opposed to anything that pretends that a Dem is anything other than a
> lesser evil.
In concrete historical circumstances where every inch of progress is disputed fiercely, where evil and good are shades in a continuum, isn't the "lesser evil" basically another name for the "greater good"?
If you can do better than the lesser evil, then why is *that* the lesser evil? What's the subject of debate here, the starting point or the direction of motion? Why can taking part in a flawed political formation only lead to reinforcing its flaws and not to transforming it?
In 1873, a wise Karl Marx wrote a parody -- a reductio ad absurdum -- of the anarchist arguments and added (my emphasis):
"It cannot be denied that if the apostles of political indifferentism were to express themselves with such clarity, the working class would make short shrift of them and would resent being insulted by these doctrinaire bourgeois and displaced gentlemen, who are so stupid or so naive as to attempt to deny to the working class *any real means* of struggle. ***For all arms with which to fight must be drawn from society as it is*** and the fatal conditions of this struggle have the misfortune of not being easily adapted to the idealistic fantasies which these doctors in social science have exalted as divinities, under the names of Freedom, Autonomy, Anarchy."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/01/indifferentism.htm