> same thing with hamsher. there's no purpose there other than to get
> democrats to do certain things.
This stuff is really loopy, Shag. If there's an antiwar movement and its demand is "Stop the War," how is that not trying to "get the Democrats to do certain things"? If you demand free public college or prison reform, aren't you demanding the Democrats do certain things? Unless you're trying to launch an insurrection to storm the Capitol building, all of your political demands are *ultimately* about trying to get the Democrats to do certain things.
> the reason why the religious right can exercise the power it does is
> because those folks *are* perfectly willing to skip voting if they
> have to. they have a history of retreating to their holes and waiting
> for the end times or the end of their days. whatever. they have been
> very apolitical at times. that's a threat for the republicans because
> that retreat to an apolitical stance erodes their base. hamsher
> doesn't have same kind of threat and doesn't intend to cultivate it.
This is totally garbled. The religious right *used* to skip voting. The result was that Governor Reagan liberalized California's abortion laws, the Republican Party platform would endorse the ERA every four years, and nobody listened to the religious right. Sure, religious right leaders sometimes threaten Republicans with the specter of low fundie turnout if the GOP betrays the cause, but they never actually end up calling for a boycott. At worst they sponsor primary challenges against sell-out Republicans. That's exactly what the Hamshers of the world do to the Democrats. (The standard refrain on her website goes: The Dems lost the 1994 midterms because Clinton sold out the base with NAFTA.)
There's no reason to be uncritical about Hamsher, though. There's a lot of activistism on that website. They don't seem to spend a lot of time thinking.
SA