SA wrote:
>
>
> You're afraid of another Republican victory? I've got bad news for you:
> There will be more Republican victories. We live in a two-party system.
> One party won't just disappear. It will come back - if not in 2010 then
> 2012; if not 2012 then 2014. You can hope for many things but there is
> no hope of stopping Republican victories.
This is absolutely fundamental to thinking about what can and cannot be done through participation in electoral politics. And of course a Congressional majority always shrinks in mid-term elections.
>
> But what you can hope for is to push both parties to the left - just as
> the TP is pushing them to the right - so that Dems fell compelled to do
> good instead of evil and Republicans are defanged. In 1965, Medicare - a
> single payer program - passed with *half* of the Republicans in the
> Senate voting *for* it. Under those conditions, the inevitable
> Republican victories become a bit less catastrophic.
But the events that brought about that situation were entirely external to electoral politics. In fact one of the more important events was in itself apolitical -- the Watts riot. The move to the left came from a rather small number of people raising hell & in effect putting a gun to the head of the ruling elites. All those reforms were extorted, not won by persuading anyoen or by supporting or opposing candidates in electons.
Carrol