[lbo-talk] Wisconsin recall results

[Wojtek S]

Maria: "Conservatives are presented with candidates who appear to
stand for what they, the voters, really believe in.  For whatever
reason, they are in the market for what the right wing candidate is
selling, and they know the political tide is going their way.  Anyone
politically left of center in today's US is, if not totally burnt out,
very close.  I think Obama has been a real stake thru the heart of the
"left" of the Democratic Party.   Even liberals see no one genuinely
championing their cause, and people further left have written
electoral politics off...for now."

[WS:] All of it is true.  There is no party in the US that represents
those left of the center.  I do not think that there has ever been
such a party, at least since World War 2.  What irritates me is the
left-of-the center responses to that situation.  They either imagine,
like most liberals, that this is merely a personal preference of
individual politicians, and it can be changed by voting in the
progressively minded people, or - like Carrol et al. - blame Democrats
for this state of affairs.  This strikes me as quite foolish,
especially for people who should have known better.  It is like going
to a hardware store and kvetching that they do not sell milk there.

All I see is people either working within the system hoping to get
different results or kvetching that the system does not give the
results they want.  There does not seem to be much of an effort to
actually change the electoral system, which is the main culprit here
(smashing windows and setting things afire every now and then does not
constitute such an effort.)

Wojtek