: The Democrats are the same as the Republicans, so why vote for one over the other; that's the line being peddled here.SDF: Not really. I argued more specifically and more generally, that the Demopublicans contain a lot of wasted votes, because, basically, bourgeois democracy convinces the working class to hold its nose while the king is crowned, year after year. One example of this, I argued, is "liberal Democrats" who vote for right-wing assholes like Bradley. It's time for the working class to stop holding its nose and start campaigning for its own interests. It's been time for the last twenty-five years -- however, it's only been for the past ten years or so that there's been a Green Party in the US.
In this regard, the Demopublican and Republicratic Parties are just different versions of right-wing hegemony.
Against the "lesser of two evils" tactical error, I'll here display some reasons for campaigning Green in this year's Presidential election:
1) When the next President continues to commit the usual atrocities, the blood won't be on your hands.
2) If the candidate gets 5% of the vote, the Greens get matching Federal funds, and can launch a winning campaign in 2004. And, contra Stoller, leftist legislation can indeed disrupt the status quo, as it did under Allende's regime in Chile. (As if Marx was right about everything, in all contexts and for all places and times!) A popular movement will also be necessary, per "grassroots democracy"...
3) More states will have ballot-status Green parties as a result of direct popular participation in campaigns.
4) If you vote for the Demopublicans, you might as well campaign for them as well, that is if the result of the election means anything at all to you. This practice of holding your nose and voting is one of the most repugnant aspects of the Demopublican followership, from the perspective of democracy -- not only have Demopublican followers sold out to the campaigns of the highest monetary values, i.e. the rich, but they've sold out reluctantly, withdrawing in an important way from what ought to be the democratic life of the people. If you're going to vote for someone, you ought to campaign for him/ her as well, which means of course that you ought to agree with their positions. That the Democrats have been able to sucker liberals into this reluctant support has meant the ascendancy of scum like Clinton amidst the decline of the Democratic Party. Ending the trap of reluctant support is, more than anything, the main reason for supporting the Green Party in word and deed, across the board.
That they understand the operation of the democratic life of the people is one of the reasons the Christian Coalition has been so successful in promoting its politics throughout the last two decades. Meanwhile, Cornel West endorses Bill Bradley. Is it any wonder there is no American Left anymore?
: Assuming that the two parties are identical in all ways save one, that one difference is reason enough to vote for Gore over Bush: the Republican's official party platform includes passage of a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion; the Democrats official position is pro-choice.
SDF: By this reasoning we all ought to vote Green; for they have the best platforms.
But I'll address the point more specifically -- one's position upon abortions is contingent upon the President being able to do anything about Roe v. Wade, a very contingent possibility (given what it would take for that to happen), and assuming that this will affect REAL mothers in some minor way (frankly, it's between being allowed to abort and being forced to keep the baby, neither of which are life-threatening) somewhere way on down the line, whereas the Clinton administration position on Iraq still kills 4,000 REAL children every month including THIS month, with the WILLING COMPLICITY of the "liberal Democrats" who voted for him in 1996.
Does the Democratic Party platform demand its pound of flesh from Iraqi babies in the way I've described above? Of course not -- platforms are public relations statements, meant for the fools who can't tell the difference between public relations and reality.
: And that's that. By the way, in reference to another post: Alex Cockburn is the Left's Rush Limbaugh: more mouth than brains.
SDF: Why dispute the factual basis of a single one of their claims when you can dismiss them as politically-harmful? Have you been learning debate tactics from Stoller? Has realistic assessment been downgraded to heresy?
