Re: Leftists and Electoral Politics Re: California recall results

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

> At 2:02 AM -0500 10/8/03, Lou Paulsen wrote:
> >Everyone knew it was going to be Schwarzenegger or Davis or maybe
> >Bustamante.  It's the old story: a vote for the 'third party' is a
> >'wasted vote' unless you know ahead of time who is going to win, in
> >which case you have the luxury of casting a 'protest vote'.  We
> >-really- can't fall into the trap of thinking that vote totals in a
> >bourgeois election are some kind of accurate measure of what you
> >have accomplished during the campaign.
> 
> A third party on the left in an electoral system like the United
> States' can never rise to power without a prior collapse of the
> political party controlled by the ruling class that had captured
> working-class votes (the Democratic Party, in the case of the United
> States).

the real action has to involve the development of a mass movement of the left, something that will never come from the DP. Only when there's a working-class movement outside of the electoral arena will the political balance shift back in the human direction.
Jim