Re: historical errors

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

[disconnected from e-mail for a couple days, then work took over, then MS Exchange shut down.]

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine

Yoshie writes:
> >>  The majority of Americans are already wasting their votes -- they
> >>  either don't vote or live in one-party states like California, New
> >>  York, and Texas.  Evidently, the vote-wasting issue doesn't matter to
> >>  them at all.

I wrote:
> >I was looking at the issue from the voters' point of view, not from
> >the leftist point of view. ... They don't see a vote for the Berry or Kush as a wasted vote.

Yoshie now writes:
> I'm looking at the issue from diverse voters' points of view -- as
> voters do not have the same points of view. 

of course.

>Why don't the majority
> of voters vote?  Not voting would have to be the ultimate "waste" of
> votes, if not voting for Bush or Kerry constitutes a "waste."  Why
> doesn't the vote-wasting issue matter to them?

it's true that most people don't vote. It reflects the powerlessness of voting. It seems that they agree with me (and the anarchists) that "if voting could change the system it would be illegal" -- or with the economist's cynical position that the personal costs of voting exceed the (paltry) personal benefits. It seems that the non-voters see voting for Nader (or Peltier) to be a waste, along with voting for Bush or Kerry.

The people who do vote (who see it as worthwhile in some way) mostly see voting for "third" parties as a waste, as I noted. This reflects the biased nature of the winner-take-all money-driven voting system that I was talking about that you seem to ignore, Yoshie.

> Why don't leftist voters who agree more with Nader or Cobb or others
> on the left than with Kerry vote for Kerry in such one-party states
> as California, New York, and Texas?  Kerry doesn't need leftist
> popular votes to carry electoral votes in the Democratic one-party
> states, and leftist popular votes cannot give electoral votes to
> Kerry in the Republican one-party states.  Why doesn't the
> vote-wasting issue matter to them?

 

I don't know. The "Molly Ivins" strategy seems to have a lot to go for it, once you've decided it's worth voting at all.

 

I wrote:
> >it seems that the [Green] Party you describe needs to have an activity that
> >they can get involved with in non-election years that can then
> >organically imply some election-year activity, which may or may not
> >involve running candidates.
>
> Precisely.

 

To get up and running, the Greens might gain by focusing only on local elections -- or skip elections altogether. It's ridiculous to run a national campaign if you don't have a national movement of some sort to back you up -- or if you don't use your national campaign to build a national movement. (Is Nader engaged in movement-building? It doesn't seem that way.)

 

...

I wrote:
> >The actually-existing Green Party, by the way, seems to be "subtly
> >(or sometimes even pretty blatantly) designed to motivate people
> >to support the Democratic Party."
>
> Some Green party members are like that.  Others aren't.  I'm
> supporting the left wing of the Green Party represented by such
> leaders like Peter Camejo, Matt Gonzalez, Howie Hawkins, Donna
> Warren, and Jason West and such local leaders like Logan Martinez and
> Rick Wilhelm.

 

So you're supporting a small faction within a small party?

I wrote:
> >but the DLC people don't want grass-roots activists. They want
> >passive followers. That was my point.

Yoshie:
> The DLC pay to hire followers, but it can't pay all who do work for
> the Democratic Party.  Intellectuals like Medea Benjamin and Norman
> Soloman aren't paid by it, nor are union leaders.  Any successful
> organizer of hegemony can't simply depend on passive followers like
> the military dictator.  Hegemony depends on active consent and
> creative initiative on the part of the followers.

right. What I don't see is how ACORN (and similar groups) are creating drones for the DLC queen.

 

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://myweb.lmu.edu/JDevine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.