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The 'Teach-the-Dems-a-Lesson' Myth
If my e-mail inbox is any indication, many American progressives plan to use the Nov. 2 election as an opportunity to “teach the Democrats a lesson” by either not voting or casting ballots for third parties, even if this contributes to the expected Republican (and Tea Party) landslide.
The thinking seems to be that the loss of the congressional majorities will punish the Democrats for accepting half-measures and compromises on issues from health care and financial reform to job stimulus and war. The Left’s hope apparently is that the chastened Democrats will then shift toward more progressive positions and be more assertive.
However, modern American political history tells us that this strategy never works. After the four key elections in which many progressives abandoned the governing Democrats – in 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 – not only did Republicans take U.S. politics further to the right, but the surviving Democrats tacked more to the center and grew more timid.
All four elections also were marred by GOP dirty tricks that drew little or no reaction from either the governing Democrats or the progressives, emboldening the slash-and-burn Republicans to operate in an ever more audacious style.
Tragically, too, the Left’s sideline-sitting contributed to the unnecessary deaths of millions of people in wars from Vietnam and Central America to Iraq and Afghanistan. Arguably even worse, U.S. inaction on global warming – a neglect surely to be continued if Republicans and Tea Partiers are victorious in Election 2010 – may doom the future of a livable planet.
In other words, the “teach-the-Dems-a-lesson” strategy not only doesn’t work, it’s extremely dangerous.
The Vietnam Precedent
Take, for instance, the pivotal election of 1968. The Left was furious with Democratic President Lyndon Johnson for the Vietnam War and with the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, for the bloody Chicago convention.
Many on the Left refused to support Humphrey, even though they knew that would help the election chances of the divisive and disreputable Richard Nixon. Some anti-war activists voted for minor third-party candidates while others simply sat out Election Day, allowing Nixon to win one of the closest elections in U.S. history by less than one percentage point.
However, we now know – based on declassified information from Johnson’s presidential library – that Johnson was on the verge of a peace settlement with the North Vietnamese in Paris and that Humphrey’s election likely would have led to a rapid end of the Vietnam War.
Nixon, who was getting briefings on the progress in Paris, knew that a breakthrough was imminent. The evidence is also now clear that Nixon, possessing that knowledge, let his campaign make contacts with the South Vietnamese government behind Johnson’s back, promising President Nguyen van Thieu a better deal if he boycotted the Paris talks.
Thieu did as Nixon’s campaign wished, refusing to attend the peace talks, thus torpedoing hopes for a quick end to U.S. participation in the war. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Significance of Nixon’s ‘Treason.’”]
After taking office, President Nixon had no choice but to continue – and to expand – the war in pursuit of a better outcome for Thieu, who after all knew of Nixon’s treachery.
The additional four years of war resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers and millions of Indochinese in Vietnam and Cambodia, yet the final peace agreement mirrored what had been available to the United States in 1968.
Nixon’s nasty, take-no-prisoners style also shook the political foundations of the United States. The nation grew bitterly divided; parents turned against their own children; war-fueled inflation ate away at incomes; hopes for alleviating poverty vanished; and Americans came to doubt their government could accomplish anything good.
The national wounds inflicted by that ugly era have never fully healed. Much of that, however, might have been avoided if disaffected progressives had swallowed their anger and cast their ballots for Humphrey.
‘Good for the Country’
During Nixon’s Paris-peace-talk gambit, the governing Democrats also revealed what would become a pattern for them, an unwillingness to expose political wrongdoing by Republicans ostensibly to avert partisan divisions for “the good of the country.”
President Johnson was aware of what he called Nixon’s “treason” in the days before Election 1968 and was tempted to expose the illicit contacts. However, other senior Democrats fretted that exposure of such treachery might not prevent Nixon from winning, yet could destroy his legitimacy as president.
“Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected,” said Defense Secretary Clark Clifford in a conference call with Johnson on Nov. 4, 1968. “It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”
Clifford’s argument carried the day. Johnson remained silent, Nixon won, and Johnson carried the secret of Nixon’s peace-talk sabotage to his grave.
So, in 1968, the U.S. political process was undergoing three dangerous transformations. The Left was separating itself from practical politics; the Republicans were learning that they could win by playing dirty; and the governing Democrats were shying away from demanding accountability for Republican abuses.
Over the next 42 years, all three of these patterns have deepened, combining to create a political crisis for the nation.
Republican Extremes
Over the past four decades, the only times when the Left and the governing Democrats have pulled together in a meaningful way were when the Republicans were in power and when that power went to their heads.
That was the case when Nixon, who had locked himself into a continuation of the Vietnam War, went nearly crazy in denouncing anti-war protesters as “bums” and going to extremes to block publication of the Pentagon Papers secret history of the war in 1971.
Nixon’s paranoia then led him to commit felonies surrounding his Watergate political spying operation, a scandal that played out from 1972 until Nixon’s resignation in 1974. The Watergate case was one of the few times when the governing Democrats and the Left mostly were on the same page, objecting to Nixon’s abuses.
However, whenever the Democrats were in power and had the potential to accomplish something meaningful, the split always reopened. The governing pragmatists sought incremental change in an often difficult political/media environment, while the idealists demanded sweeping reforms regardless of public resistance.
The division opened up during Jimmy Carter’s presidency when the Left viewed Carter as too centrist and too cautious, prompting a primary challenge from liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy in 1980. Kennedy’s bid fell short but left behind deep antagonisms between the two wings of the Democratic Party.
Many progressives turned a deaf ear to Carter’s warnings about what Ronald Reagan’s election would do to the country. Some backed independent John Anderson or other minor candidates, and some simply didn’t vote.
Iranian Crisis
As it turned out, Carter – like Johnson and Humphrey – was facing Republican skullduggery. The evidence is now overwhelming that elements of Reagan’s campaign contacted Iranian officials who were then holding 52 Americans hostage, a crisis that was eroding Carter’s remaining political support.
Like Nixon with Thieu, Reagan’s team appears to have offered the Iranians a better deal than Carter did, in this case, promises of military hardware via Israel that Iran needed for its conflict with neighboring Iraq.
Failing to win the hostages’ release, Carter saw his reelection hopes dashed. With the first anniversary of the humiliating hostage-taking coming on the day of the election, the polls showed a suddenly widening lead for Reagan who coasted to an easy victory. The hostages were finally released immediately after Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981.
(As with the Nixon-Vietnam scheme, governing Democrats recoiled at the idea of holding the Republicans accountable even when extensive evidence of Reagan’s Iran contacts came to light in the last half of the 1980s and the early 1990s. For “the good of the country,” Democrats again swept the evidence under the rug.) [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
Reagan’s election marked another turning point in American history, and it was not a positive one. President Carter, for all his shortcomings, had begun addressing some of the big problems confronting the United States, including the need for alternative energy sources, Middle East peace, and human rights as a core value in U.S. foreign policy.
Reagan, however, countered with a “don’t worry, be happy” approach to the future. Tax cuts would swell revenues; no need to worry about your gas-guzzlers; government was the problem, not the rapidly expanding power of multinational corporations; human rights were for sissies.
In selling his policies, Reagan also was aided by a rapidly expanding right-wing news media that was bankrolled to challenge the remnants of the Watergate-era press corps. Meanwhile, the Left largely abandoned the goal of having a national media infrastructure. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Left’s Media Miscalculation.”]
Ugly Americans
Despite the harm that Reagan’s economic policies did to the United States – corporations accelerating the shipping of jobs overseas, unions broken, Carter’s solar panels ripped from the White House roof – perhaps Reagan’s most destructive actions came in his global strategies.
Reagan unleashed right-wing “death squads” in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua – killing tens of thousands. To challenge the Soviet Union, he funded Islamist radicals in Afghanistan who would become the backbone of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He acquiesced to Pakistan’s building of nuclear bombs, perhaps today’s greatest threat to world security.
To justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars more on U.S. military hardware, Reagan also oversaw the politicization of the CIA’s analytical division so it would exaggerate the Soviet threat in the 1980s. Two decades later, that perversion of U.S. intelligence would help justify the invasion of Iraq with “fixed” analytical reports about non-existent WMDs.
In terms of government personnel, Reagan credentialed a young group of intellectuals and ideologues who became known as the neoconservatives. To justify U.S. interventions abroad, these neocons felt justified in using propaganda techniques to manipulate the American people, herding them like cattle in a desired direction. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]
Many on the American Left who had abandoned Jimmy Carter were aghast at what Reagan did, especially the atrocities in Central America. But the blame was put mostly on the hapless ex-President and the governing Democrats.
There was very little soul-searching on the Left, which viewed itself as essentially blameless for the catastrophes that the Reagan years wrought.
The Clinton Years
The Reagan excesses, especially the mirage of tax cuts producing extra revenue and the myth that the United States didn’t need an industrial base, created so much economic pain by 1992 that Bill Clinton was able to exploit a split in the conservative vote – between President George H.W. Bush and billionaire Ross Perot – and slip into the White House.
Clinton’s election also came at a time when evidence was finally pouring in regarding political and national security crimes of the early Reagan years, including the Reagan campaign’s arms-for-hostages deals with Iran in both 1980 and later with the Iran-Contra Affair and Reagan’s secret orders to help arm Iran’s enemies in Iraq.
In late 1992, so much new evidence of Republican guilt was arriving at a House task force investigating the 1980 hostage crisis that chief counsel Lawrence Barcella said he urged the chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, to extend the inquiry for a few more months, but Hamilton declined citing political difficulties.
Instead, with the goal of maintaining some bipartisan comity in Washington at the start of the Clinton administration, Hamilton’s task force concealed much of the new evidence and issued a report asserting Republican innocence.
In a similar way, the new Clinton administration helped clean up for Reagan and his team on the continuing Iran-Contra investigation (which represented a sequel to the 1980 Republican-Iranian contacts) and on the Iraq-gate scandal regarding clandestine military assistance to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
High Hopes
As Bill Clinton became the first Democratic president in a dozen years, the governing Democrats had high hopes that they could make progress on some difficult issues that had been ignored under Republican rule, including health care and environmental initiatives. The Democrats also moved to get the nation’s deficit under control, approving a modest rise in income tax rates.
Yet, for all the Clinton administration’s hopes for bipartisanship, the Democrats instead encountered near unanimous Republican opposition to every major initiative. Not a single GOP vote was cast in favor of Clinton’s budget in either the House or the Senate.
Instead, the Republicans relied on their expanding right-wing media, which had added powerful AM radio programming to an influential roster of newspapers, magazines and book publishing houses. Voices on the Right like Rush Limbaugh made every day a fiesta of Clinton bashing.
As the Democrats headed toward Election 1994, the Republicans and their right-wing media allies rallied the conservative base with wild stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton as a kind of Arkansas-based Bonnie and Clyde, leaving a string of death and corruption in their wake.
Though political pundits cite the collapse of health care reform as the key blow to the Democratic majorities, the media-driven hysteria about the Clintons also was a major factor in the right-wing tidal wave that was building. The failure of the American Left to invest in a media infrastructure to counter the Right was another little-noticed factor. A strategic media imbalance was forming.
Yet, even if the Left had worked on building a media infrastructure, it’s not clear that progressive voices would have done much to protect the Clintons from the right-wing attacks. To many on the Left, the Clintons were a couple who had long since sold out their principles to corporate interests.
So, with both American progressives and mainstream Democrats discouraged and demoralized, the Republican tsunami in November 1994 wiped out not only the fragile Democratic Senate majority but ended the long-time Democratic control of the House.
Reagan Redux
The Republicans saw their resounding victory as a mandate to resume Reagan’s assault on Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Trying to assert his “relevance,” Clinton conceded that “the era of big government is over.”
For the next six years, the Republicans and the right-wing media derided government programs that tried to help the middle class and the poor, while pushing through more and more deregulation of corporations, including repeal of a New Deal law separating commercial and investment banks. The repeal passed with the support of the Clinton administration.
Besides trying to dismantle much of the federal government, the Republicans hounded Clinton, finally impeaching him in the House for lying about an extramarital affair. Though Clinton survived a humiliating Senate trial, the Republicans were optimistic about regaining total control of Washington in Election 2000.
The Republican presidential nominee, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, was a thinly qualified scion of a political royal family. Opposite him was Clinton’s wonky Vice President Al Gore, who was an expert on the complex workings of government and who had a particular passion for the environment, alternative energy and the pressing need to address global warming.
In my view, Election 2000 may have represented the last real chance for the world to turn back from environmental devastation and from the dangerous political instability that will follow. In 2000, the future of the planet was truly in the balance – and Gore, despite his lack of charisma, may have been the best person for the job, at least the best that modern U.S. politics could produce.
However, much of the Left viewed Gore as an unacceptable centrist. A number of prominent progressives also rejected my warnings about the dangers posed by Bush, particularly my concern that he would restore the neoconservatives to positions of power over foreign policy.
I was especially alarmed by Bush’s choice of Dick Cheney to be his vice presidential running mate. I had covered Cheney for years when he was in Congress and knew him to be a rigid ideologue who was much closer philosophically to the neocons than was generally understood.
Bush Illusions
At the time, most political analysts of all stripes viewed Bush as an Establishment Republican. They accepted his self-description as “a compassionate conservative” and thought he would govern with his father's moderation, surrounded by his father’s old foreign policy hands, the likes of Brent Scowcroft and James Baker.
I was assured by several left-wing political analysts that I was overly alarmed at the prospects of a neocon revival if Bush won.
This widely held viewpoint fed into the notion on the Left that Bush would not be much different from Gore and that Election 2000, therefore, represented a good opportunity to “teach the Democrats a lesson” by showing them that they couldn’t “take the Left for granted.”
So, many progressives decided that they would back Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. To rally more support on the Left, Nader’s campaign touted what may be one of the biggest – and most dangerous – lies ever told in American politics, that “there’s not a dime worth of difference” between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Nader succeeded not only in siphoning off votes from Gore but his attacks on the Vice President – often echoing similar attack lines from the Republicans – frustrated the Gore campaign’s efforts to gain momentum.
A Stolen Election
Though Gore still managed to outpoll Bush by about a half million votes nationwide and almost surely would have beaten Bush in the key state of Florida if all legally cast votes were counted, Bush used a combination of clever lawyering and hardball politics to seize the White House. [For details, see Neck Deep.]
To this day, very few Nader supporters will admit that they contributed to Bush’s tainted victory, although it should be obvious that Nader’s votes in Florida – if most would have gone to Gore – would have put the election too far out of reach for Bush to steal.
A Gore presidency also would have taken the country in a far different direction. Most significantly, he might have made significant progress in getting the United States to face up to the crisis of global warming, an existential threat to mankind that Bush studiously ignored.
It may be a bitter irony that the one major political accomplishment of America’s Green Party will be that it helped condemn the world to environmental disaster.
Whether Nader backers acknowledge their complicity or not, the hard truth is that the American Left – in this attempt to “teach the Democrats a lesson” – contributed to the dangerous ascension of George W. Bush to power.
Besides his inaction on global warming, Bush restored the neocons to key positions throughout the foreign policy bureaucracy and, after 9/11, adopted their aggressive strategy for seeking violent “regime change” in Muslim countries considered hostile to Israel.
As a result of Bush’s “global war on terror” and his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, hundreds of thousands have died and many more – including many children and other noncombatants – have lost limbs and suffered maiming.
Bush also trampled on traditional constitutional and legal principles with his assertion of unlimited presidential powers that included his secret wiretapping of citizens, his waiving of habeas corpus rights to a fair trial, and his torturing prisoners held in clandestine prisons.
At home, Bush’s tax cuts mostly for the rich and his further deregulation of corporations contributed to a bubble-and-bust economy that – by the end of his eight years in office – had devastated the American middle class, which had grown during the Clinton years but was rapidly shrinking by late 2008 and early 2009 with the disappearance of millions of jobs.
Brief Reunion
Because of the alarm over the Bush administration, the Left and the governing Democrats found common ground in Election 2006 and 2008. In Election 2008, many progressives set aside their concerns about Barack Obama’s accommodating style of politics and rallied behind the first major-party African-American candidate for U.S. president.
Obama’s historic victory in November 2008 touched many progressives as it did other Americans, though some on the Left resisted any sentimentality.
On Election Night, I encountered Ralph Nader at the make-shift studio in downtown Washington where TheRealNews.com was handling its election coverage. He had run again as an independent candidate but had gotten far fewer votes than at his high point in 2000.
Nader was attacking Obama and the governing Democrats, making clear that he would continue opposing them unless they turned to him for advice and direction. He said that if they didn’t, he would be like “the canary in the coal mine,” an indication that Obama was another centrist sell-out.
No doubt, many progressives believe that Nader’s comment was prescient. The Obama administration did disappoint many of them by making too many concessions to the Republicans in a quixotic search for bipartisanship.
With the Republicans moving almost in lockstep against Obama’s initiatives -- and resorting to Senate filibusters at an unprecedented rate -- Obama and the Democrats did scale back their proposals, like the job stimulus plan, and they sacrificed key features, such as the public option for health insurance, in their bid for legislative accomplishments.
Obama also came in for progressive criticism for refusing to hold Bush and his subordinates accountable for torture and other war crimes, another example of governing Democrats shying away from a divisive struggle that they might deem not "good for the country."
Though Obama did begin winding down the Iraq War as he had promised, he acquiesced to the insistence of Bush holdovers at the Pentagon, including Gen. David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan. [See Consortiumnews.com's "How Bush Holdovers Trapped Obama on Afghan War."]
The Right’s Narrative
While many on the Left grumbled about Obama’s centrist approach, the Right sold millions of Americans on an entirely different narrative, that Obama was a closet socialist who was taking over the economy and wasting tax dollars on useless jobs programs.
Again, the Right’s media dominance, contrasted with the Left’s media weakness, has played a key role in convincing a large segment of the population that whatever slur is directed at Obama and the Democrats is true.
This media dynamic, combined with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling permitting unlimited corporate spending on political ads, has thrown the Democrats profoundly on the defensive, with many of them running away from their votes on health care and stimulus spending.
To compound this crisis facing the Democrats, many on the American Left have chosen this moment to repeat the experiences of 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 – determined to “teach the Democrats a lesson” by sitting out the election or voting for third parties.
There is little indication that these progressives have learned anything from the outcomes of those four earlier elections. Nobody seems to be asking the pertinent question: "Has that technique ever worked?"
Instead of the Left’s goal of pulling the governing Democrats and the American public to the left, the undeniable direction of U.S. politics (and media) has been to the right.
After 42 years, the Republicans are far more right-wing than Richard Nixon (and arguably even crazier), and most governing Democrats are far more centrist than the likes of Tip O’Neill, Lyndon Johnson and the old Democratic lions of that earlier era.
In other words, the Left’s notion of “teaching the Democrats a lesson” is a myth. It may make some progressives feel morally pure, but it doesn’t work. And, the results of the last 42 years should make clear that the idea is not only folly but it is dangerous.
If the pundits are correct and the Democrats go down to a crushing defeat on Nov. 2, the result will not be more progressive legislation but even less; not more spending on green jobs and a rebuilt infrastructure but more neglect; not a strengthening of the middle class but even starker financial inequities and enhanced corporate power; not a reordering of priorities away from the military-industrial complex but more tough-guy foreign policies.
Indeed, some of the more extreme Tea Party-backed candidates have made clear that their ultimate goal is the total repeal of FDR's New Deal. For both governing Democrats and disaffected progressives, the results of Election 2010 could well prove catastrophic.
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465 Comments so far
Show AllGood comment.
Let the Republicans repeal the new deal. They should eliminate social security as soon as they have 50% in the house and senate.
But I don't think this is the intention. The oligarchy (I refuse to call them the elite) want the Democrats to repeal social security. This will eliminate any hope in the American populace of ever bringing it back. No cola increases are just the start.
It is for this reason that liberals, progressives, the left should NOT vote Democrat. Neither should they vote Republican. But they should vote.
On the mark, Collins.
We have been toyed with and played for decades. McCarthyism is alive and well, even as it succeeded in robbing us of nearly two and a half generations of people who even heard or read real critical thought. THAT's why so few folks today even know it's OK to analyze, much less criticize the System upheld by our "two parties."
We are worse off than those in so-called 3rd world nations, who in spite of their problems, have a closer sense of reality than those in the nation that produces "Reality Shows" for worldwide distribution.
Boyd: Excellent post!
Prime example of zealous party allegiance is Dennis Kucinich. Personally, by his voting record in Congress, I think he is the best of the bunch, but his own party ignores him, yet he stil swears allegiance to the Dems.
I wrote to Kucinich about switching to the Green Party, and if he did, our ranks would probably increase by the millions in short time, and we would have some clout and a voice in Congress and for local, county, and state races.
Obama is hell-bent on moving to the right no matter whether we vote for the Democrats or not. See this excerpt from "Education of a President" from the New York Times. Pay particular attention to the fourth and fifth paragraphs:
'Rouse and Messina see areas for possible bipartisan agreement, like reauthorizing the nation’s education laws to include reform measures favored by centrists and conservatives, passing long-pending trade pacts and possibly even producing scaled-back energy legislation. “You’ll hear more about exports and less about public spending,” a senior White House official said. “You’ll hear more about initiative and private sector and less about the Department of Energy. You’ll hear more about government as a financier and less about government as a hirer.”
Obama expressed optimism to me that he could make common cause with Republicans after the midterm elections. “It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible,” he said, “either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”
I asked if there were any Republicans he trusted enough to work with on economic issues. The first name he came up with was Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who initially agreed to serve as Obama’s commerce secretary before changing his mind. But Gregg is retiring. The only other Republican named by Obama was Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who has put together a detailed if politically problematic blueprint for reducing federal spending. The two men are ideologically poles apart, but perhaps Obama sees a bit of himself in a young, substantive policy thinker.
Even if such an alliance emerges, though, the next two years will be mostly about cementing what Obama did in his first two years — and defending it against challenges in Congress and the courts. “Even if I had the exact same Congress, even if we don’t lose a seat in the Senate and we don’t lose a seat in the House, I think the rhythms of the next two years would inevitably be different from the rhythms of the first two years,” Obama told me. “There’s going to be a lot of work in this administration just doing things right and making sure that new laws are stood up in the ways they’re intended.”
As a senior adviser put it, “There’s going to be very little incentive for big things over the next two years unless there’s some sort of crisis.” Yet Obama and his aides still scorn Bill Clinton’s small-bore approach. “It’s fair to assume you’re not going to see school uniforms play a big role in the next two years,” Plouffe told me. “His view is you can’t spend two years playing four-corners.” Before he left, Emanuel told me: “I’m not of the view that you do nothing. I think you’ve got to have an agenda.”
But what sort of agenda? Not as sweeping and not as provocative, say some advisers. “It will have to be limited and focused on the things that are achievable and high priorities for the American people,” Dick Durbin told me. Tom Daschle said Obama would have to reach out to adversaries. “The lessons of the last two years are going to be critical,” he told me. “The key word is ‘inclusion.’ He’s got to find ways to be inclusive.”'
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all
VAGreen, thanks for that post.
If you wanted any evidence that Obama and his team did NOT learn a thing in two years and are going to continue to swing right, there it is.
So essentially, as Parry says, there is no lesson to be taught no matter what the outcome of Nov..
I reject this argument. Here's why:
Mr Parry seems to be telling us that the Democrats are Coke, the Republicans are Pepsi - and we MUST drink cola.
I will no longer cast a vote for any candidate of any party who does not demonstrate deep commitment and decisive action in support of the issues that matter to me.
And I would encourage EVERY American of any political persuasion to begin doing the same, starting with this election.
Why?
Because while the United States has always had a two-party system, the two parties have frequently changed. If the Democratic and Republican parties attract fewer and fewer voters, over time there may be new parties which contest elections, gain larger and larger shares of the electorate, and eventually offer effective alternatives to the current status quo.
This solution, admittedly, takes the long view. And after 30 years of voting for Democrats who consistently disappoint me, I am prepared to stop participating in this knee-jerk behavior.
There is a reason most Americans - regardless of their passions at election times - regard the two current political parties as nearly identical twins. That is the result of generations of having a false choice in the voting booth.
Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.
And what America needs so desperately at this point in its history is a different result. So make mine a club soda with lime.
Steve,
It may be interesting to review Canada's New Democratic Party, for whom I voted during my nearly 30 years in Canada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democratic_Party
Trylon
Parry is saying that disaffected progressive voters are cutting off their noses to spite their faces by permitting the Republicans to retake the Congress. And he adds an historical analysis to demonstrate how this nose cutting-off has played out in the recent past.
If you are a progressive you have to vote for the lesser of two existing evils until there is a third even lesser evil option available. The Democrats deserve to be eliminated from office, but not by Republicans, rather, by actual progressives.
If you aren't running on the progressive ticket and no one else is, you have to vote Democrat. Don't punish yourself (more) in the effort to punish the nearly useless Democrats. They may stink, do stink, but they are not quite as bad as their adversaries.
So does that all translate to vote Green or what?
kcg - think about the implications of what you're saying here. "...you have to vote Democrat."
In a democracy, telling someone s/he "has to vote (blank)" effectively negates any choice at all. It is the most undemocratic statement you can make.
I do not have to vote D any more than I have to vote R. Or I, or G or Z.
Because I am far more committed to progressive goals than either the D or R parties, my choice in any given election may be that I cannot support either party's candidates.
And that is a valid and supportable decision made in my own self-interests - and what I consider the best interests of this country.
A parliamentary system gives far greater voice to minority parties, and such a system would truly benefit this country - though I won't hold out much hope for that. In the alternative, all we are left with is our system which provides for multi-party contests in primaries. If, for example, a Green or LGBT party organized and succeeded in running candidates that attracted 15% or 25% of the vote in a primary, the Darwinian political implications would cause future D candidates to adopt positions that would attract that portion of the electorate. You have only to look at the success the Tea Party is having in moving the GOP to the right.
So, I don't buy your argument that not voting D is some sort of self-punishment. That line of reasoning has only served to maintain the status quo in this country for several generations. And look at the result.
"The Left’s hope apparently is that the chastened Democrats will then shift toward more progressive positions and be more assertive."
Not at all. Progressives' hope is that people will wake and vote for the best candidates. No crooks, No liars, No business as usual, No more war, No spying on the public.
I don't have time to read this article or >300 comments, but all this bullshit should go on RobertParry.com or some other obscure homepage. No public masturbation needed here at CD.
I'm not happy with President Obama and Senate Dem leaders, but I will be voting Dem this election. Fortunately I have progressive Dem candidates that are honorable and I believe in.
It is a shame that House Dems will be punished for the lack of guts and leadership in the other House and in the Executive. Granted, a number of them are Blue Dogs, but look at the hundreds of pieces of legislation that passed the House and died in the Senate.
If you plan on voting for a third party or not voting at all, at least consider being strategic in your decisions.
I thought it obvious that the "commandment" that "you have to vote Democrat" entailed the application of enlightened self interest in the instance that another, better option was not available and marginally competitive. In my precinct there will not be Greens or any other more progressive candidates on the ballot. There will be D and R. The D for US Senate probably sucks but the R incumbent supported the Honduran coup, wrote me that Zelaya was trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution etc.... The D member of the House wrote something boring and fairly weasel-y but didn't try to see Zelaya's non-binding referendum proposal as a threat to the USA.
We live in a terrible time for democratic principles. As a society we are cowed, too addicted to conveniences, too accustomed to the corporate teat, know that our next breathe almost is in the gift of our 'boss' and his in the gift of his, ad infinitum. Who are the corporations' more eager water carriers? Who more eager to destroy Social Security? It is a terrible choice that we must make but, until we find the courage to take the future in our own, many hands, it is a choice that we must make.
"and Left "moral purity" that disdains participating in the give and take of real politics."
–(Boyd R. Collins)
An interesting posting!
The left hesitates or declines to participate in what is deemed 'the give and take of real politics' is because 'real politics' in America is a spent myth. There are no politics in America. That misnomer must be categorically rejected, as it is now little more than the detritus of a bad dream, that has collapsed in on itself.
What we take, perhaps incorrectly, to be the meaning of your posting, is that extant politics in America must be categorically 'exploded,' becoming unmoored from prior contingencies, truly entering a 'terra incognita' of possibility– severed from prior references. This is the only way it can be revivified or reanimated as an imperative purpose.
Simply put, it is not enough to 'teach the Democrats a lesson,' but to implacably destroy them in the mind, where they continue to haunt, as if in an afterlife of false consciousness.
It is tantamount to an obscenity that they continue to be even discussed; to continue to do so is to indulge a regression into political infantilism and the vexations of archaism.It is truthfully little more than political bedwetting.
What is needed is not 'a politics of give and take,' but a politics where there is none of either. Zero tolerance for fascism is just that. To not cede ground to fascism is to completely delegitimize its very existence, including its Democratic party iterations, which sublimate themselves through an ineffectual liberalism: To wit:
"The dictatorship is necessary because it is a case, not of partial changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement is possible on this ground. Only force can be the deciding factor"
–(Leon Trotsky)
An interesting response! We must indeed enter the "terra incognita" of possibility. We must forge into unknown territory in which the "realism" of Robert Parry and many others on CD is experienced as an unreal submission to the catastrophe of things continuing as they have.
I particularly like the section "Simply put, it is not enough to 'teach the Democrats a lesson,' but to implacably destroy them in the mind, where they continue to haunt, as if in an afterlife of false consciousness." The Democratic Party as currently constitituted no longer represents a legitimate possibility for the liberation of the human person and this should be openly acknowledged so that we can move on to brighter possibilities.
The mind is the only place they exist, for the purposes of this discussion. In fact, the "Democratic party" as described and discussed here, exists almost entirely as a figment of people's imaginations. It is an illusion. Not the party itself, but what the people here think it is. Fortunately, only a small percentage of the population agrees with that illusion, maybe 10% if that. Try it if you don't believe me. Ask the next 100 people you meet. You have to take care not to unconsciously select only professional, educated and white collar people to ask. Ask people if the Democratic party represents anything important or relevant to their lives, if the success or failure of the party means anything to them, if they think the Democratic party is any way represents the broad aspirations and needs of people. It means no more to people, nor should it, then whether or not their favorite football team wins this weekend. One in a hundred think that the Democratic party is something important and relevant, cares one way or the other.
Thinking that the Democratic party is some monstrous evil force that needs to be overthrown is really no less delusional than thinking it is some friend to the people that needs to be supported, defended and promoted. That just is not were the battle lines are drawn, and most people know that.
However, the illusion needs to be overthrown. That is vastly more important then the endless obsession with and the debates about personal voting choices.
"Thinking that the Democratic party is some monstrous evil force that needs to be overthrown is really no less delusional than thinking it is some friend to the people..." –(Two Americas)
–Clearly.
If we did merely think "that the Democratic party is some monstrous evil" that would be patently delusional; but on the contrary–since we actually 'know' the Democratic party is monstrously evil– it is more truthfully, just common sense– something tacitly true, and nothing that needs to be worthy of consideration or thought.
Certainty about an illusion doesn't mean that it isn't an illusion. It means that there is a deeply and widely held belief that the illusion is true.
The Democratic party consists of some politicians and a bunch of aides and flacks acting as errand boys for the wealthy and powerful, for the ruling class, and making a nice living at it. Beyond that it is a brand name that has a following. Those people "in the party" are front men for the power that rules over us, they are not the power itself. Do you think that if there were no Democratic party those people would magically disappear, or have no other way to continue to do the same things, advance the same things? And that is just the flacks. Overthrowing the Democratic party doesn't in and of itself even begin to touch those in power.
So, what do you mean when you say "the Democratic party?" What do you mean by "evil" and how exactly is the Democratic party evil? How would you overthrow it, and what would that achieve?
Let's look at an example of a party being overthrown from history - the Whig party in the 1850's. What was it that was overthrown, and how?
I think there is much that is worthy of discussion, consideration and thought on this subject.
Your description of the Democratic Party seems quite accurate in terms of its material basis. Its ideological function in supporting the class interests of those in power depends on those who continue to believe in the brand. The brand has been built up through an idealistic narrative that includes the progressive reforms of FDR, JFK, and LBJ. Those who accept this narrative and build on it include many prominent political writers. Their acceptance and promotion of this myth, of which Robert Parry's article is an example, enhances the notion that capitalism can be "humanized" and therein lies its usefulness to those in power.
During the 60s and 70s, the ruling class made concessions to demands for equality by women and minorities. However, these concessions were carefully designed so that the fundamentals of capital were not challenged. In fact, the reforms helped focus the aspirations of the newly empowered women and minorities on more effectively serving the corporate power structure as a confirmation of their empowerment.
It is not important to "overthrow" a party. The growing irrelevance of its ideals and mythology cause it eventually to simply disappear. In the present case, the usefulness of the Democratic Party as an ideological trope is diminishing rapidly. Therefore, its ability to misdirect and repress struggles from below is also weakening.
This presents true progressives with a powerful opportunity. It will be interesting to see what the CD community makes of this opportunity.
Very good. I agree.
The USA has a really really bizarre historical footnote about something that occurred in 1944. FDR had beaten Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election - but developed a grudging respect for the individual. FDR came to the conclusion that the Democratic Party had been hijacked from its initial mission - and, with witnesses, he bounced the idea off Wendell of forming the American Liberal Party by 1948, with a Roosevelt-Willkie ticket. Willkie laughed.
I support everything the greens stand for. But without Koch Bros. money and the Fox PR machine behind them, they cannot capture public attention. The entire system is hopelessly corrupt; nevertheless, a vote for Democrats can count for something.
Health-care reform, scandalously-timid as it is, was made possible by Democrats in the face of the most powerful opposition of corporate forces that I have ever witnessed. The insurance companies can no longer deny policies to sick or potentially-sick people; dependents are kept in the parental fold to age 26. Sure, it's only a half-step forward; but the GOP, who might be empowered by a shift of progressive votes to greens, are still fighting to put it all in reverse.
How about war? Well, I would like to see progressive Democrat Alan Grayson of Florida continue his assault on the military-industrial complex. In fact, I'd like to see him in the White House. If there are more Dems like him out there, I'm for them.
"nevertheless, a vote for Democrats can count for something."
Yeah, more of the same.
"Health-care reform, scandalously-timid as it is, was made possible by Democrats in the face of the most powerful opposition of corporate forces that I have ever witnessed"
That bogus reform was written up by the insurance companies from the start.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/29
/baucus-thanks-wellpoint-vp-liz-fowler-for-writing-health-care-bill/#Respond
"The insurance companies can no longer deny policies to sick or potentially-sick people;"
Wrong, they still can and face no serious penalties for it. It leaves 20 million plus with NOTHING. It forces 32 million to buy crappy private insurance with insanely weak protections. Insurance companies can still deny coverage for people with pre-existing conditions if the companies are willing to eat the fines, $100 a day, $36,500 for a year. Chances are, companies will just eat the fines. Nothing prevents the companies from increasing premiums. Obama protected his campaign contributors from hospitals, Big Pharma and the health insurance industry. He killed the Public Option. We can go back and we should to Single payer, Medicare for All or a Public Option. People are more important than profits.
"dependents are kept in the parental fold to age 26."
And what happens once the younguns cross that age and are long term unemployed?
Absolutely right. The non-parliamentary method we use to pick our government is by its very nature a "duopolistic" system. Its simple math. Third parties are irrelevant. Oddly enough even the Teabaggers and Dominionists on the right recognize this and spend their time working to establish their bases within the the conservative party instead of starting parties of their own. But thats o.k. folks. Shoot yourself in the foot again. Let Feingold and Grayson get beat. After all they're just corporate shills, right?
The reason you can't "teach the Dems a lesson" is that they are covert Republicans, there is only one party. The article mentions Regan's death squads - now we have Obama's death squads. Are Obama's actions more virtuous, somehow, than Regans? We have US troops doing murder for sport, and digging bullets out of women's bodies as a coverup. Is that virtuous because a Democrat is president? Not in my book. We have murder by drone now. We have the overt, planned assassination of American citizens. Peace activists are being investigated as terrorists .. because they attempt to open a dialog with terrorist groups to persuade them to abandon violence. These actions are well to the right of those of Bush, in my opinion.
Obama is every bit a war criminal as was Bush I, Bush II, Regan, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton, and Ford. Carter and Ford supplied the Indonesians with arms even while they were murdering citizens of East Timor. Do you recall the pharmaceutical factory destroyed by Clinton?
On the domestic front, Clinton gave us NAFTA (without the protections for labor and the environment which were dangled in front of progressives). Obama gave us forced purchase of insurance from corrupt insurance companies where the bottom line is profit, not health, in a secret deal brokered between healthcare companies and the white house. That is government and corporations working together at the expense of the citizen, the definition of Fascism according to Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
Anyone who things voting Democrat is somehow virtuous, is deluded, IMHO. We have one party, the "Corporatist Party". All hail.
I think kitaj should have had the last word here. When y'all get into the voting booth (or whatever), you should not vote Demo or Repo. Use your imagination. I taught my children that voting is a civic duty. Don't take it lightly and don't go at it in anger.
The author has it ALL WRONG.
It's the Democrats who have a policy called "Teach-the-People-a-Lesson" and they've been doing it for decades!! They teach us to bow down to corporate policies and direction and to either like it or shut up.
It's exactly BECAUSE we did not react to it sooner that we find ourselves once again in this BLACKMAIL situation.
Sure it's easy for the author Parry to say voting for a third party has "proven" only to strengthen the hand of the Right, but the main strengthening of the Right's power has been the largely unbroken support to the Democratic machine of supposedly "progressive" or "liberal" Americans, who believe somehow that a Democrat in office represents some kind of "opposition."
To that, Mr. Parry, I can only say: HA!
The Dems ARE responsible for this nation to have no real Opposition, for, as I see it, the Corporate Role they have accepted is to SILENCE any organized opposition. They sit idly by during the demise of the labor movement, the stagnation of the minimum wage, the lack of a real and fair healthcare policy. Of course it is the DLC and funders we are talking about, not the minions of good-hearted believers in the Myth...
It is THEY, the ones calling the shots, more than any other sector of our society that SHUTS UP those people who cry out against our war policies, that dare point to inequities in our so-called "correctional system," that call for impeachable offenses which empower the Right's illegal rampages on our Constitution to be investigated, that question the disgusting, illegal robot-bombing of an "ally nation" and the obscene enrichment of a growing, privatized war machine, not to mention silencing those who opposed acceding to a Stick Up of our Treasury, laughingly labeled a "Bailout." If Dems had stood up on ANY of those issues we would be better off today, and maybe even have a reason to listen to Parry's cries to support them.
BUT -- they do NOT defend, nor truly represent the people of the United States. Period. It's time to get that CLEAR.
Thinks about it. When a Republican says "shut up" about the war, progressives may wince or snicker, yet keep organizing. When the Democratic Party says to keep quiet about our foreign policy or they'll lose the next election, the minions quiet down like trained puppies. Sooo...instead of leading us to a better place, the corporate-led Democratic leadership weakens our resolve to participate in building a world of values we believe in, and instead "LEADS US" to collaboration with anti-democratic forces right here at home.
If we cannot muster the will or the imagination to develop a third party Opposition to this Oligarchy which can embody the wishes, desires and visions of the true majority of decent, peace-loving, hard-working Americans at a time when virtually NO ONE in our Congress represents us, then, well, we deserve the Hell we have allowed to engulf and dominate us.
Mr. Parry it's time to take heed from those who rebelled against the King, and to help us build the politics we need and deserve.
The only elements missing from this thoughtful compendium are the threads of race and religion. In my lifetime, the key turning point was the passage of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, which convinced the Dixiecrats that they could no longer live in the Democratic Party. This mass migration of Bible-thumping, country music-singing, African-American hating, semi-literates to the Republican Party shifted the balance of power to what we endure today. In many ways, we were truly lucky in those years of the 1960s years, for they shaped the idealism of those of us who saw this as the start of something even bigger--a truly decent America, perhaps on the northern European model. In fact, we are a degraded nation, a hillbilly nation, and I truly doubt that the country will remain a significant force in the world--likely not an economic force, certainly not an intellectual force, most certainly not a moral force. Despite my gloomy outlook, I vote in every election and I vote to produce winners if possible, not losers with high standards. As a member of "the media," I am profoundly disturbed by my inability to advance the kind of liberal changes the right envisions "the media" supposedly are making and by the profound shift to the right of the entire mainstream media.
First, the premise of this article is a straw man. Many progressives are voting Green not to 'teach the Dems a lesson' but to build an independent progressive alternative outside the corporate-sponsored, militarist, no-win Republican/Democrat duopoly.
Second, in the spirit of fair debate, Common Dreams should publish an op-ed from the perspective of a progressive who is planning to vote for an independent party. I would be willing to write such a piece, and had actually started one before my regular computer crashed. I'll be in touch with Common Dreams about this.
Go for it!
My take on these 400 plus comments, many of them brilliant, is that the United States exists in a grudge marriage where the only agreements we have are that we will not divorce, but we will fuck anybody we want. Parry is offering unsolicited advice upon choice of sex object, and bargaining tactics.
The most critical phrase in political discourse is "Over my dead body". This phrase has been triggered over and over by the suggestion of health care reform since 1970. The recent legislation is a farce, and may well be thrown out by a new Congress. Since 2008 it has been expressed WRT any effort to Transfer Wealth from the Apex Elites. "We're prepared to fire your asses from employment, anything legal or illegal it takes to keep us in power will be done; victory over us is both a dream and an illusion."
Metaphor switch: gas chamber. Unless you are in the top few percent of Americans, you are on der Himmelweg. To me, the Republicans seem like Jews wearing Nazi arm bands and strutting around in jack boots - in hopes they'll avoid catching the eye of executioners. Trailer park Republicans hope to do some actual executing of Socialists and other bogeymen they've been conditioned to hate.
Nothing convinces me that the United States can be saved with and by any democratic process. And this is the same as saying that the United States cannot be saved by any solution from Inside-the-Box. As John Cleese said of the dead Norwegian Blue lying on the bottom of the bird cage: "This is a =late= parrot."
Wake up America, and observe the fluids draining from this corpus. Hosing them from the gurney next November 2nd is not going to do any good.
Trylon
The only elements missing from this thoughtful compendium are the threads of race and religion. In my lifetime, the key turning point was the passage of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, which convinced the Dixiecrats that they could no longer live in the Democratic Party. The mass migration of Bible-thumping, country music-singing, African-American hating, Mauri-tattooed, semi-literate, skinheads to the Republican Party shifted the balance of power to what we endure today. In many ways, we were truly lucky in the 1960s, which shaped the idealism of those of us who saw this as the start of something even bigger--a truly decent America, perhaps on a northern European model. Democrats could say, good riddance to bad rubbish, but, in fact, we have become a hillbilly nation, and I truly doubt that the country will remain a significant force in the world--likely not an economic force, certainly not an intellectual force, most certainly not a moral force. Despite my gloomy outlook, I vote in every election and I vote to produce winners if I can, not losers with high standards. As a member of "the media," I am profoundly disturbed by my inability to advance the kind of liberal changes the right envisions "the media" supposedly is making and by the profound shift to the right of the entire mainstream media.
The civil rights bills of the 1960's were approved by much higher proportions of Republicans in both houses than Democrats. There was no logical motive for Dixiecrats to prefer Republicans.
The transfer was slow and gradual, starting with Nixon's Southern Strategy. It got worse when the South was given more and more major federal contracts by Republican administrations, mostly through the Pentagon, giving southerners a big stake in militarism and jingoism, not just racism.
This might just be the dumbest article ever published by Common Dreams. I didn't open it for several days because of the offensiveness of the headline. I guess this will continue as Election Day approaches. The CD staff has never pretended to be other than they are.
There are phenomenal contradictions here, and enough straw to fill a hayfield the size of Texas.
With over 400 comments already logged, I'll limit myself to this.
1. The Democratic Party is not a victim of the Republican Party. They are junior partners in the multinational corporate firm that owns both parties. Even the author has been unable to conceal that the Democrats always pursue "bipartisanship" and the Republicans don't. Outside of American politics, winners negotiating away the goals of their victory to the losers is unheard of. Victory has consequences, except for the Democrats.
2. Teaching a lesson has real consequences outside of ideological impact. There are hundreds of thousands of patronage jobs, with little work and excellent perks at stake. National ballot reorientation always has coat tails to the localities in control of those appointments. The voters may not be able to push the Democrats to the left, but as the regulars lose their jobs, the complaining could get loud.
3. For those voting not to teach a lesson but to help get an alternative off the ground, please bear in mind that there is currently no functioning Green Party. 98% of you will not find any Green Party candidates on your ballots. Some of the 2% of you who think you see Green Party candidates are actually seeing Republican candidates running on vacant lines that the Green Party doesn't even have sufficient manpower to protect from poachers. Voting for them will not bring them membership to come in and build wider candidacies for the odd-year local elections in 2011, where on-the-ground organizations get built and victories can actually happen. It will not turn back ballot laws that keep third-party candidates off the ballot. Most urgently, it will not fix the contradictory operating rules that made the party disappear after mid-2003. What progressive alternative party potential requires is manpower. All that's left in the Green Party is the remains of the same dysfunctional leadership that caused its dissolution in the first place -- all the sensible people moved on anywhere between when the paralysis set in and the treasury dried up. If you come forward to actually be part of Green Party operations, be advised that at its 2005 convention, GPUS overwhelmingly struck down language requiring that it hold itself fully independent from corporate parties. So long as the "safe states" leadership is in place, and the contradictory bylaws prevent the necessary changes in leadership and operations, you're going into a black hole in political space from which you may never emerge.
There are several states where alternatives to the Green Party have sprung up and are growing. There are other states where dormant ballot lines (including Green) that could be commandeered by a national progressive electoral movement and stitched together into a new national party that doesn't have to start out hamstrung like GPUS. The point is, the real lesson-teaching will be done after Election Day if you start organizing 2011 and 2012 starting Nov. 3rd instead of just voting and expecting something to materialize. This would be a good year to teach ourselves a lesson.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said Monday he is appearing on "Mythbusters," a television series that uses science to separate fact from fiction.
I guess he is going to finally dispel the myth that he is in any way progressive.
In Brazil the other week the Green Party Candidate, Marina Silva, got 20% of the vote throwing the election into a 2nd round runoff. Yes! They insist on a MAJORITY vote to elect the President of the country.
How on earth can the U.S. settle for less??!!!
To a great degree her success and the continued debate over national issues because of the runoff was due the fact that she was allowed participation in the televised debates.
Again: How on earth can the U.S. settle for less??!!!
The Answer: WE, the People (remember, them, us?) have ALLOWED this. We have become complacent, lazy, selfish, and distracted by personal things and have lost the sense of and desire for Community and Citizenship.
We have let the greedy Mafiosos who run our banks, the weapons supplies and war policies, the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, now our educational institutions, the media, and our very government take control of everything they want -- and WE (most of us, at least) do nothing.
"Freedom isn't Free" many love to repeat when sending our children (and those of other nations) to kill and die abroad to keep up this charade. Well, that saying about Freedom is still true -- when used in the right context (wars of resource domination are not). We have lost our freedoms, Constitutional Rights, and self-respect by NOT PARTICIPATING as active Citizens in our own affairs.
We cannot have it both ways: active, concerned Citizenry, or NO Democracy.
What will YOU be doing about it in the next weeks and months? Participating in the vote-charade (as Parry would have us) is not sufficient.
I cannot believe ya'll are going to put the Republicans back in the big seat!! What, 8 years of Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush wasn't enough?? Your support for Nadar. Remind me again how that worked out for us??
That argument is dead. You need a new one, unless you don't really care how people vote and are merely looking for a scapegoat. 30 elections I have listened to that argument. You have used it once too often. It is over. How did that work out for you?
We got Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush thanks to your line of reasoning, and yes we have had enough.
Great comments. Most Common Dream readers seem to understand the corporate take-over of the Democratic party amd the mistake of voting the leser of two evils that just perpetuates and legitimizes the evil. Robert Parry's article of factual distortion and ommissions actually reminds all of us who are old enough to have follow his advice over and over again in the past of just why his advice has usually turned out wrong. Most of the Republicans and Democrats are just playing good cop & bad cop to their different constituent support bases, but neither mean any of us well. Let's face it Corporations own our political system, our election system, our courts and our mainstream media. So far we still have ourselves and our progressive media and a neutral Internet. Thank you to everyone who has contributed another side to Mr. Parry's.
I can understand people's frustration with the Dems. I too am in that boat but I certainly have not gone round the bend enough to shoot myself in the foot. If you are frustrated get involved and hold the Dems accountable. Most people complain but have never gone to a protest, written their congressional person, stood on the corner with a sign or gone to a party meeting. They just decide, I am not voting, I'm voting Green or I am voting for the Repubs. Think about that! That is like saying. I don't want my house to burn down but I am voting for the pyromaniac to protect my home. Give me a break!
This is not the time to be acting like pouting babies. Yes, if you don't vote then all of the rest of us get to pay for your selfish choices. I don't want the Republicians to win this war and I will fight to the bitter end. This is about the fate of America for generations to come and you and I have the voting power to turn this mess around. If we don't do it know it will be to late. We are not talking about some minor thing. If you think we don't have jobs, health care, education and the wealthy in control now, just wait until we return to the Republician Corporate Fascists. If you have ever read the history on Nazi Germany you would never consider not voting.
Next time you think about not voting or voting for the G's or R's look into a childs eyes and ask yourself, "By not voting what kind of a life am I leaving for you?" Then go vote! God help us all if the Republicians take control.
"Most people complain but have never gone to a protest, written their congressional person, stood on the corner with a sign or gone to a party meeting. "
Oh please ! We have done all that and gotten no results from it. The Democrat Party has come to the point where a vote for Democrats is almost always a vote for Republicans.
"I too am in that boat but I certainly have not gone round the bend enough to shoot myself in the foot."
You must be too well off to "get it".
"Next time you think about not voting or voting for the G's or R's look into a childs eyes and ask yourself, "By not voting what kind of a life am I leaving for you?" Then go vote! God help us all if the Republicians take control."
God has nothing to do with voting and he would never say "shut up and vote Democrat or else" unlike you.
"Yes, if you don't vote then all of the rest of us get to pay for your selfish choices."
Oh please ! We're already paying for the cornfed electorate picking between "the lesser of the evils" election after election.
"If you think we don't have jobs, health care, education and the wealthy in control now, just wait until we return to the Republician Corporate Fascists."
It doesn't matter which of the two win. The continuity stays.
"If you have ever read the history on Nazi Germany you would never consider not voting."
If you had actually read history, you would have realized why "lesser evils" voting leads to tyranny and fascism in the first place.
I think readers should know that there is A VERY GOOD CHANCE that many of the so-called progressives posting here that say that they are so discouraged they will either be voting Green Party or not at all are, inactuality, Republicans imposters trying to build a anti-progressive momentum.
They believe that people on the left are prone to jumping on the bandwagon of any tough talking poster.
The Republicans have elicited the help of certain PR groups to create "fake grassroots campaigns".
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bivings_Group
Some quotes: "There are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly involved... it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such as this, it is important to first 'listen' to what is being said online... Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party... Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously.... Sometimes, we win awards. Sometimes only the client knows the precise role we played."
...
"Bivings has received $79,811 in 2004 [7] from the Republican National Committee, and designed their GOP Teamleader website.[8]"
"Bivings defends their role in creating fake letters to the editor via GOP Team Leader. Regarding the consternation one letter writing campaign caused they gloat "The editors of these papers, which include The Boston Globe, The Cincinnati Post, and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, are crying foul - they feel that they were duped. All major publications have policies against publishing form letters, but these managed to slip through, as they had the look and feel of genuine grassroots responses."
And this comment from a Democracy Now program:
How to Rig an Election: Convicted Former GOP Operative Details 2002 New Hampshire Phone Jamming Scheme
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/8/how_to_rig_an_election_convicted
"Another example might be, you know, if you’re a Republican, calling into what you’ve identified as a Green Party leaning household and encouraging them to vote for the Green Party, because more than likely, that household is going to be a Democratic-voting household if they’re not a Green Party household. So, essentially, you’re polarizing, you’re dividing, and that’s how you win in politics. I mean, this is a—as I said earlier, this is not about morality, this is about winning, but winning in a way that you stay on the right side of the law, which, again, as your listeners know, is something I violated and paid a stiff price for. But nonetheless, the idea is, to win, you need 50% plus one, that means half the electorate plus one vote. And sometimes it’s not even a majority, sometimes it’s just a plurality. So this is about polarization. It is about division, and it is about wedge issues."
This coupled with the proven fact that the Republicans have funded Green campaigns over the years means that they want people to vote Green because they know that that's as good as a vote thrown away. And that means the Republicans win again.
The Dems are far from perfect but they are still a damn sight better than the Repugs. I too am not happy with the compromising on the part of the Democratic Party but we should not be throwing our votes away. After the election people should make clear that they expect the Democrats to reform or come 2011 a new party will be formed, and Democrats will be canvassed in earnest to join it and come 2012 the new party will run candidates across the country. But to fall for the old ploy of not voting or voting third party right now will mean another Republican victory.
Think about it.
The Green Party has been irrelevant since 2000. Sorry Byron but the Democratic Party is to blame for working too hard to fail itself and the country. The Democrats chose not to earn votes and they must pay the price.