Ok, question. About this assumption that voting for a "non-major candidate" doesn't matter. I slept through high school government and have only been old enough to vote for one presidential election so here goes with political naivete.
In party politics, are the numbers of non-voters or third/fourth/fifth/eighteenth party voters taken into account in terms of platform? If there is a concerted shift to the Green/liberalprogressiveofyourchoice party (and by concerted I mean ..oh..one percent or more), is this going to affect what they do or not?
has it since the last election? or are they concentrating on the tried-and-true swing-right crap?
Catie, I think I kind of agree with you. whether it's how I vote or not is irrelevant...people who *don't* vote are far worse than those who do but do so in ways I disagree with.
That's why I asked Patrick (a question still unanswered; I guess it's just going to be ignored) whether his Green party opprobrium is about methods or results. I suppose I'll extend the question to other people, if you'd like to answer. I can see being pissed as hell over Nader saying he'd vote Republican, and allied tactics; it's irresponsible and repugnant. The voters themselves are a bit different.
Ok, question. About this assumption that voting for a "non-major candidate" doesn't matter. I slept through high school government and have only been old enough to vote for one presidential election so here goes with political naivete.
In party politics, are the numbers of non-voters or third/fourth/fifth/eighteenth party voters taken into account in terms of platform? If there is a concerted shift to the Green/liberalprogressiveofyourchoice party (and by concerted I mean ..oh..one percent or more), is this going to affect what they do or not?
has it since the last election? or are they concentrating on the tried-and-true swing-right crap?
Catie, I think I kind of agree with you. whether it's how I vote or not is irrelevant...people who *don't* vote are far worse than those who do but do so in ways I disagree with.
That's why I asked Patrick (a question still unanswered; I guess it's just going to be ignored) whether his Green party opprobrium is about methods or results. I suppose I'll extend the question to other people, if you'd like to answer. I can see being pissed as hell over Nader saying he'd vote Republican, and allied tactics; it's irresponsible and repugnant. The voters themselves are a bit different.
Most of you probably already read this blog, but Michael Berube (plus accent marks) has some amusingly-written comments on "voting your conscience" in today's blog. somehow I mind having my face rubbed in being-wrongness much less when it's funny than when it's screamingly angry. Which is one reason I like him.
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php?id=P67
quoth Chip: "This isn't even vaguely true -- if it were, there would have been no need to hand the last election to the Supreme Court. It's true that turnout at primaries has been higher than usual this year, but my loose recollection of figures is that primary voters are about half the general-election voters. The guesswork -- and it's not much more than guesswork at this point -- is over what the people who only show up for the general election will do.
I've been trying, continuously, to come up with an answer that doesn't amount to "....oh. good point." in a very sheepish tone of voice, because it's a really obvious point. while I remain a bit dubious of electability, it does logically knock out the tautology argument.
I don't know what you mean by the Supreme Court thing, though?
Patrick, I'm still working on a reply to the post about Green-bashing vs. Bush-bashing. It involves rather a lot of data. I remain curious about the answer to my question (pissed about effects versus methods?).
Is that the Nielsen Hayden Godwin corollary?
Tim: "mainstream Green"
Something about that phrase just makes me grin. Ah, ever-splintering splinter parties.
I think I simply didn't see the kinds of behavior you're talking about, and I hadn't heard anything about accepting Republican ad money. The Greens on my campus, for the most part, promoted a platform I couldn't argue with; vote Green for local elections, vote Democrat for the national. Either they were a splinter perspective, or one that's been seriously under-recognized.
Teresa said: "A vote is not a private satisfaction, chosen solely for the exactness of its match with your own personal tastes. A vote is a social act or it is nothing."
While that and the preceding argument were beautifully written, I think you're drawing a false or at least incomplete distinction. I think one can say in all honesty--as Erik Olsen did another thread--that as a "social" act, one cannot choose to support either of our major parties. Both parties have betrayed enough voters, enough promises, enough groups of people, that disillusionment, anger, and a hope for even symbolic gain for a third party makes such a vote conceivable and not subject to moralizing. I may not vote that way, but I sure as hell will not be spewing hatred over the people that do.
In the case above, voting Green (for example), for your somewhat-uninformed voter who doesn't know firsthand the Green party's own reprehensible actions, can be both an act of conscience and a social act. On the (perhaps mistaken) assumption that the state one votes in will be going Democrat anyway, voting Green makes sense; the delegates are locked up anyway, and it gives a smaller party a better chance at their magical 5%. How is that not a "social act"?
What bothers me most is not that people are pissed at the Green Party or at Nader or third-party-politics in general. What bothers me is that the strongest vilification, the worst criticism, and the bloodiest anger (at least on a quick-scan of the "read all bys"), seems to be reserved for the Greens, and that I just don't get. As I said above, GWB has been a bloody atrocity as a president, but I save my hate-spewing for him, rather than a third party that may or may not have contributed to his election. To have the priorities the other ways reminds me of feminists destroying other women in preference to the patriarchy. It might be easier to assuage one's own sense of betrayal, but on the whole you're not getting anywhere. Sheesh, channel it towards..oh..promoting Instant Run-off Voting, and you'd be a heck of a lot more productive.
Patrick, as a clarification, are you angry because the Greens may have cost Al Gore the election, or are you angry because of their campaign tactics?
Tim:
Hear, hear.
You know what? I voted Democrat. And I still refuse to accept that we can blame the current state of the country on the Green Party.
I nearly frothed at the mouth the last time I heard Nader on the radio. The man is at best an egomaniac, and at worst dangerously irresponsible. That does not change the fact that our current administration has caused its own problems. Our current administration had wonderful "satisfaction ratings" throughout most of its first three years, because the voters of this country agreed with Bush. You think that's the Green Party's fault?
And worst of all, you think these diatribes are doing anything to help our cause? Swing voters, hmm, and electability. If the Green party was significant enough to swing the 2000 elections, they still are now, and screaming that you can blame any single stinking one of Bush's murderous incompetencies on them isn't doing a darn thing.
Patrick, I'm sorry if the anti-psychotic remark pissed you off. I assumed, given that you started off saying that you "bear no great personal animosity towards Greens", that the last part of your post was sarcasm, intended to point out the folly of extremity. I replied in kind. It was clearly a misreading.
That darn electorate. In the final analysis, you may have to have them replaced.
Goodness. Channeling Bush so early in the day? Anti-psychotic drugs just aren't what they used to be.
I think you're skim-reading in both cases. I didn't refer to Randolph's remarks as a prime example of liberal ineffectuality because he dislikes Kerry. What I was remarking on was Randolph's overriding concern with whether voters were making their choices for reasons Randolph approves of. From the way Randolph argued the point, one distinctly gets the idea that the actual choices matter less than whether they were made with what Randolph would consider a properly virtuous level of intellectual rigor.
Ok. I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of his argument, but on better reading I can a.) see why it would read like that and b.) get that part of your argument.
That kind of "radicalism" I'm happy to bash -- retail.
:)
For the record: I think the "get worse before it gets better" is just as pernicious as you do, but (when referring to the last election, which is the only time I know of it happening recently--see comments about politically naive, above) I try to restrict most of my blame for Nader rather than the Green party as a whole. Most Greens I know voted that way simply because the views best reflected theirs, end of story. While that might be abdicating the strategic possibilities of one's vote, I think it's an entirely justifiable interpretation of "democracy". A "strategic" view involves at best vague guesses and at worst some painful cynicism.
I'm a radical. I believe in making little bits of progress wherever and whenever they can be made. I think that's how you get to the "root" of problems: by getting into the world and working at them. Yes, by God, sometimes the material circumstances of a conflict call for spectacular, even theatrical challenges to the status quo. Dorothy Day knew that; Martin Luther King knew that; and they knew how and when to do it. But just as often, the realities of the world call for boring hard work in which we're unlikely to find any sort of immediately satisfactory self-actualization. It's worth doing anyway. But don't tell me I'm "bashing radicalism" because I make note of the fact that politics won't always make us happy.
Well. Yes. However: most people wouldn't make it in activism, radical or otherwise, without a large emotional commitment (sorry if that seems tritely obvious). It's a rare individual who can devote their life to a cause in which they have solely an intellectual, abstract concern. Your comment read as dismissing all self-driven activism, which seems like a silly position to take, and certainly didn't acknowledge that activism as a route to personal fulfillment might have also done some good.
I was, however reading into it perhaps a tidge too much to connect it to the orgies of Green-bashing that occasionally go on here.
Xopher--sorry, I just don't buy the electability thing. I hope this point hasn't been made before, but as far as I can see "electability" is a tautology. The voters in the Democratic primary are largely the people who'll be voting for the candidate in November. If primary voters like the candidate, he or she is "electable", meaning he or she deserves the nomination. Circular, so why not vote for the one you like?
As far as appeal to centrists and swing voters...meh. One thing Bush has done successfully is to polarize the country, and I don't think there's that many left. I think "getting out the vote" is going to be far more important.
On a completely disconnected note: "it has to get worse before it gets better" seems like it has actually happened--not in the Green party's benefit, but too many people are too scared of Bush to vote for him. Sucks for them that it benefits Dems instead, but such is life.
Either I'm even more politically naive than I think I am, or I'm seriously misunderstanding the argument here. Or both, actually.
Isn't this the point of primaries? Disliking Kerry isn't tantamount to Liberal Ineffectualness. It's saying, the Democratic Party can do better. Which seems like a quite reasonable thing to say, really. Time enough to talk about expediency and the "lesser of two evils" when it's election time. During the primaries, can't we be allowed just the teensiest smidgen of choice?
Fer cryin' out loud, yes, enough already, just about anybody in the Democratic field this year would and will be a better president than Bush. I'll be voting for whoever gets the nomination. No bleeping debate. But they aren't all created equal! And though the debate may rapidly becoming irrelevant, it's quite possible that Edwards or Dean would have been a better Better Than Bush.
PNH: "The idea that political activism is a route to personal fulfillment is one that has left a lot of wreckage in its path."
And possibly, you know, inspired a few leaders, started a couple of movements, and agitated for genuine beneficial change in this country. But we'll ignore that in favor of yet again bashing radicalism wholesale.
Of course, there is the fact that it weren't for the Green party, together with the Sierra Club, the ELF, and those troublesome abortion-rights activists, GWB's policies actually would have been sane, moderate, and enlightened. It's clearly their fault that they weren't. And alienating all these "radicals"? Blaming them for the state of the country? That there is a fantastic way of convincing them to vote your way.
Never mind, somebody else already made that point. This is what I get for not re-scanning the thread.
Stipulating for the sake of speculation that Nader's choice of campaign terrain had a significant contribution to the outcome of the 2000 elections, wouldn't that be a horribly, horribly ironic example of Mead's quote? Indeed, a small group of thoughtful, committed people, changing the world--for four years at least.
and meanwhile, they flew workers out from other grocery stores across the country (to work in the striking stores), with work schedules of 60-80 hours a week, and time and a half for overtime, plus extra for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
It's cheaper to fight the unions?
Seems like corporate solidarity (and squash-the-peons-brotherhood) is stronger.
Ow! Shouldn't read these things while consuming comestibles.
I just snorted Pixy Stix into my nasal ducts. That stuff stings.
Umm, and I don't mean that the cocaine/nose-first type route.
Scott:
I hear that line--about how I should be out providing jobs for "these people" if I care so much--pretty much every time I talk politics with my family. I hear ya.
What gets me is what a weird hybrid argument it is. Like, in school, I used to hear it not just from Republican types, but also from far-left Green Party and beyond types. That because I live in a capitalist system, it's my fault too. It always made my eyes cross to hear it come from both ends.
And yeah, to some degree, it is (the fault of all of us). The endless drive for cheaper products has spawned the Wal-Mart movement; but there's an element of corporate responsibility too. Executives can in fact refuse to treat their workers like slime. They can refuse to structure pay scales to go home millionaires, and leaving their workers penniless.
I think it was on this blog somewhere, a few weeks back, that someone mentioned the wage disparity between execs and their peons increasing from somewhere in the 80x to >300x over the last decade? I'd like to know where the statistic is from, but assuming it's valid, it also points out another counterargument to the "you are part of the problem" Meme Of Doom:
It doesn't have to be this bad.
Pardon if this is a stupid question, but is the "you folks" rule a joke or not? I poked around a bit to see if there actually were rules for the comment threads, but I didn't see much. Are there?
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