You’re wrong. Those who vote Republican don’t want the status quo. They want even more of their freedoms taken away because it makes them feel secure. The way to show you’re satisfied is to fiddle while Rome burns — fret over piddly shit while two men wrestle for control. The plane is in danger of crashing. This is not the time worry about when you’ll get your peanuts.
Ah, yes, the vanguard will show us poor working class schlubs just how wrong we were. Many thanks, massah!
Just how many times can a single poster miss the point? Keep demonstrating it to us.
Yet again: I’m not saying to go to the ballot box for social or political change. I’m saying to go to it to prevent unwanted social or political change. The choices there aren’t good enough, but one is worse than the other. So choose the less-worse one in order to put a hurdle in the path of your opponents, and then your work on building better choices will be that much easier.
But don’t believe this member of the working class. Believe the out-of-touch comrades of yours who would prefer cooperating with the Christian Coalition to building alliances with potential allies.
Eventually you’ll grow up.
Daniel
And yet you can’t guarantee that the Democrats won’t prevent that unwanted social or political change. Or, furthermore, that Kerry, should he win, won’t be followed later by a Republican who’s just as bad as Bush. In which case, four or eight years from now, we’ll be back here having the same argument. “Sure, Kerry didn’t do as much as we’d have liked him to, but the Democrats aren’t as bad as the Republicans!” Are we supposed to spend our lives hoping the Democrats win next time? The battle’s already lost if we do so.
You’re right. I can’t guarantee that. It’s a gamble.
What do I get if I win this extremely likely gamble? Why, I get a nice big fat hurdle thrown up in the way of my political opponents.
What do I get if I lose this extremely likely gamble? Ten minutes of my freakin’ time.
Consider that you also can’t guarantee that your organizing will do any good, or that your vanguard sect won’t turn around and engage in mass terror if they ever (haha) gain power. There ARE no guarantees.
However, this one is a no-brainer: the potential loss from voting for Kerry is so low (a loss of a negligible amount of time), and the potential benefit is so high, that only sheer bloodyminded stubbornness is keeping you from recognizing it. Let your ego go on this issue, and talk to some working-class activists outside of your sect, and you’ll see what I mean.
Daniel
As opposed to, say, having read up on the distant and recent history of the Democrats, and learning how they’ve absorbed grassroots movements so they don’t present a real challenge to the established order, how they’ve actively opposed real progress time and time again, seeing how Clinton conducted himself while in office (and no, I’m not talking about Monica Lewinsky), and concluding therefrom that the Democrats are not a party that deserves support as part of my political activity. Oh no, I’m merely a 34-year-old with the mind of a toddler who just wants to be always right no matter what. Silly me. :rolleyes:
What hurdles did the Democrats put in the way of the Patriot Act, may I ask? Or the vote to go to war in Iraq?
Has nothing to do with what I suggested, except that you’ve disproved me on one point: not everyone, apparently, grows up. I’m not saying to let yourself be absorbed by the Democrats; if you ever go into a voting booth, you’ll discover that the voting lever isn’t actually a pseudopod of the Democratic Elder God, and that touching it doesn’t cause the Elder God to suck you into its essence and make you part of it. Independents are allowed to vote for a Democrat without becoming part of the party, even without supporting anything the Democrats do. Your false equations of voting Democrat and supporting Democratic goals is part of your problem.
Daniel
Fuck you. Your arguments have failed to convince me, so obviously the problem isn’t one of convictions or politics, it’s maturity. Or maybe it’s the frustration over your wife’s continued ineptness over simple vehicular maintenance, and refusal to acknowledge such, that’s talking. It’s easy to impute immaturity to everyone you see when you have such an obvious case sleeping next to you.
“I don’t support the Democrats at all but I’m going to vote for them.” That doesn’t smack of the least hypocrisy to you?
And another part of your problem is your all-or-nothing view of the world. There are gradations.
Idi Amin, for example, ate his political enemies. However, he never voted in favor of the Patriot Act, or in favor of the war in Iraq. That doesn’t mean he was superior to the Democrats.
A challenge: can you find a single issue on which the Democratic party leadership has opposed your position less than the Republican party leadership? Seriously.
Daniel
Crap crap CRAP! I have no idea what made me connect that thread to you, unless I saw your name in the “Last posted” area and got confused.
Obviously the attitudes in this thread has gotten the better of me. I’m out.
And talking smack about a man’s wife who doesn’t even participate here is low.
And a third part of your problem is reading comprehension. 
Go back to that other thread, reread it, and come back here; I’m sure my wife is waiting with bated breath for your apology.
One, not a bit; two, that’s not what I’m saying.
Daniel
You’re right, gobear. But it’s rather hard to maintain the high ground in a four-page debate when the other side, yourself included, see fit to resort to the same methods from the get-go. You don’t want me to use low tactics? Fucking don’t use 'em yourself.
Hardly. Buy you DO sound like a man, who, despite your platitudes about the ‘working class,’ has the luxury to not care what happens in this election cycle. There are many of us that don’t feel the same. And yes, your insistance on an ‘all or nothing’ platform does strike me as childish.
You’ll not be the only person sitting out this election who should be out there voting. But I can understand apathy. What I can’t understand is the extreme effort that you’re putting into not voting.
Well, there you have it. My point was simply that while much of the discussion on this thread has put on the garb of a theoretical discussion on the ethics of voting, what it comes down to is that Kerry is your guy, and you want your guy to win. Which is of course fine.
But ISTM that you’re better off dropping the whole “electability” thing and try convincing him that the Democratic party is a positive good. Of course, that won’t succeed either, because he is, in this country, on the political lunatic fringe (which I mean in the best possible way 
).
Ya’ll seem to want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to keep the DP as leftist as you possibly can, keeping every single vote from people like Olentzero, while maintaining just enough appeal to the center to squeak out 50% +1. And I don’t think it works that way. Democrats like Bill Clinton can and will win elections (I’d have voted for Lieberman over Bush), and if you want to win, you’ll put up candidates like that and write off the Olentzeros of the world as baggage not worth keeping, just as the GOP dumped Pat Buchanan and David Duke. Democrats like Howard Dean can be a powerful voice for core liberal beliefs, but they can’t win. As for Kerry, he can win … but only if has a “Sister Soljah Moment” and runs as a Bill Clinton.
In short, you should be glad that folks like Olentzero won’t vote for Kerry, because a Democratic candidate that he liked wouldn’t be able to win a national election.
And refusal to accept responsibility for your own obnoxious behavior is yet a fourth part of your problem. Not that what you do surprises me at this point: you’re exactly the sort of holier-than-thou, shrill, irrational twerp that I learned to expect from vanguard groups. Even when I was invovled in radical politics, I knew better than to engage with your ilk.
Guess I’ve forgotten some things in the time I’ve been out of radical politics.
Daniel
It’s because my decision not to vote, Stonebow, is a political one, based on an assessment of the Democrats as a political party, an assessment of Nader’s agenda, and an assessment of how I can work to best further my interests. I’m not apathetic about the political future of either this country or the rest of the world. I just do not see the interests of my class being served by a political party that is avowedly allied to the capitalist system, even if they think (wrongly) that it can be fixed for everybody.
If I felt I had the luxury not to care, I wouldn’t be involved in politics at all. I don’t have the luxury not to care. But voting is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and if voting in a given election (note I’m not saying elections in general!) doesn’t get me anywhere close to heading towards the end I find most desirable, I’m not going to do it.
LeftHand, I am human, and I make mistakes, especially when driven to the breaking point by groundless insults. That’s about as close to an apology as you or your wife (if you’re married) are going to get from me.
So you admit, then, that the repeated cracks about immaturity might have had something to do with pissing me off? Or does accepting responsibility for obnoxious behavior only extend to the opponents you’ve needlessly angered?
Sure: you can dish it out (calling other people hypocrites), but you can’t take it. I got no problem admitting that. You want a nice discussion with me, don’t call me names. You wanna call me names, expect the same. But bring my family into it, and I’ll think up some real choice words for what you are.
Daniel
**Olentzero ** - could you please articulte your political position to us? I’ve read several statements by others as to your beliefs, but nothing from you personally, and I don’t think that any discussion between us can be fruitful with me making assumptions. If you’ve stated them elsewhere, feel free to just point me that way.
As for your response to me, I just don’t see how you can recognize that the Dems are, if not progressive towards your position, at least not regressive, as are their opposition. But I have never been a fan of idealogical purity in any case. I tend to view politics in a very martial way- whatever helps me, confounds my opponents, or both, is the proverbial ‘good thing.’