Technically true, but there’s no evidence that the missing 50% wouldn’t split the same way. There’s probably more evidence that they’d split more towards the Dems than the Reps as that missing 50% is probably made up disproportionately of poorer folks, but I’m actually just guessing about that.
Either way, given that the election was decided in a few states by a margin of just a few thousand or even, in the case of New Mexico, a few hundred, the margin in such a 50/50 split is determined by who votes and who doesn’t, more than by the preference of the majority. So a decision to stay home, under those circumstances, is a vote for the side that is farther away from your ideals.
Now, if all you care about is the complete, 100% triumph of your ideals, then this wouldn’t bother you.
You ought to if you’re going to claim I’m following the principle. I took a look at the Rabotnitsa article you linked to, and did a site search for that exact phrase - “the worse the better”. It comes up exactly twice in the works of Lenin posted on that website; one in the Rabotnitsa article, attributing the attitude (if not the exact phrase) to Plekhanov’s criticism of another political group entirely, and in a second article from 1905 in which Lenin decries
(Bolding mine. -O.) Granted, the archive front page notes that barely one-third of the works of Lenin have been posted to the site, but given the range of years covered by the already available works, it would seem that if “the worse the better” were an integral part of Lenin’s politics, the phrase should appear far more frequently than just twice in some 1,300 documents. If you’re going to attribute political motivations and tactics to me, you’d damn well better be able to back them up with some solid evidence. Which, obviously, you lack.
Neither is a Kerry victory going to make the word more what I want. In fact, the second Lenin article in which “the worse the better” appears has a close approximation of the approach I do favor:
I’m not just not voting for Kerry in November. I’m involved in political activity that involved that “agitation, recruiting, organising the revolutionary forces on a larger scale”. True, we may be small now, but it’s this kind of work done now that will enable a strong, militant radical left to grow in the long term. And that growth doesn’t depend on whether or not Bush is in office the next four years. Bush, as disgusting as he is, is neither Hitler not the Tsar, and Kerry isn’t “peace, love, harmony, and human progress” made flesh. The left has work to do in either case.
Then why aren’t the Democrats acting on that guess to motivate a large part of that 50% to vote? The votes are out there, and, as you assert, there’s evidence that effort on the part of the Democrats would yield some positive results. Why are they trying to focus on that tiny section of “swing” voters?
I was suggesting, partly in jest but partly not, that it was a possibility. You claim otherwise. Fine.
As for the throwaway quote itself, it’s widely attributed to Lenin as I noted, but perhaps falsely. That doesn’t appear provable either way. But the question about your motivations stands regardless of who said it, okay? If I’d said “Plekhanov” instead of “Lenin”, would it matter?
You can claim that only by assuming there is no real difference between him and Bush. That assertion is not supported by the facts, though.
Snort. Ain’t never gonna be a workers’ revolution, pal, here or anywhere else. How many years has it been since 1917 and what progress has been made toward it? What is actually different after all these years of “agitation etc.”? Not a fucking thing. The CPUSA and its fellow travelers have never accomplished a fucking thing of substance, however trivial. Why is that? You’ve been totally ineffective for generations, and there is no basis whatsoever to expect, or even hope for that to change, but you maintain your total religious faith in your ideology and its followers anyway. That is not what a responsible man does, or even a sane man. The world does not match your vision of it, and the fault for that is not the world’s. While you and your tiny circle of fellow committed ideologues are wanking away over vodka shots and your translations of *Chto D’elat’?, * you are in fact letting real conditions deteriorate for the real people whose interests you tell yourselves are at the core of your philosophy. “The worse, the better” is the only possible *kind * explanation for your actions - but you’re denying it, so we have to stick with the unkind ones already explained, haven’t we?
Done and done. So now the question: “If the Democrats are far from pure, why vote for them?” The core of the issue.
A very poor choice of words on my part. I don’t look for or to one person to organize the working class; I look for the tactics and strategies that would help the working class organize itself. There’s a very relevant quote from Eugene Debs on the subject:
That is what I look to.
Take a look at the first chart here. It shows the difference between the nominal and the real minimum wage. Note the real minimum wage - that is, the purchasing power of the nominal minimum wage after adjusting for inflation - has fallen by $3 since 1968. Are we to be thankful to the Democrats for raising the minimum wage when those raises can’t even keep up with the rate of inflation?
Do or do not. There is no try. …sorry, I couldn’t resist. But it sums up my feelings on the subject. If the Democrats are really champions of universal health care, then they’d have found a way to implement it by now. They had their chance with a Democratic president and (as I remember) a Democratic majority in Congress before 1994. Why wasn’t it a cakewalk for them?
A few preliminary statistics: The SS Board of Trustees estimated in its 2004 report that current trust funds would be completely exhausted in 2042 - in other words, when the people who were on the very tail end of the “baby boom” will be dying off at an increased rate. In short, Social Security as it is now is more than sufficient to do the job we’re worried about. How is it funded? According to this blurb, wages up to a limit of $87,900 are taxed at a rate of 6.2 percent for employers and employees, while the self-employed are taxed at a rate of 12.4 percent. Beyond that any wage income (not income derived from other sources, which isn’t subject to the Social Security tax) isn’t taxed. So the immediately obvious solution to prevent exhaustion of funds in 2042 - and the projected drop of revenues below the necessary level to sustian program costs in 2018 - is to either raise or remove the salary cap and subject non-wage income to Social Security tax. Like, say, corporate revenue. Unfortunately, however, the effective corporate tax rate seems to have dropped significantly over the last eight years. In 1996, the end of Clinton’s first term, the effective corporate tax rate, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy report here, was 22.9% (a drop from the high of 26.5% in 1988 after the corporate tax reforms of 1986). By 1998, however, the second year of Clinton’s second term, the effective rate was down to 22.1%. So Republicans obviously aren’t the only ones guilty of cutting taxes for corporations, nor are Democrats entirely exonerated from keeping a tight lid on the ability of Social Security to do its job properly. Where is the fight to preserve Social Security here?
I seem to remember Clinton allowing Ron Carey to be witch-hunted out of the Teamsters presidency after the 1997 UPS strike - on corruption charges that proved to be utterly baseless. I hardly call that attitude “doing what you can for the labor unions”, nor do I think unions would have it easy ‘proving their relevance’ when the government obviously guns for them when they try to fight back.
while failing to close loopholes and other tax shelters. As I understand it from this CTJ site, the effective tax rate for the top tax bracket (39.6% of individual income) is somewhere around 27.4%. Whereas the effective tax rate for those in the bottom tax bracket (i.e. zero taxes) is 2.4% - meaning the people who ideally aren’t obliged to pay taxes generally do, while those who should pay the most in taxes get a 25% tax break.
Again, that doesn’t help much if the EITC can be potentially absorbed by taxes paid under the effective tax rate.
Kerry wants to reduce the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 32.5% - and corporate taxes made up only 7.6% of federal revenue in 2001 (see third Google entry here - compared to 11% in 1998 (fourth Google entry [url=“http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q="federal+revenue+1996"”]here). I have an assertion that the percentage of federal revenue furnished by corporate taxes was 23% in 1996 but I haven’t found a cite to back that up yet. in any case it should be clear that the Democrats aren’t exactly shy when it comes to cutting taxes, and that both they and the Republicans are responsible for the squeezes in social spending.
Anyone that depends primarily or solely on wage income to survive. That is, anyone who must work to live - i.e. the working class. They have to sell their ability to labor to someone else in order to have a roof over their head, clothes on their back, and food in the pantry. How narrow does that seem to you?
I’m trying, Kim. I just don’t see how the Democrats are going to be a help in that regard.
What, exactly, do you think failed? And has it failed so completely that it no longer remains a viable approach?
Where does Kerry stand on the death penalty? On gay marriage? On the war in Iraq? I know that one, and he definitely doesn’t stand on the same side I do. On abortion? - well, actually, Kerry is pretty progressive on abortion; I’ll give him that. But in his pursuit of ‘electability’ he skipped out on the vote over the federal ban on intact dilation and extraction, which allows him to say “I didn’t vote against it” to those who support a woman’s right to an abortion while saying “I didn’t vote for it” to those who oppose abortion. That ain’t compromise, that’s just plain old weaselling. And it seems to me the general consensus is that “single-issue” voting for candidates, at least around here, is akin to casting an uninformed vote.
I think we’ve been over some of what the Democrats actually did in the 1990s, and if we can expect the same of Kerry, you’ve pretty much guaranteed there’s no way in hell I’m gonna vote for him.
Well, apparently when they did have a majority in Congress under Bush they chose to roll over instead of stand up and fight for what they supposedly champion. I don’t remember if Clinton ever had a Democratic majority in either house (I would presume so before 1994, when the election of so many Republicans seemed to cause a political earthquake) but I don’t remember great things coming out of those times either.
Please! Dean’s gotten contributions from Time Warner, IBM, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs during his political career. He’s no populist outsider; he’s got just as many ties to corporate interests as any other prominent Democrat.
And they’ll become an arm of the Democrats wherever they take office. All well and good for Kerry that he’s raised $100 million for his campaign for President; are those same people who donates $25 and $50 going to be able to afford traveling to Washington and lobbying on behalf of their own interests when Kerry’s in the Oval Office? Of course not. And take a look at Kerry’s record on telecommunications legislation sometime. He knows which side his bread is buttered on. It ain’t ours.
FDR gave us Social Security at a time of popular anger, unrest and activity resulting from the Great Depression. He didn’t create the program because the “little man” was near and dear to his heart; he created it because there would be hell to pay if he didn’t. He described himself more than once as “the best friend the capitalist system ever had” - and he was right. He threw us large enough of a bone to quiet us down and defuse any potential threat to the established order. That having been said, what did FDR do about Jim Crow? Nothing. Hell, he presided over the racist internment of Japanese-Americans during the war. [heavy sarcasm]'Cos everyone knew the wily inscrutable Jap placed unthinking loyalty to the Emperor and his dogs of war above loyalty to the country they’d moved to. Unlike the German-Americans.[/heavy sarcasm]Sure, FDR set the integration of armed forces in motion, but how long did it actually take them? Decades, in one or two cases, IIRC. It took another 20 years for the overt racism in American society to be addressed (yes, under another Democrat) but again that was in response to the grassroots organization and struggle that was going on. Not out of the goodness of Johnson’s heart.
People still seem to be able to sniff out the bullshit, SCLM’s work notwithstanding. Maybe it’s because the SCLM (what’s that stand for, anyway?) hasn’t been entirely successful in keeping news from the rest of the world from leaking in.
True, which is why it’s important to organize an alternative to both the Democrats and the Republicans. The Republicans don’t hide the fact that they’re beating us back, while the Democrats try to make us think they’re just taking the lead in a tango.
Seeing as how we’ve only been around for 25 years, and that during some of the worst attacks on working class living standards since the Depression, I’d say just holding our organization together and recruiting by the ones and twos is quite an accomplishment. Sure, it ain’t much, but as I said previously, it’s a good foundation for building further on the fightbacks that are happening now.
At the grass roots, of course. Most grassroots organizing is defensive these days - like the push for gay marriages in the face of Bush’s attempt at a constitutional ban on anything outside of heterosexual monogamy, or the march for abortion rights coming up in DC later this month, or the continued anti-war effort - but it is happening, and independently of the Democrats. There is certainly a pro-Kerry tendency within them - or, rather, an anti-Bush tendency writ large and panicky - but that’s where the arguments for a real alternative have to happen.
Dean’s no trailblazer. He was able to tap into popular frustration for a time, but he’s not discovering new territory by any stretch of the imagination.
I don’t want to get into this particular subject in this thread, since it’s way off-topic, but I will say that the $87 billion Bush requested for military financing would have been put to better use as direct reparations to the Iraqi people.
OK, you’ve got me intrigued here. What say we keep an eye on events through November 2005, and then the loser has to say, in no uncertain terms, “You were right”?
I forget, did Clinton sign the Kyoto Accords or not?
I gotta look more into this but I will say I’m not expecting to have my mind changed on this one.
And what bloody good are civil unions to gays and lesbians? Not only do they not accord the exact same civil and legal rights as marriage does, the decision to honor or reject them is left up to the individual states - so a gay couple married in Massachusetts may not have their union recognized in Texas should they move there. If the Democrats don’t have enough of a spine to say “Separate is not equal, period” then I’m not going to consider voting for one.
We’ve been over this one previously. Kerry wants to lower the corporate tax rate, which is already generally circumvented by loopholes and tax shelters.
Shit, Kim, how do you think I feel? I got research and typing here.
Defense of Marriage Act. “Don’t ask don’t tell”. A complete failure on one of his biggest campaign promises - universal health care. Ruination of Yugoslavia and Rwanda under the guise of “humanitarian intervention”. Bombing a fucking pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan on flimsier pretexts than Bush’s WMD. Reductions in corporate taxes and social spending. Flagrant union-busting.
Nah, Clinton didn’t start the process that sent 58,000 young American men and women to their deaths.
With friends like the Democrats… you know the rest.
Electing a Democrat without corporate influence is one thing. Doesn’t mean we’ve immunized them to it for the next three to seven years.
Whew. I think I’ve spent the better part of two hours, maybe more, on this post. Y’all excuse me if I go find something off-line to do for the rest of the evening. 
Yes, because it would appear Plekhanov didn’t say it either. At least Google and the marxists.org archive don’t show it as being so. Your continued insistence on that catchphrase informing my politics just shows you really don’t have much of a leg to stand on. Which reminds me - Fine talent for abuse in the second part of your post. If only it weren’t so hackneyed.
I just saw the 60 Minutes special on Jack Spadaro. I’ve changed my mind. I’m voting for Kerry.
Speaking as someone who hasn’t watched Sixty Minutes in a decade…
Okay, now I’m scared. Lib, please expand on the topic?
Except we’re not talking about your responsibilities on the other days of the four-year cycle. We’re only talking about your responsibilities on election day. Don’t misrepresent.
Because Pat Robertson’s plan is working, or haven’t you noticed, and your plan isn’t? Your staying home on election day is getting the Christian Coalition elected into power, just like Pat wants. THAT is why your reasons are the ones without external validity.
But I’m sure Pat will be happy to hear that you think he’s deluded; he’ll be happily deluded all the way to the white house.
Daniel
In sum–if you play, you may win, or you may lose.
If you decline to play you will still lose everything that a player would have lost by losing.
So play.
You may win something.
I’ve looked at the Democrats. I still fail to see what I might possibly hope to win.
You could win a lack of an amendment banning gay marriage, for one. You could win fewer soldiers killed in Iraq, for two.
And I’ll point out that you’ve already devoted a lot more energy to defending your right not to vote that you would’ve devoted to actually voting. This is masturbatory, self-righteous “activism,” the type of activism that turned me away from politics for a long time. You’re not nearly so concerned about the working class, near as I can tell, as you are concerned about feeling good about being concerned about the working class.
If you actually gave a visceral shit about the working class, this would be a no-brainer for you.
Daniel
So I’m supposed to go out and vote for a party, about whom I’ve spent four years arguing that it is no alternative and is in fact a poison to grassroots organizing and activism, simply because the other party is worse? Sorry. You just can’t mask hypocrisy with the word “compromise” well enough.
But I don’t win gay marriage, either. Civil unions aren’t enough.
Kerry. Wants. To. Send. MORE. US. Troops. To. Iraq. So. More. Soldiers. Are. Going. To. Die. How many FUCKING times do I have to spell this out?
Well, this is the only portion of my activism you actually see. Doesn’t mean that’s all there is.
More of your bankrupt logic. A fork in the eye is better than a bayonet in the gut, and no fork in the eye is better than a fork in the eye, even if it’s not as good as a bowl of chocolate pudding. Your inability to recognize gradations is a major hindrance, and may explain why you measure success by recruiting a couple people to a fringe organization, instead of measuring success by, I dunno, achieving your goals.
Say it as many times as you like; the logic doesn’t follow.
We’re. Not. Talking. About. The. Rest. Of. Your. Activism. How many FUCKING times do I have to spell this out?
For the rest of your time, go organize rallies, or go spike trees, or go picket stores, or go educate kids, or go do whatever the hell makes you feel like a big old working class hero. But one day a year, spend the energy to drag your ass down to the poll booth and defy Pat Robertson.
Daniel
I recognize gradations quite well, thank you very much. I also recognize the practical consequences of such gradations. Not having a constitutional ban on gay marriage, but only having civil unions, is treating gays and lesbians as second-class citizens, and is therefore gay oppression. If I claim to oppose gay oppression, but I vote for a candidate that doesn’t offer much of anything by way of ending it, I become hypocritical. Hypocrisy, to me, is not a viable option in the effort to achieve my political goals.
I have no idea what you’re saying here. Are you asserting that Kerry doesn’t want to increase US troop presence in Iraq?
Yes, as a matter of fact, we are. Voting Democrat in November when I belong to a political organization that bases its activities around building an alternative to the Democrats, while at the same time arguing that the Democrats themselves are no alternative, is hypocrisy. Pure and simple.
OK, so marching as a delegation in a demonstration supporting a woman’s right to an abortion, which is exactly what I’ll be doing on April 25th here in DC, is not defying Pat Robertson? I mean, am I confused in thinking Pat Robertson opposes that right? Is voting for a candidate that Pat Robertson doesn’t support (hypocrisy issues aside) the only way of defying the Christian Right? I hardly think so.
I guarantee you Pat would rather you march and not vote than not march and vote. But hell, you’ll go home all proud of yourself at the end of the day, and maybe you won’t have done a damn thing to actually protect abortion rights, but at least you and Pat will be happy with your choice.
While you’re at the rally, at least, will you ask some abortion rights leaders whether they’d rather have you vote for Kerry or march in their rally?
Daniel
Why, have you asked him?
Remember it was grassroots organizing and mobilizatioin that made abortion legal in the first place. It wasn’t won by voting for Democrats. Nixon was in office at the time, and the Supreme Court had no less than four judges appointed by him. But there was a mass movement for women’s rights on the ground, which had made the demand for the legalization of abortion a key part of their agenda. If those people had done nothing but waited until the 1976 election to vote for Democrats, we still might not have legal abortion today. Organizing and campaigning around the issues on the ground is a far more powerful tool than voting once every two or four years.
“Or”? If they’d rather have me vote Kerry than march in solidarity at the demonstration, what’s the point of having a demonstration in the first place?
Because most people, most parties, most institutions are ‘far from pure’, but there is usually a good deal of difference between that and being actively malign. I’d rather hang out with a small-time drug dealer than with a murderer, and I’d rather have a Democratic president than Bush.
So do I. But the actions of the Federal government have a great deal of effect on the degree of difficulty for the working class to organize itself. I don’t expect Kerry to do much leading in this area; I expect him, unlike Bush, to not be actively hostile to such organizing. Seems very much in line with your Debs quote.
Yeah, and $4 of that $3 decrease coincided with the Nixon and Reagan years. Thanks for making my point!
Yoda, Y-O-D-A Yoda…
Why should it have been? There’s only been twice that I can think of that a President has been able to get social spending on anything like that scale through Congress: Social Security (1935) and Medicare (1965). I don’t know what Roosevelt’s Congressional majority was like in 1935, but after the 1964 landslide, Johnson had the most liberal Congress of my lifetime, and it still took all of LBJ’s unparalleled arm-twisting skills, plus a good deal of horse-trading, to get Medicare through Congress. This is nontrivial stuff.
As far as ‘do or do not, there is no try’, for how many years did the sponsors of campaign finance reform have to try before they did? I think they were going at it for about a decade. Often the first few steps toward doing consist of trying and failing. But if Bush wins, there will be no meaningful ‘try’.
Between 1996 and 1998, huh? What happened in between those dates that could’ve made a difference? I’ll tell you one big thing: the GOP held those anti-IRS hearings, which resulted in the IRS’ enforcement budget being slashed, resulting in the IRS being unable to go after more than a minute fraction of all the tax-avoidance schemes for both rich folks and corporations that were designed to take advantage of the absence of manpower to investigate. David Cay Johnston’s book Perfectly Legal goes into details. Blame Newt, not Bill.
As far as Social Security’s viability is concerned, I’ll defer to Krugman, who says:
I have no idea what the deal was on Carey. But that didn’t put Jack Welch in charge of the Teamsters, did it? Seems your Debs quote ought to come into play here: a longtime union like the Teamsters shouldn’t be dependent on one man.
Awww, Clinton didn’t do as much good as you would have liked him to do.
So, after three years of Bush tax cuts, what’s that effective max tax rate? CTJ doesn’t say, but given the tax cuts involving (a) the lowering of the top bracket, (b) dividends, and (c) capital gains, we know it has to have gone down significantly.
Thanks again for making my point.
I’m assuming the EITC was figured in when CTJ calculated their “effective tax rates”, and that the EITC helped lower the rates on the bottom brackets. (I don’t know, but that would have been consistent.)
First, Kerry’s proposal is, as I understand it, a revenue-neutral trade: we kill the tax benefit for moving jobs offshore, and we cut the top rate enough to balance it out. In a perfect world, he should just kill the benefit for offshoring, but it ain’t no pervect world.
Second, the difference in general between the Dems and the GOP on squeezing social spending is, the GOP’s actively fighting to squeeze it, while the Dems often fail to fight hard enough to defend it. You know it, and I know it, and so does everyone else.
That’s a big difference, because it means that with a Dem President, or a Dem Congress, or both, the GOP will have fewer tools to use to squeeze social programs further, and the Dems won’t have to work so hard to preserve what’s already there.
IOW, it makes a difference.
That seems wide enough to me. It wasn’t clear from your posts before this, was all: “working class” has generally been used to mean those whose jobs involve physical labor, whether they work a loading dock, an assembly line, or what.
But in that case, I entirely fail to see your larger point; I was thinking that perhaps you defined ‘your’ class in some narrow sense that they somehow eluded any help from Democrats, and somehow weren’t ripped off by the Bushies. At least we’ve gotten that confusion out of the way.
OK, how has it succeeded? You ‘commie bastards’ have been organizing for a long time; where are the fruits of your labors? You know the old definition of insanity: doing X over and over again, getting the same result, and expecting it to work differently the next time.
The death penalty is hardly in play at the Federal level, except when it comes to appointing judges and Justices that may have to vote on this or that case. And you know how Neanderthal Bush’s court picks have been. Kerry will probably be like Clinton and appoint a lot of centrists to the courts, but there’ll still be a world of difference between Kerry’s centrists and Bush’s reactionaries.
Bush is opposed to gay marriage of any sort, and supports a Constitutional amendment banning it. It didn’t seem to bother him when the operative version banned civil unions too. Kerry’s against the amendment, and for civil unions. That may not be as progressive as you like, but once again, there’s real daylight between their positions.
Iraq’s silly to argue right now: whoever’s President in ten months, he’s gonna have a shitty hand to play, unless Iraq’s so totally gone down the toilet by then that it’s clearly time to cut and run. (Starting to look that way, though.)
The daylight between Bush and Kerry on abortion is the daylight of Sweden at the solstice. But down to brass tacks: if given the opportunity, Bush will put justices on the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe. Kerry won’t.
So there’s four issues that you named, and in very practical terms, Kerry’s much better than Bush on three of them, with the fourth a draw.
Yeah, and we’ve established that there’s a lot of room between the Dems and Bush; that things will probably play out very differently in tangible ways depending on who’s elected.
Point taken, but even accomplishing nothing would be an improvement over the GOP’s effort to dismantle what’s left of the New Deal and Great Society programs, one brick at a time.
Which had nothing to do with my point, so it doesn’t constitute a rebuttal.
Yeah, except that now the Dems will know they don’t need the lobbyists’ money anymore. Before, they really believed they did.
Actually, Kerry hasn’t; that’s the combined take of Kerry, the DNC, the DCCC, and the DSCC. But suffice it to say that if people donated money over the Internet, they’ll be able to deluge Kerry with emails if he goes the wrong way.
Also, bloggers such as Kos and Atrios have been active in raising money for the Dems. They will be able to speak on behalf of those who contributed through their sites, and be listened to the way Bush listens to his Pioneers and Rangers: Kos has raised about $110K for Kerry and national Dem groups so far this year, plus smaller amounts for specific Congressional races he’s pushing. I think Atrios’ total is a bit higher, but the Web connection here at work is buggy right now. They won’t be ignored.
I’ll grant you that, in telecom, you’ve finally found one issue where both parties have looked equally bad.
So he gave up trying to put America back to work after passing Social Security in 1935? I doubt it.
Not every rich person is aware that in the long run, making sure the wealth is shared is the best way to preserve capitalism. FDR was. Bush sure isn’t. Suffice it to say that rich people can do very different things from one another when elected. Kerry’s fortune doesn’t make him the equivalent of Bush.
Yeah, but it sure wasn’t out of political self-interest either. Johnson knew the Civil Rights bill would cost the Dems the South for a long time to come.
But even then, did you see the GOP standing up for the blacks? Daylight between the parties again.
SCLM = “So-Called Liberal Media.” Sorry about that. But even when the truth leaks out, it takes time when the other guys are trying hard to hide it. Some of these things aren’t yes/no propositions; it can be more or less of an uphill fight to root out disinformation. I’d like to do what I can to tilt the table more in our favor.
well, it may be obvious to me and you, but the Pubbie propaganda out there still has a lot of people fooled on that very point.
What, no predecessor publications/organizations before 1979? But gotta say, the effectiveness of your work over the past 25 years doesn’t impress me.
Thanks for admitting Democratic grassroots activism is alive, which was my point.
In terms of organizing?? I beg to differ on that. You may not like his politics, but his organizing was first-rate, and used the Internet in ways new to politics.
Yes, a movement for womens’ rights was afoot, but the legalization of abortion was accomplished by legal challenges to state abortion statutes, and then by finding a test case to take all the way to the Supreme Court, not by marches. Marches help with fundraising and raising the popular consciousness, but they do not get laws overturned. From Plannedparenthood.org:
Viable change is only possible by working with the system. If all you do is march, you’ll be left wondering what happened as ypour smarter, sharper opponents win the court cases while you’re beating your drims and chanting inane slogans.
Go ahead and march AND vote for Kerry, by all means.
It’s not either/or–both campaigning AND voting are impoertant.
Waht you radical lefties fail to understand is that you have zero, and I do mean ZERO, idea of how to launch and sustain a popular movement. The Radical Right has done a wonderful job of convincing the working class to vote against their own self-interest because you lot are too lofty to explain your side.
You’re on the periphery of American politics and you don’t even know it.