Which would have stopped a civil war, or a Shi’ite theocracy, how?
Works for me.
No, but I certainly don’t understand them sufficiently well to say they ought to be used as a litmus test.
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Yeah, whatever. A year ago, even civil unions were a radical idea, and now you want the frickin’ moon.
I’ll let gays and lesbians tell me how close civil unions are in terms of rights (gobear, any comments?); Barney Frank thinks pushing for gay marriage is going too far right now. I don’t think Kerry has to be ashamed of not being to the left of Frank on this one.
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yeah, but where do you think that came from? The Gingrich Congress, that’s where. There were a finite number of battles Clinton could fight, and he decided to cave on that one. Again, it comes down to the difference between being actively conservative, and not being able to thwart every conservative initiative that comes down the pike. First thing is, we’ve got to put them in a position to throw less bad stuff at us.
At the time, that was progress. How soon we forget that the previous standard had been, ask and tell, with pretty steep consequences for lying.
Again, at least he tried. Think Bush’s gonna?
Oh, gimme a break. The shame in Rwanda was that he didn’t intervene; the shame in Yugo was that he didn’t intervene sooner. (Bush I got us into Somalia before leaving office, and Clinton got the blame.)
Wow, that’s a biggie.
Like I said before.
Clinton was a union-buster? I want a cite for this, friend.
They demostrate popular support for the overturning of those laws. Would the lawyers who took those test cases to the state and federal courts have done so solely on their own initiative if they felt they didn’t have mass popular support?
You guys are taking the single examples I provide as counter-arguments and thinking that is the whole spectrum of my political activity.
I’ve been over this one already. I don’t think the Democrats are an alternative, and I’ve argued as such for years now. I’m not gonna turn around and vote Democrat just because Bush is a complete wanker and his appointees are disgusting thugs.
Show me someone worth voting for, then!
Allow me to introduce you to the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. The ISO has been involved since the beginning, and the CEDP has been doing great work around the issue.
What great work? How many state legislators have you elected that will vote to remove the death penalty? How many anti death penalty governors have you elected? How many Congressmen and Senators have you elected that will vote to remove the death penalty from federal crimes? How many anti death penalty presidents have you elected? And I’ll tell you, I’m strongly anti death penalty, but any page that the headline is “Stop the racist death penalty” has lost me right there.
And I don’t even know why I typed this. All of y’all arguing with Olentzero are absolutely right, but you’re missing one thing. He. Just. Doesn’t. Get. It. You’re wasting your breath. His political purity is the only thing that matters to him. The fact that sometimes progress comes in baby steps is lost on him. On the bright side, some of the things said in this thread, I can easily use in talking to the people at work who’s only reason for not voting is: “What difference would it make?”
I’d rather have a workers’ government, myself. And voting Democrat ain’t gonna bring that about.
Oooh, “not actively hostile”. Such a tasty crumb, Master Kerry! Thank you, Your Lordship. :rolleyes: I’m sorry, Kim, I’m just not satisfied with “not as bad as Bush”. I do want the frickin’ moon and I’m not ashamed of saying so.
So what did Johnson have to compromise away to get Medicare? What other crumbs did the American working class get snatched away in order to get decent health care for the poor and elderly?
You’ve struck a real gem here, Kim. What I want to do - that is, radically reconstitute society - is incompatible with supporting the Democrats. They don’t want to do that. So leftists keep trying to organize, and make mistakes, and learn from them and keep trying. Eventually what we want to do can become possible.
The work I want to do still needs to be done irrespective of who’s in office.
OK, so Clinton didn’t have any veto power over this particular issue?
No, since Jack Welch is (or was) head of UPS. It put Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. in charge, though - and that’s just as bad.
No, you’re right. But Carey had done something that could be built upon to increase the Teamsters’ rank-and-file members’ confidence to fight back around other issues. Clinton witch-hunting Carey out of office killed what little confidence the Teamsters had gained from the strike.
Damn straight, Kim. I refuse to lower my expectations for social and political justice just because the other ‘electable’ party in the US refuses to meet them.
So why should I support the bastards if they’re not fighting hard enough?
Wasn’t it you who just said the Republicans have been beating us back since at least Nixon? The only reason the left may be getting the same results it got sixty years ago is because the left has been pushed back to where it started sixty years ago by the right-wing onslaught, both politically and socially, since the end of the Second World War. We have a lot of work to do before we can even approach the level of mass movements we saw in the late 1960s, to say nothing of the mass movements of the 1930s. Hell, I’d love to see replays of the kind of strikes that brought the unions to places like Ford and the city of Minneapolis in the mid-30s. We’re not there yet.
Allow me to introduce you to Clinton’s "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act". Clinton also expanded the list of federal crimes punishable by death from 2 to almost 60. The death penalty is most certainly well at play on the federal level.
Oh joy. That’s not enough.
Daylight? Yes. Enough? No. Same for the other positions, even on abortion. Kerry skipped out on a vote that would have clearly marked him as a progressive on the issue in order to pursue ‘electability’ on both sides. That’s just fucking slimy.
Since when has “nothing” ever been acceptable to anyone?
AH, see, there is the central key issue! Democrats are committed to preserving capitalism. I’m not. I’m not gonna vote for a party that’s committed to preserving capitalism, 'cos no matter how they try to sugarcoat it or blunt its sharper edges, capitalism is still going to produce economic crises and social injustices that it cannot hope to successfully address.
Cost them what? The support of the “Dixiecrat” type? Why would a party that claims to be committed to social justice, and is (only) occasionally successful at demonstrating this commitment, be worried about losing the support of the wing of the party opposed to such commitment? You sign landmark civil rights legislation, suddenly you have serious grassroots support and you lose some conservative members. Net gain, from my point of view.
No, last time I know of the GOP standing up for the Blacks was during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
I’m sure our steering committee in Chicago will be absolutely crushed to hear that and will order the immediate disbandment of the ISO. :rolleyes:
So sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities, TYM. But the number of prisoners on any given death row are disproportionately Black and minorities, and uniformly poor. So are you going to re-think your stance on the death penalty because the CEDP calls it racist, or merely refuse to participate in any anti-DP events that the CEDP may be involved in?
Electing officials isn’t the only, or even the primary, method of ending the death penalty. Stopping executions, like the CEDP has done in MD and CA, and being heavily involved in the campaign that resulted in the emptying of Illinois’ death row, is much more effective.
Get what? That I’m supposed to vote for the Democratic candidate even though he disgusts me, simply because Bush disgusts me more? That I’m supposed to yield to hypocrisy and vote for a party I’ve decided, and will continue to argue, is no alternative at all? I don’t see what’s so wrong with sticking to political ideals I’ve found to be correct. Yes, my ‘political purity’, as you call it, is important to me. That’s because I detest being a hypocrite.
Hardly. I just don’t see the progress I’d like to make as coming from the Democrats.
Go ahead. Ask them. They’re not the ones suggesting you should only do one or the other, YOU are. I betcha that they’re assuming everyone at the rally is going to vote for Kerry, and will be appalled to find out that you’re too pure to do that. Ask them which they’d prefer you do, if you’re only going to do one or the other.
I’ve read A People’s History of the United States cover to cover; I’m no stranger to direct action; I’m a big believer in organizing folks. But I’m not so foolish as to deny the power of the ballot, either.
If Olentzero was wandering through the desert, dying of thirst, and I approached him with two glasses – one empty, the other half-full – I wonder which one he’d take?
I’m guessing it would depend on whether or not you could certify that the water in the half-full glass was gathered and purified without the abuse of the sweat of the workers’ brows.
This may be the best summary of why I hate radical politics that I have ever come across. Better even than the guy who told me over a game of pool (played with wooden cue sticks) about shouting, “Murderers!” at some local loggers.
There we disagree. Elected legislators who are against and will vote against the death penalty and elected executives who will appoint judges who are against the death penalty are the ONLY way to stop it effectively and permanently. Or as permanent as one can expect. There have been and will be executions in Maryland, and in Califonia, and Illinois’ death row will likely fill up again as quickly as it was emptied. Stop gap measures are fine, but should be considered only that - as stop-gap measures while the real work is being done. The real work consists of evangilism, organization, and last but not least, voting - voting for the person who will best provide some progress.
(The death penalty may be racist as applied - I don’t believe that’s proved - but the racist card is played too often and in too many inappropriate situations for it to be convincing as an argument. Am I not a pure death penalty opponent if my reasons for opposing it do not include that it may be racist?)
How, then, do you explain the abolition of the death penalty in the United States in 1972, but its reinstatement in 1976? Or does that fall under the category of “as permanent as one can expect”?
So it should be disregarded as an argument in situations where it is appropriate? The CEDP isn’t just shouting “racism” to appear radical; the racial bias in the death penalty has been proven by state-sponsored studies.
No, you are still a death penalty opponent, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get argued with by other DP opponents who have reason to believe it is racist and should be openly opposed on those grounds.
Daniel, since you obviously wouldn’t know sarcasm if it came up and bit you on the ass, no, you may not quote me. (Not that I believe it’ll stop you.)
Dude, I invented metasarcasm. You know not of what you speak.
Fer example, I recognized you were being sarcastic, but that doesn’t stop what you said from being a perfect summary of shoot-yourself-in-the-foot ideology. And since obviously I don’t need permission to quote you, I’ll take your petulant refusal for what it’s worth.
You wanna elaborate on that? It seems to me that an oversimplified hypothetical doesn’t really deserve much more than a sarcastic answer.
Darers go first.
Do you really think I’d expect any other answer than “You gotta vote for Kerry”? I’ve already laid forth in this thread, rather explicitly, why I don’t intend to vote for Kerry, or any other Democrat, in elections. Am I gonna write off anyone who intends to vote for Kerry and not talk to them for the sake of ideological purity? Obviously not, else this thread wouldn’t have stretched to three pages already. I’ll argue with the rally organizers themselves why I don’t think Kerry is an alternative and that voting for him isn’t going to accomplish what we want to accomplish. They don’t have to agree with me either, but it is to be hoped that they don’t feel the need to engage in Red-baiting simply because their arguments don’t convince me or my comrades, either.
Sure thing: it seems to me that when you’re confronted with a choice where you don’t like either option, but where one is obviously worse than the other, you’ll reject both, even if it means hurting your own interests to do so.
I have not yet seen an argument in this thread, or elsewhere, that has convinced me that voting Democrat is in any way furthering my interests. I’ve read up on Kerry. I’ve read about the history of the Democratic Party. I’ve read up on how reforms I would have organized in support of, had I been around, have been chipped away by both Democrats and Republicans. If I had found one shred of solid evidence that supporting the Democrats led to furthering my interests, I’d happily vote for them. But my interests and their interests are too divergent. If one party is trying to turn back the clock, figuratively, and the other party is only trying to maintain the status quo, when the status quo is woefully insufficient, I’m going to try to find a way to push things even further forward which doesn’t depend on parties that only want to preserve the status quo.
…thereby asking for a cheeseburger when that’s not one of the choices.
As I said, Pat Robertson is perfectly happy with the choice you ARE making. The leaders of the abortion rally are despairing about folks like you who make that choice.
But that’s the beauty of democracy: if you want to help Pat, that’s your choice. When the Republicans win, and turn back the clock, you can stand up proud and say, “I helped them do this!”
Says who? The Democrats and the Republicans? We’re supposed to believe them when they say they’re the only two choices we could possibly make? Ludicrous.
If you think someone besides the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate has a chance of winning the 2004 US presidency, you’re clinically insane. In the voting booth, if you want to influence the election in one direction or another, you can either influence it by helping turn back the clock or by helping prevent the clock from being turned back. In November 2004, you will have no other choice in the voting booth.
Outside of the booth, there are plenty of choices. But you can help prevent the clock from being turned back, or you can decline to exercise that power, which is what the Christian Coalition wants you to do, and what all rational progressives desperately hope you (and millions of other self-righteous leftists) won’t do.
Whether to exercise that specific power is a binary choice, independent of all other choices you make.
This may be the best summary of why I hate radical politics that I have ever come across. Better even than the guy who told me over a game of pool (played with wooden cue sticks) about shouting, “Murderers!” at some local loggers.