The original response was mostly tongue-in-cheek. I'm a young anarchist - that's how we are stereotyped (dreaming of spontaneous arising by the masses). I almost knew how you were going to reply and I largely agree with you. But I am a young anarchist and... my gut feeling is that we shouldn't mess around with the voting for rulers...

Random musings: [there's a good reply in here, somewhere]

I was just rereading Parenti's A People's History of Ancient Rome and was again struck by how some things never changed. It's almost a cliche: "Liberty cannot be given. it can only be taken." There are many ways to work towards a social revolution. Some of them we discount outright e.g. violence and guerrilla movements. Would we really be happy if we got gains through violence? Why are we so happy when we get the gains from voting for rulers? You say

> but there are a number of Democrats with real anti-war leanings and more progressive economic outlooks.

In An Exchange on Resistance (1968) Chomsky says

 

"There are several ways in which one can hope to affect the decisions made by the Government. One way is to try to influence the choice that will be offered by the two major political parties and to exercise this choice on election day. Another, very different approach, is to try to modify the objective conditions that any elected official must consider when he selects a course of action.I do not want to go into the general question of the legitimacy of these alternatives,"

To modify A.J. Muste:

 

"the problem after an [election] is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that [fund raising] and [campaigning] pay. Who will now teach him[or her] a lesson?"

If the public acts or is even just organized then it wouldn't matter much who is in office (liberals will eventually turn to repression/ Nixon, after all, supported the New Deal). So, shouldn't Chomsky's second option be more legitimate, more useful... And partaking in elections affects the movement (spotlighting a representative etc), so there is a (severe?) cost if you try to use both approaches... I don't know...

I would take part in the ballot system for each platform that, ignoring any other issue, promises to make the political process more democratic, hopefully cumulating in a candidate that would be suicidal (dissolve the system and replace it with parpolity). That's my version of being a "radical progressive" ^_^

This isn't a deal breaker. I could work with people towards parecon even if they believe in making full, realpolitik, uses of the electoral system. I would break relations if someone wanted to use violence methods...

Oh wait, aren't you the guy who manages the Third Party watch? I was about to write, "Shame on you" but I guess every activist, now and then, wants to do some organizing that 'immediately' has something to show for it. So... erm... sellout. *ducks*

Ok, seriously now, I agree with Sam. If you want to do this, why not do it for the Green party? Why not go to door to door knocking again; take some parecon pamphlets with you too.

As always, the elections are a sham, this one moreso than others. Nancy Pelosi (Democrat - minority leader of the House) has already said she isn't interested in any "investigations" as they would be "distractions" if the Democrats take power. So it is highly unlikely Bush will be impeached (by the way, if that impeachment happens, what next? Cheney? *horror*). And Hillary Clinton is all for sending more troops into Iraq (the media might cover that more after the election is over) so those voting 'against Bush' might be hurting their cause even more. But don't worry, the Democrats and the media will sell it to them better.

I'm sorry Mitchell but I'm just not a fan of coalitions. The history that I know makes me feel that such tactics never end well. It's like a rabbit working with a dog to drive off a wolf. Once the wolf is beaten, the rabbit then becomes the dog's dinner. The rabbit would be much better off recruiting more rabbits to fight both the dog and the wolf. I'm not saying radicals shouldn't work towards those reform goals. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have conversations with other 'leftists' either. If anything, a radical movement should focus more on talking to progressives and liberals as they are the second easiet to 'convert' to the cause. That's the point really: are we going to have conversations about how to lobby so-and-so representative, or are we going to have conversations about what vision we want and what we will struggle towards.

I especially detest these Get Out the Vote campaigns. The vote is essentially meaningless if you can't get the voter to also put pressure on the representative after the election is won. The representative will cave in to other interests. Then you'll get the same people come back, two years later, to 'get out the vote'. Meanwhile, those two years had real consequences... Short term tactics today begets more short term tactics tomorrow. Build for the future today, not "after the election". The style of most Get out the Vote campaigns and tactical voting compromises makes it feel like you can only choose between the candidates on the ballot. Why not remind people that they may vote for 'write-in' candidates. It might be largely symbolic (I'm pretty sure the people in power would find some reason to disqualify Chomsky or Albert if they did win) but it brings the issue to a head. It's a lot better than insisting that the people only look to the parties to find a solution...

I would pay more attention to these cycles if I could find decent analysis; preferably along the lines of Thomas Ferguson's Golden Rule. Anybody got a good link?

(Edit - Just to be clear) I feel

• Voting is essentially useless on its own. If one votes and doesn't do the follow up, then the effort is largely wasted
• We [radicals] should focus on making the liberals and progressives themselves radicals. Let the liberals and the progressives focus on getting out the vote and other such measures.
• I detest coalitions and democrats. Damn you Krumm, Damn you Mitchell :).

p.s. Why do people say you should vote democrat in close races (but vote for a third party in race that isn't close) so that the democrats "don't take you for granted"? It seems absurd to me. Obviously the democrats only care about the close races. I'm sure nobody is losing sleep that he/she didn't get 100% of the vote. Anyway this whole tactical voting is like trying to unravel a gordian knot. Just cut the damn thing.

Four thoughtful replies, and no right-wing troll? It makes me think that the Znet blogs are limited to sustainers like long ago.

Thanks to all of you for fleshing out my skimpy post. I'm going to keep calling for Moveon.org, though looking at Webb in Virginia tout his military service so much makes me ill. I think just about every photo on his website has a shot of him in fatigues.

One thing that motivates me is that I have a Republican, retired, working class father-in-law who spends almost all of his free time working on the election.

Yes, but I think we should go a step further. First, we should do this for extra progressive candidates. It alters the frames of debate, but it also forces lefties to talk politically to non-lefties. Too many of us hide out among other lefties and have an unrealistic understanding of how people interpret their political world. The more we're forced to engage, the better we can theorize about how to change our world for the better. <br>Second, I've assisted on electoral campaigns before where they identified citizens by party registration. Long lists gave names, addresses, and phone numbers. While the internet does allow us to exchange ideas quickly and make info available to an amazingly large audience, a lot of non-electoral campaigns are local, or at least location-based. List-servs are nice for the people who sign up, but how else can we reach beyond the activists? What if we could create both the tools and the activist culture, that would allow us to feed voter roles into a program, say for a city, and then make the lists usable (IDing green voters, or people who live near a dangerous power plant or a site of continued police brutality). Then on the "cultural" side, local groups could then write a basic script with an FAQ list and encourage phone parties to hammer calls for three hour stretchs on cell phones. We could bypass so many hurdles (cost of advertising, obscurity and accessibility of websites), improve activists ability to engage politically with people, AND advance political struggle. Why isn't this happening?

I agree with Mitchell that we shoot ourselves in the foot if we cannot even communicate with people from other parts of the political spectrum, or work together toward similar goals. And Mitchell's example is a good one. Holding one's nose and somehow supporting Democratic candidates is an issue that has received a lot of attention around here, especially at Paul Street's old ZNet blog. I used to feel that people should reclaim their democracy by taking part in it, and for example energetically supporting progressive third-party candidates (when they could). But lately I feel that American "democracy" is rigged and, at least this year, I will not vote. I explain these feelings in more depth in a recent blog entry entitled How To Vote. My conclusion in that piece is adopted from Liberty Union candidate for Vermont Attorney General Rosemarie Jackowski: that if people feel they must vote, then they should always vote against incumbents (and avoid the two major parties like the plague). I hope this all is relevent to your question. Keir The Hague

If the Democrats, however unsatisfactory, regain some measure of power, then the overall debate will shift a smidgen back toward the center. It is better to have the political debate between the center and the right, than between the far right and the Bushist right.

An educational moment today for me: An industry group that has a PAC that supports 95% Republicans, mostly on self-serving issues like the estate tax, sent me a notice that they will have an emergency luncheon this week with a liberal Democratic Congressman. In other words, looks like they had better hedge their bets.

Also, the media narrative value of a massive rejection of Bushism should be pretty high. Imagine all the talking heads trying to figure it out: Gee, Americans don't really like imperial wars, a plutocratic economy, and Republican incompetence.

You can reason with Democrats. You can't do a damn thing with Republicans until they change. A big hit in the face with a 2 x 4 may help them change. A Democratic win is the 2 x 4.

 

There's good reason to be skeptical about the effectiveness of this. One can justifiably speak about the systemic problems with the Democratic party and with party politics in the United States. So a lot of activists might, with good reason, decry such involvement as some form of "sellout". But I still think that what you did is a good thing. Given the rampant criminality which "elected" Republicans in the United States have been able to enact, in so many ways, whatever can be done to help stop and reverse that trend is, I think, all to the good. This is especially true if the Democrats gain the U.S. House of Representatives (which a number of analysts believe will happen), that means that the Democrats will have investigative powers to really stir things up (such investigations may help expose the latter-day versions of COINTELPRO), and that can help all activists of all persuasions. I should say one other thing: I'm very involved in ZNet, Indymedia, and much activist work in the radical end of the political spectrum. But in a lot of the media policy work that I do with Chicago Media Action, I wind up ending up working very closely with people who are big-time into the Democratic party. I do this because, given the circumstances I find the political state of being in, I find it to be another avenue to help improve things. Take this year. Most of my political work in 2006 has been involved in stopping the dreadful rewrite of the main law in the U.S. concerning the media and the internet -- the Telecommunications Act. Had this bill passed in a form resembling what it was originally drafted, practically every website to the left of Newsweek (and quite a lot of right-of-center websites too) would have been driven off and expelled. But it pretty much got stopped to no small part thanks to political lobbying and outreach efforts much like those I was involved in with Democratic party lobbyists. Now, that's something which activists of all persuasions will gain benefit from, even if many activists don't know about it (it was quite the eye-opener for many folks at the SDS conference in Chicago where I discussed this at great length), and it happened because of key tactical coalition work, with folks I don't agree with everything on. It's like the saying: Do what you can with what you have where you are. That's my take on it, in any case...