“Some men look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that never were and ask why not?� so old Robert Kennedy once said. I’ll confess that this rhetoric has never made much sense to me in a literal sense. It seems to me quite important to look at things as they are and ask why, and if failing such scrutiny, to jettison them. And what is Mr. Kennedy supposedly fathoming out of whole cloth to which he says why not? I’m unable to assess the value of this approach. Lotsa people come up with lotsa crazy ideas, and I don’t know about you, but “why not� doesn’t justify even a quarter of them. But that’s all fine. I have no quarrel with Bobby Kennedy.
The modern liberal, on the other hand, (perhaps it has always been this way) looks at things as they are, and says that this is the best we can do. At least that’s what they’re saying. Maybe what they really mean is, this is good enough for me
I do like Neil’s sense of optimism. He imagines what it’ll look like in January 2009 and Democrats control both chambers of Congress, and John Edwards is president. He says “it’s time for universal health care and fixing poverty and taxing the rich and raising the minimum wage (which Cantwell supports) and appointing judges who respect women’s rights.â€? He imagines these things. Why not? Well how about, because there hasn’t been a Democrat since LBJ who’s been willing to stand in the face of criticism and make something happen despite the slightest hint of opposition. Or because you’ll get the same litany of excuses for why these things can’t be done then that we now get for why things can’t be opposed. And, of course, we’ll get the same blather about how I have to vote for Democrats. Because not voting for democrats is stupid
So, I say he’s a dreamer… and well… so are others. But there are worse things one can be. The word that pops into my head is “enabler.â€? Like your Democratic politicians who have enabled the Republican Party on Iraq, the bankruptcy bill, Supreme Court justices. They are elected by other enablers. Often progressive enablers, the kind who write letters to their Democratic congressman beginning “I can not imagine the circumstances in which I would not vote for you.â€? They enable the Democrats to shift ever rightward, enabling Republicans. Because as far as they’re concerned, seemingly, there are never consequences to anything a Democrat does. Maybe I’ll frown when I vote for you boss. How’ll you like that? Make some noise of opposition before voting for ‘em anyway. Just like the elected Democrats do.
This is the best we can do.
But this is your Democratic base. It’s mostly the so called moderates for whom the Democrats are so very infatuated. The idea that the Democratic base is particularly progressive does not make sense. When the Democrats appeal to moderates like the moderates are their base, and I see a bunch of moderates embrace the Democrats, clueless to why anyone to their left would not join the coalition-that-the-realities-of-our two-party-constitutional-system-dictate; It seems pretty clear that it’s a moderate party for moderate voters, united with an odd bunch of progressives who have added up the numbers and decided to take whatever they’re given. The extent to which they really care what the Democrats even do is an open one. Is it because it’s the best we can do or is it because it’s good enough? Can it not be both? In your estimation, it certainly can.
I too have a dream. I dream that someday I’ll be able to vote for someone who both deserves my vote and has a chance at winning. Democrats, your complacent obeisance to the system, your bowing to reality, your voting for the best we can do who is good enough for you, will not get me there. I believe in, will advocate for, and will work to reform the winner take all representative “democracy� that we operate under and is your excuse for your enabling patterns of voting. But I will not be held hostage as you are. I will not complicitly support this system that is your best argument for voting your interests (I’m willing to strategically support some Democrats though).
I became a Democrat sometime in 2003. I had been a left-leaning independent. The Republican threat convinced me that joining the Democrats and seeing them elected would be the most effective way to oppose this threat. In 2004, I worked for a woman who would be elected to the United States Congress as a Democrat. I talked to thousands of voters. I knocked doors in sweltering heat and in pouring rain. I convinced myself that John Kerry had a consistent position on Iraq. I convinced myself of a lot of things. Sure, it doesn’t matter if the Democrats have to compromise a little. The Republicans must be defeated. The Democrats will be better. And well that didn’t work. But the tactics would not change.
So over the course of 2005, despite briefly managing to allow the president’s deeply unpopular social security plan to implode, I watched the Democrats roll over and roll over, on Bankruptcy, on judges; and I watched Boss Schumer dictate that Bob Casey, Jr. be the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, and I watched the gate-crashers endorse that.
You were probably a democrat before me, and you’ll be a democrat long after I’ve left this useless party. It’s likely because you have the disposition to be a Democrat. I don’t. You are your elected leaders. Enabling, timid, frightened. Or substantively: you like a party half-filled with corporate whores and half filled with uterus cravers. You are a Democrat, because you are a Democrat. One way or the other. You know, I used to, myself, believe and spew a lot of these anti-third party arguments. It took actually being a Democrat for a while to realize how empty they are. But make ‘em anyway. Maybe some of these other cats’ll be herded.
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pandagon book club
discussion date: March 3rd
You are a Democrat, because you are a Democrat. One way or the other. You know, I used to, myself, believe and spew a lot of these anti-third party arguments. It took actually being a Democrat for a while to realize how empty they are. But make ‘em anyway. Maybe some of these other cats’ll be herded.
Well, that’s a little like saying you’re a Catholic because you’re baptized. Believing in the Democratic Party these days is a crapshoot. I can’t remember who said it, maybe Ted Rall, but Clinton was the greatest Republican president ever. Their aims are so intertwined that telling the Democrats from the Republicans becomes impossible for me. I know it doesn’t help things, but the only way I can protest both parties is to not vote for them until they nominate someone I can at least believe up ’til November.
Right on! Couldn’t have said it better myself. And I believe it was Michael Moore who called Clinton a Republican president.
I
(heart) jedmunds, even.
it must be so tough on you… being so much more enlightened than everyone else.
i think the biggest victim of the 2000 and 2004 elections is… not the half million iraqi civilians killed in the war… not the millions of americans without health care or the working people who live perpetually on the brink of homelessness or starvation or death from treatable illnesses in the wealthiest society on the planet… no, their travails are nothing compared with the sufferings of
JEDMUNDS
yes, poor jedmunds and all the other hipsters, who not only performed the awesome sacrifice of setting aside their self-regarding ironic detachment for the sake of trying to elect a viable politician, but weren’t even rewarded by an easy victory on their first try.
i mean, spending the entire period from 2003 to 2004 sharing an official party affiliation with those embarassingly unironic, un-self-aware democrats must have been hard enough for a sensitive soul like jedmunds… but now it looks like he’s stuck with us intellectually limited drones until 2009 at the earliest… provided, of course, he doesn’t become so disgusted with our inability to perceive the pointless futility of our struggle that he ditches us for the greener pastures of the seventeenth nader presidential run or however many it’s been by now.
JEDMUNDS THANK GOD WE HAVE YOU ON OUR SIDE!!! WHAT WOULD THE DEMOCRATS DO WITHOUT CYNICAL, UNHELPFUL IRONISTS LIKE YOU!?!
gosh, how uncool is to be a democrat, and not realize that electing potentially progressive candidates is futile!! without jedmunds our party might collapse from the sheer weight of our unhipness.
How in the hell do you read a post about the failure of the Democratic party, as a group and as an institution, to stand up for its constituents as ironic hipsterism?
Am I to infer, then, that taking the easy way out and never rocking the boat is the only responsible position for a committed realist?
Jedmunds’s post here is a sign of sanity breaking through clouds of madness.
The Democrats and Republicans share the same fundamental policy goals. Every war the US has engaged in has been fully supported by both parties. Nationalized health care, firmly established as a fundamental government service in every other industrialized nation, is opposed by both parties.
Registered Democrats, like registered Republicans, have no influence over the direction of “their” party. Primary elections are as undemocratic as regular elections — the candidates have been selected by committees that are completely unaccountable to the voters. The political parties are fundamentally fundraising apparatuses, and they answer only to the corporations and wealthy donors that give them their money.
The Democratic Party is not a party of the left. One of the principle purposes of the Democratic Party, as an entity distinct from the Republican Party, is to subvert and destroy any organization of the left. In 2000, the Democrats set out to co-opt and destroy the anti-globalization movement; in 2004, the Democrats set out to destroy the anti-war movement. In both cases, they were brilliantly successful. Countless activists, fearing the greater evil, actively campaigned for the lesser evil — and abandoned their own causes. “Free trade” and wars of aggression are basic tools of imperialism, and the Democrats are every bit as committed to imperialism as the Republicans.
In an essay to which I often refer, Who’s going to be the lesser-evil in 1968?, Hal Draper says,
What’s the alternative? While I do support the Green Party, that is not the primary alternative. The primary alternative to the evil of the Democrats and Republicans alike is best represented by the massive demonstrations on May 1 by millions of immigrant workers and their allies, which succeeded in stopping the reactionary anti-immigrant laws under consideration by Congress. This movement succeeded despite attempts by the Republicans to demonize it and by the Democrats to co-opt or cripple it. Against the parties of the ruling class, there is the self-organization of the working class, in whatever form that takes.
I think this boils down to whether one believes it’s more politically effective to be an outsider or an insider. Personally, I see nothing wrong with voting for a Third Party candidate, even at the Presidential level, so long as one is cognizent that their vote is symbolic only. Creating a viable new party is a nearly impossible task; the two existing parties are too ensconced in the halls of power to make that a viable strategy. A viable morality, certainly, but not a strategy for political victory.
I would have loved to support Nader in 2000. I admire most of his views on modern social problems. However, he never had a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning. Al Gore, who shared some of Nader’s views, did, and could have with the Green Party’s support. George W. Bush is the antithesis of Nader; essentially representing everything the Greens oppose. So which was the better path? Vote the good moral choice, the good conscientious choice, or the politically practical choice? If you supported Nader’s positions, who, out of the only two candidates that could have possibly won the Presidency, would better represent Nader’s positions? I have to take the Democrats over the Republicans in that light, every time.
I have to believe the better path is to infiltrate the party ranks and produce a progressive platform from within. And that is never, ever going to happen in the Republican party. It just might in the Democratic. It may be a small chance, but it’s the only chance we have of getting a progressive policy in place. Throwing support to Third Party’s may be a good moral choice, and may even be practical at the local level, but the reality is that the two parties have complete control over the national political scene. For now, that’s the framework that progressives must work within in order to enact change.
you can believe either route might be more effective.
i supported nader in 2000 as well.
what i didn’t do, after switching to the democrats in 2004, was assume that, unlike me, everyone else voting democrat was some un-self-aware imbecile who was only supporting the deomcrats because they, unlike me, were blind to their shortcomings.
The full slate of progressive positions is a sure loser in a national election, for multiple reasons. For people who support progressive positions the only real hope is to pick a major initiative that you want to see passed, and fight a holding action on the others. That may mean voting for a pro-choice homobigot, or a capitalist running dog who supports national healthcare. I’ve given up on the parties, and will be lending mys support to individual candidates on a case-by-case basis, with the proviso that the Democrats damn well better take the house so that there can be at least some checks and balances (and subpeona power!).
Stop thinking of elections as the primary form of political action. That’s part of the trap. In 2004, anti-war activists were campaigning for Kerry INSTEAD of organizing against the Iraq war. This was explicit: there were frequent calls to put anti-war organizing on hold until after the election. The result was that there was a contest between two pro-war politicians, and almost no anti-war organizing. Following the election, there was less organization to oppose Bush’s policies than there had been before the election. Such organization would have been necessary to oppose Kerry’s position as well. But the Democrats successfully demolished most such organization.
You make it sound like there is some substantial alternative to the Democrats just on the edge of electoral success. Who are these principaled alternatives?
Al Gore, who shared some of Nader’s views, did, and could have with the Green Party’s support.
But why should the Green Party support the Democrats, honestly? Progressive Democrats are told, pretty bluntly, to sit down and shut up for four years while the party moves a little further to the right, to pick up the ‘Democrats’ who inexplicably decide to vote for Republicans (more Dems voted for Bush than Greens voted feor Nader). They, of course, are a massive source of electoral wealth, unrivalled surely by, oh, I don’t know, the leftists, progressives and Greens that the Democrats are so busy blowing off and shutting down.
There are two groups not voting for Democrats, ‘Democrats’ in name only, and progressives, Greens and leftists; why is only one of them considered worth tailoring policy around, while the other is just expected to fall in at the back of the line in return for nothing?
You can compromise on tactics and strategy, but never on principle. If there’s no principled alternative to vote for, don’t vote. More importantly, don’t sink massive amounts of time and energy in supporting politicians who don’t support your principles. Do something else to realize your principles. Help organize a union. Defend a women’s health clinic. Counterprotest the Minutemen. Do something principled.
But supporting the Democrats is WORSE than doing nothing. You’re actively harming progressive causes by doing so.
jedmunds nails it.
I was going to respond to FO’s valid point by saying that I hold back from NOT voting for anyone at all in the Presidential races because not voting makes it that much easier for Demo apologists to render me invisible and voiceless. Then I recalled that Bradbury’s meddling in Nader’s campaign in ‘04 did essentially the same thing. Last I heard, write-ins only count as write-ins. They are not broken down according to who the disgruntled voter wrote in. If you write-in, you’re essentially a “disappeared” voter. It gets a little harder every year to justify putting anything in that damn box at all, and that’s a situation of the duopoly’s making. Each half is scared shitless of real challenges and does whatever it can to keep them out of the public’s earshot. It’s only one of many issues both the Red and Blue agree upon.
I also recall a buddy of mine who also went Green in ‘00 saying that she runs into more self-confessed Nader voters now than she ever did in the first couple of years after ‘00. Her theory is that it’s the century’s first example of Woodstock Syndrome. For some reason, eventually far more people will claim to have voted Green that year than actually did, according to the final vote tally. That always makes me chuckle. To think those Big Chill wannabees said my generation was too dull-witted to learn anything from their genius. We’ll show ‘em !! Pppphhht !!!
FoolishOwl, okay, if a majority of people who would otherwise vote democrat now started voting only for Greens or liberal independents, here’s how a few races would play out. In my home state of New York, liberal Elliot spitzer will lose to John Faso and Hillary will be replaced by a man who claims she is a “traitor” who “aids an abets our enemies in the war on terror”. In Penn. Santorum will hold his seat, Ken Blackwell will win in Ohio, Allen will hold Virginia, Jim Talent will hold onto Missouri, and by and large, most Senate, House, Governor and state and local legislative positions will become Republican.
We will be a one party system under the control of religious fanatics. How is that better?
Being someone who long since abandoned the Democrats about 20 or so years ago to become a Left Independent, I have to agree with FoolishOwn and Jedmonds on the notion of the folly of liberals reforming the Democratic Party from within.
Forget the basic fact that even when the Dems had majority control of both houses of Congress AND the Presidency (remember Jimmy Carter’s Presidency?? The first two years of Bill Clinton?? Or how about LBJ’s Presidency???), “progressives” had little or no real power to exercise any change because the conservative and “centrist” Dems always seemed to cross over at will with Republicans to prevent any real liberal legislative outcomes from passing. The real issue is that in certain parts of the nation (including my home state of Louisiana), there really are NO liberal Democrats to speak of in the first place (outside of a few isolated feminists, a tiny outposts of gay/lesbian/bi activists, and the mass Black electorate which is basically ignored and abandoned outside of election day). Most White Democrats in my state are not only very much conservative; many of them are to the RIGHT of even most Republicans; and they are the “swing votes” that Democrats seem to covet the most, not Blacks or Latinos or liberals.
The fact remains that even with years of activism and attempts to change the system, the DLC/Dixiecrat/Blue Dog/Establishment remains fully in charge of the party, and not even Howard Dean’s efforts or that of the Kosniac “Netroots” will change the center-rightward orientation of the party. Too much corporate money; too much dependence on the institutional inertia of the military-industrial complex; and too much reliance on a forever rightward-moving White electorate.
Even if by some miracle the Dems do succeed in taking control of both houses of Congress later this year, all that will do is enable the DLC wing and their sycophants in the establishment media to crow about how their brand of “centrism” continues to work. And if the Repubs do manage to snatch victory out of defeat, you know who will be blamed once again for the loss…and who will suffer the usual consequences.
NO thank you…I have no need to continually back someone who treats me with such contempt as a voter. Better to lose short-term and build your strength behind someone who actually cares about your issues than to forever back “winable” candidates who dump you into the wastebasket the day after election day.
When the Democrats show that they are serious in becoming a real opposition party — or better yet, when they show that they are ready to actually BE unapologetic progressive LEADERS — then and only then will they recieve my support. But not until then.
Anthony
Oh, please.
Have you paid any attention to Hilary’s saber-rattling in the direction of Iran ? Her arrogant refusal to give the ever-increaing number of citizens who want the U.S. out of Iraq anything but her upraised middle finger ?
Why is secular fanaticism centered upon the worship of money an improvement over the fanaticism you describe ? Why is a person like Hilary’s unconditional right to bleed the American public and consort with the religious fanatics defended over and over again ? Is championing somebody whose most consistent philosophy during her career has been her sacred right to grab as much money as she can cram into her already-overflowing pockets supposed to be the best we can do ?
I would never urge Green strategists, if I ran into any, to bother recruiting amongst the ranks of liberal-pwogs as embodied by folks like tiger. I’d urge them to go out amongst folks who either never voted before or who haven’t voted in years. That couldn’t possibly be more of an uphill battle than these exchanges invariably are. Folks like jedmunds are the exception that prove the rule.
First off…chances are that Hillary will still beat her Repub opponent anyway without Left/Independent support (and since when should Leftists and progressives become cheerleaders for Hillary anyway??) Secondly, what makes you think that Spitzer would lose his seat even if there was an Independent on the ballot??
More importantly, this “stick with any Democrat because the alternative will be so much worse” is the same old “lesser evil” nonsense that gave us such weak candidates that cave to the GOP at every oppurtunity, thus enabling the very same “religious fanatics” to begin with.
Besides, the GOP has no monopoly by any means on “religious fanatics”: take the case of the DEMOCRAT Bill Casey who will end up opposing Santorum in the Penn Senate race; or the Democrat which sponsored South Carolina’s anti-abortion bill signed into law; or the Democratic governor and Democratic-dominated legislature which allowed Louisiana’s antiabortion bill to become law. In the South particularly, the overwhelming majority of White Democrats are so far to the Right politically that they even outflank the leadership of the GOP…can you please tell me how we are going to convert them into progressives???
I’m not going to tell New Yorkers how to vote; they should lay out the options themselves and vote their consciences. But, it is not the burden of Independent Leftists and liberals to continually defend the Democratic Party even when they are taken for granted year after year. If Spitzer or HRC want my vote, they must earn it; it should not be assumed just because they have a “D” next to their name. That’s how Connecticut is stuck with the likes of Lieberman.
Anthony
I’m not speaking only of the 2008 Presidential elections. There are many other races. And Iraq is not the only issue. Democrats are not the same as Republicans. They are not the same. Yes Democratic politians are often driven by money interests. They’re POLITITIANS not Monks. The Dem and Republican party have opposite views of Abortion, the environment, Religous control of the public square, allocation of federal resources, etc. etc.
No, I don’t agree with Clinton’s Iraq policies. But I do agree with her on Abortion. I think her Flag Amendment is stupid, but I think her position on Gay rights is miles ahead of any Republicans. I don’t particularly care about sex or violence in video games but I do care that she doesn’t want to privatize Social Security, whild McCain does.
On a Liberal scale of 1 to 10, with Nader as 10 and Santorum as 1, Clinton might be a 7-8. Mccain, a 2-3. Is she perfect. No. Is she, and virtually every singel Democrat candidate better then Republicans? Yes.
How exactly are Democrats and republicans feeding equally at the same Corporate troth, when the Republicans easily outspend (usually more than 2-1) the Dems?
What’s the difference between Republicans who eliminate social spending and use the money to buy cruise missiles with which to murder Iraqis, and Democrats who do exactly the same thing? What differences exist are trivial.
I will not vote for a Democrat, and I recommend that no one else does. But if everyone who reads this blog stopped voting for the Democrats, it would make almost no difference whatsoever. That’s not what concerns me. What concerns me is that activists, the people who decide to devote time and energy to politics, waste that time and energy on supporting Democrats, and many of the regular followers of this blog are activists. As a political activist, in every encounter with the Democratic Party I have had to struggle their efforts to stop real political movements.
The Democrats, at best, will occasionally give limited and hesitant support to the demands of mass movements, but they never take initiative, and their motive is to bring the mass movements to a halt as quickly as possible. Roe v. Wade was decided by a conservative Supreme Court during the tenure of a Republican president, because hundreds of thousands of people were taking action for abortion rights. The Vietnam War was ended despite the absolute commitment of both parties to the war, because of the resolute resistance of the people of Vietnam, the mass movement against the war, and the rebellion of members of the military sick of their own abuse, sympathetic to the Vietnamese, and reinforced by the civillian antiwar movement. Voting for the Democrats accomplished none of these things, and actively campaigning for the Democrats undermined efforts to build mass movements.
So, you’re opposed to abortion? Because Hilary Clinton has made it abundantly clear that she is, and the Democratic Party has adopted a policy of endorsing “pro-life” candidates.
Primary elections are as undemocratic as regular elections — the candidates have been selected by committees that are completely unaccountable to the voters.
Sing it. Cook County President John Stroger suffered a stroke right before the elections. Forrest Claypool, out of respect, cut back on his ads, and ended up losing to Stroger in a squeaker.
Now, Stroger may not be able to continue as President or candidate. Is Claypool, the next highest vote getter by far, even considered as a replacement.
Of course not. Stroger’s son wants the nom. Other insiders are vying for it. Mostly, though, they just keep Stroger out of sight and claim he’s okay.
Democratic party in action.
As for Naderites…at the time, I was angry at them. I really believed anyone other than Gore.
But I simply cannot support the Democrats anymore. I’ve never enjoyed voting so much as the last primary, when looking at Rahm Emmanuel’s seat, I voted for someone else. I didn’t even know the guy’s name, but he wasn’t mealy-mouthed appeasing Emmanuel.
It was liberating. Pointless, in the big picture, but liberating.
I will NOT vote for Hillary. I will write in Feingold/Murtha and be pleased with my choice. I don’t know how bad it will get with four more years of Republicans, but I have yet to see ANY evidence that the Democrats will do anything differently. They are sucking up to the conservatives.
You want my vote? Support abortion rights. Support civil rights (that means GLBT). Support national healthcare. TAX THE RICH. Get out of Iraq. Promise to investigate the crooks who are currently in charge.
If you are unwilling to be the opposition, why should I vote for you? If you are going to support the Republicans, why should I vote for you.
Let them keep fighting for the fundie vote. Maybe someone will realize that there are lots of folks out there who are currently disenfranchised by the current candidates.
Jesus. Look at the polls. Most Americans want out of Iraq. No one likes Bush. Most Americans want universal healthcare. These aren’t wacky far-left notions. They are MAINSTREAM. They are what most Americans are interested in.
So why do the Dems keep trying to entice the fundie fringe?
Anthony, I don’t think Spitzer would lose race seat if an independent was on the ballot (however, that is how Alfonse Damato became a Senator) but Foolish Owl is advocating never voting for a democrat. If it was just Owl who voted this way, no problem. If it were just the members of this site, no sweat. However, judging by the number of largely uninformed “I will never vote for Hillary Clinton” comments I have seen accross the liberal blogosphere, and extrapolating this to a general population of non blog posting liberals, I do believe Clinton would lose a large ammount of suport in a national race. 55% of the voters chose her in 2000 over Lazio. If 1/5th of Democrats can be considered liberal, then yes, she could lose her New York seat.
I am not advocating the “stick with any democrat” position. I want Lieberman and Blanco gone. I just say, stick with the liberal or left wing polititians.
Owl, we disagree on the basic premise. You seem to believe that Democrats are little different from Republicans. I think that’s ridiculous but I doubt anything I could write would be persuassive enough to change your mind. I’d just urge you, and anyone else to see where your candidates stand. http://www.issues2000.org/default.htm
Forget the graph on the bottom, it seems inacurate to me.
That’s a little harsh, FO. I’m almost 50% sure that HRC supports safe abortion on demand for other rich suburban White ladies like herself. The “rare” part ? Well, nobody cares how much the rich fuck. Only how much people on welfare fuck. And “legal ?” Since when has flouting the law been a problem for rich, suburban, White ladies like HRC ?
“You want my vote? Support abortion rights. Support civil rights (that means GLBT). Support national healthcare. TAX THE RICH. Get out of Iraq. Promise to investigate the crooks who are currently in charge.”
In 2004, John Kerry wanted all of these things. He was still jumped on for being too conservative.
“I will NOT vote for Hillary. I will write in Feingold/Murtha”. Murtha is anti choice. Feingold voted to confirm Roberts to the bench, while Hillary voted against. No one is perfect.
Feingold is certainly more liberal then Clinton. But not by a ridiculosly large margin.
If Liberals are looking for a Democrat they can get behind, please support Wes Clark. His views on most issues are nearly the same as Ralph Nader, he has an amazing pedigree and is a good campaigner.
ms_xeno, FoolishOwl
Clinton was Recommended by EMILY’s List of pro-choice women. (Apr 2001)
Rated 100% by NARAL, indicating a pro-choice voting record. (Dec 2003) Better than Feingold.
She also voted for education and contraception to reduce teen pregnancy, so I guess she care about more than just Middle Aged white women
What Kerry professed to want, in his timid, vacillating way, and what his record pointed to are two different things. Also, it’s all very well to look at a voting record, but looking at it absent of where a campaign’s money flows from is at best, looking with one eye closed.
With all due respect, Tigercourse, I have to differ with you.
In my home state of Louisiana, there really isn’t much of a difference when it comes down to it between most (White) Democrats and Republicans; both tend to more or less pander to the Right culturally and politically. The only significant difference is that Louisiana Democrats tend to go the “populist” route on occasion and oppose Republicans as “elitist”; but in fundamental issues, they generally look and vote alike…..especially on social issues.
Of course, New York is NOT like Louisiana in any way, and I don’t doubt that there are differences between the two parties or that the Repubs really are that bad….but still, given the record of the Dems in caving in on basic issues, why should we give them any more chances to screw us over and over???
Besides, asking principled progressives to drop all principles and vote for a Democrat who has essentially abandoned all progressive principles in search of the mythical “center” merely to prevent a rightwinger from winning, then bashing and trashing them if the candidate loses anyway because of reduced turnout; is not particularly a good way of winning the trust of progressives to begin with.
And on a side note: Given how divided the GOP is in NY State and that both GOP noninees will end up running in the general election under different party labels even if one loses the GOP primary (Weld would run as a Libertarian if he manages to lose the GOP primary; Faso as a Conservative), and considering Spitzer’s overwhelming lead in the polls, my guess is that he has more to fear from an independent Left candidate than from any GOP challenge. Remember, even Pataki and Bloomberg had to tack a bit leftward to win their elections, much to the chagrin of GOP conservatives.
Anthony
Oh, I’m sure Spitzer is going to win by a landslide, he’s popular across the political spectrum. Not that many voters were great friends of Enron.
And you are right, the South is very different from the East or West Coast and I admit you know more about this region than I do. However, right not the Democrats are running a pretty liberal candidate in Missouri who is actually close to winning. She’s got almost no money, but is pulling ahead of a staunch conservative. A little support would go a long way for her.
Really, I’m just saying that never, ever voting for a Democrat and complely abandoning the pary is not the best move. I don’t think I’m being too radical here.
That speaks ill of Emily’s List and NARAL, not well of Clinton. In fact, that gets at the central problem: the Democrats co-opt political organizations and turn them into toothless shills for the Democrats. I get daily emails from NARAL urging me to vote for the Democrats. But when far right groups attacked women’s health clinics, and when there was a large march against women’s rights to abortion, NARAL was nowhere to be seen.
Owl, on the issue of Abortion, what would you like a candidate, Clinton specifically and all Democrats in genral to do or say to prove to you that they are sufficently pro choice?
“Feingold is certainly more liberal then Clinton. But not by a ridiculosly large margin.”
Just for the record:
ADA listing of liberal Senate votes 2004:
Feingold: 100%
Clinton: 95%
New listings for 2005!!
Feingold: 100%
Clinton: 100%
Oh, and Clinton’s NARAL rating is 100%
Feingold’s: 96%
Claiming Clinton “opposes” abortion is foolish, Foolish Owl. No politician’s running around saying they adore it. But besides that statement, and FWIW, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote here.
Well, adopting the slogan, “Free abortion on demand,” calling for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, and supporting a national health care system with guaranteed support for women’s access to abortion services would be a nice start.
Might I add that if she really gives a shit about women who abort reluctantly, for economic reasons, a call for a Living Wage, discounted college education, and subsidized childcare would also be in order. Oh, let’s dream a real dream and mention getting rid of NAFTA, CAFTA, and that piece of shit Taft-Hartley as well. None of which would hurt the call for better wages.
See, that’s what principles are. If you really find abortion to be “a sad and tragic choice for many women,” prove it. Don’t just wring your hands like a self-important, pious nitwit in order to impress an audience full of self-important, pious nitwits.
“I watched the Democrats roll over and roll over, on Bankruptcy,”
No, you really didn’t Jedmuds because the Dems didn’t roll over at all. The Dems who voted for that monstrous bill wanted that bill to pass because they wanted credit card company financing. They don’t call him MBNA Biden for nothing, you know!!
Without revealing too much, I worked at the DNC in 2004. Guess who sponsored all those cushy corporate lunches/ dinners/ events?? The same multi-national companies who sponsored the RNC events, that’s who. The inside joke was that the corps who did sponsor Dems gave the Dem event budgets 25% less than the Republican events. However, towards the beginning of the DNC, after Kerry’s numbers kicked up and he was considered “competitive” they all started throwing money around. Hedging their bets, doncha know!!
Why do you think the DNC and the DLC show such contempt for “special interest” groups? It’s because special interest groups have a tendency to interfere with corporate profits with their pesky little demands for equal pay and costly environmental protections and such. If they could raise enough money to be competitive (FAT CHANCE) the Dems would like them well enough.
We really need to stop glossing over the role $$ plays in all of this. Corporate financing isn’t “one reason� why the Dems don’t fight for average Americans, it’s THE reason Dems don’t fight.
I’ll try to stop ranting now.
Oh, except for one more thing:
“That speaks ill of Emily’s List and NARAL, not well of Clinton. In fact, that gets at the central problem: the Democrats co-opt political organizations and turn them into toothless shills for the Democrats.”
I don’t agree with this at all.
“If you really find abortion to be “a sad and tragic choice for many women,â€? prove it. Don’t just wring your hands like a self-important, pious nitwit in order to impress an audience full of self-important, pious nitwits.”
HA! Good one, Ms Xeno.
“The working poor deserve a living wage.” (Oct 1999)
America can afford to raise the minimum wage. (Sep 1999)
“The Senate on Wednesday agreed to an amendment sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., to the Defense Department Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2007 that would have increased the federal minimum wage to $7.25 over a two-year period. The amendment was later withdrawn because it failed to receive 60 votes.
The vote was 52 yeas to 46 nays.
Clinton, Y”
In it takes a village, she called for nationally subsidized child care.
She voted against CAFTA and is higly rated by the NEA.
Oh, Oh, . . . can’t seem to stay off this thread.
Here’s another “fun fact” from the DNC. Some of you probably know this, but its a good story for those who don’t:
The DNC/Kerry campaign demanded everyone who was scheduled to speak turn in their written speech prior for vetting. Their brilliant strategy was to “edit out” any and all Bush- bashing.
(And a few short weeks later, with respect to this unspoken gentleman’s agreement, the Republican’s did the same thing for Kerry. KIDDING!)
Anyway, everyone complied with the order except one. Okay, another aside here, Al Sharpten complied but then said whatever the hell he wanted once he got to the podium.
But of all the candidates and speakers, only one told the committee to go to hell and refused to hand in his speech.
It was Jimmy Carter.
Gack! Teh stupid!
calling for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment
Since Clinton supports Medicaid coverage for abortion services - it was an issue in her race against Lazio, IIRC - I think she has that covered. She recently introduced a bill to restore Medicaid coverage for family planning, too, although I don’t think it includes abortion - only contraception.
Registered Democrats, like registered Republicans, have no influence over the direction of “their� party. Primary elections are as undemocratic as regular elections — the candidates have been selected by committees that are completely unaccountable to the voters.
Huh. In Georgia, if you want to run for office as a Democrat, all you have to do is pay the qualifying fee - from $400 for state legislature to almost $5,000 for Congress. It’s a similar process to become a post holder (and thus vote on state committee members.)
Hard to believe it’s more difficult in other states, given Georgia’s reputation for tough ballot access rules.
It can be done. There is a history to help. In the late sixties every college campus and any decent sized town had its anti-war activists organizing meetings and demonstrations, passing out leaflets, printing free press newspapers. With this experience and contacts they flooded state Democratic conventions, and from there they managed to gain power at the National convention of 1972. They got trounced in the Pres election, but kept going long enough to get progressive congressmen elected in 1974 & 1976. The progressive movement pretty much ended with the Ted Kennedy vs Carter in 1980, the failure of the ERA, and the Reagan landslide. Democratic Congresspersons who were radical in 1970 became conservative in the early 80s.
In some ways it is better now than 1968;in some ways more difficult. Politics is not the art of compromise. Politics is war by other means. The party of Bobby Kennedy, MLK, Bella Abzug is still available.
We just have to fight to get it back. Don’t give up. Organize.
Tiger:
Oh, joy. How often has she called for it since then ? 1999 was a long time ago, especially in political time.
Nice that she voted against CAFTA. What else has she done to stop the migration of jobs ? (A tip: Thinly veiled racist babbling about “smart walls” to keep Mexicans in Mexico doesn’t count.)
Our guide is the moment when the left decided to give up its independence and enter the Democratic Party en masse, leading immediately to the collapse of the left and the conservative backlash? It seems to me that shows exactly why the left should stay away from the Democratic Party.
“Our guide is the moment…”
A lot was achieved 1965-75;I shouldn’t need to list the gains. Similar periods were the thirties and the teens. All are marked by the sudden collapse of the conservative coalition and the opportunistic grab of the Democratic levers by the left or populist forces. I certainly see such an opportunity on the horizon with the current Democratic leadership being essentially conservative and preservative in outlook.
The reactionary backlash will always happen;the goal should be two steps forward for each step back.
Another strategy could look back to the far left of 1880-1920. Their ideas were co-opted to the degree that the capitalist system was preserved pretty much intact;but they did not get their revolution in America, or one they could approve in Russia.
I keep meaning to study insurgencies at Arms and Influence or strategies at Marxists.org. We needn’t re-invent the wheel.
Yeah, organizing is great, and I’m wholly supportive of it. Organizing, say, a third party bid designed to unseat the more progressive of two candidates is not so great, and I’ll call it on its stupidity every time I see it.
You talk about “enabling” the right wing slide of the Democratic Party. What’s more important to me is how voting for the Greens “enables” the Republicans to win elections and do awful things to this country.
Here’s the problem: Elections aren’t about you. They aren’t about how you feel. They aren’t about how much you love a particular party or a particular candidate. Elections ARE, on the other hand, about outcomes. If people keep voting for Greens because Democrats feel too “dirty” to them, then Republicans will win. For someone who genuinely holds to a progressive positions, THIS SHOULD BE A BAD THING. But reading you guys, it really doesn’t seem to be; you would rather Republicans run the country because you can’t imagine sullying yourself by actually voting for a candidate who represents a broad-based coalition and has a chance of winning.
I can’t believe we’re still having this conversation in 2006.
Oh, the sanctimony of the intellectually pure perennial outsider.
I can’t listen to a democratic pol without muttering obscenities under my breath, so I won’t defend the party against the criticisms here, but anyone with the gall to thumb a nose at us pragmatists damn well better be working to build a viable third party in between elections. Y’know, like Ralph Nader does.
Oh, wait, that’s right; he doesn’t do shit except show up every few years and suck the oxyqen out of the hemisphere.
As much as I find Schumer and his ilk to be odious ballbags, the fact is, they’re in the moshpit doing whatever it is they think they have to do. If I had a coherent political philosophy maybe I’d jump in and slam back, but since I don’t, my vote always goes to the lesser evil. Am I proud of that? No, but at least I don’t sit around asserting my right as a thoughtful, enlightened Utne Reader fan to have better options, a right I’ve done absolutely nothing to earn.
And honestly, people, how many choices in life AREN’T between two evils?
In closing, let’s retire the cat-herding metaphor. If you stop leaving the kibble out and get them on a feeding schedule the way you would a dog, you can turn the little fuckers into your own personal drum corps.
Admittedly off-topic, that last bit.
Here’s the problem: Elections aren’t about you. They aren’t about how you feel. They aren’t about how much you love a particular party or a particular candidate. Elections ARE, on the other hand, about outcomes. If people keep voting for Greens because Democrats feel too “dirty� to them, then Republicans will win.
Not if all progressives would get behind a progressive candidate. Aren’t we a majority yet? [/sarcastic frustration]
“I believe in, will advocate for, and will work to reform the winner take all representative “democracyâ€? that we operate under and is your excuse for your enabling patterns of voting.”
When I see the far left joining with fundamentalist Christians to reform “winner-take-all” election systems, then I will believe you. If your goal is to break the hegemony of our two-party system, your likeliest allies are the people on the other half of the equation who’ve been frozen out of the system. Build alliances with them, show that Americans want more than just two viable choices, and get parliamentary-style elections popularized.
Of course, that would mean dealing with people even more idealogically odious than Clinton Democrats. But it would show me that you are concerned about results and not just personal purity.
Oh, of course not. The two super-size parties united to make sure my air and water are foul, I can barely afford healthcare, my counterparts in the mid-East hate me, and so on, and so on… But I should forget all that and just play along because it’s not about me. Who is it about then ?
Also, I swear we need a “purity jar.” Every Democrat who slams an independent on their Left with the bullshit notion that we vote for candidates we think are perfect should pony up ten cents every time. Mama wants her a new used Dodge Dart !! Look, the folks who pine for “purity,” or at least a politician who doesn’t appear to be getting rich on their backs 365/34/7, have a name: Non-voters. You know, those people your masters pretend don’t exist because they’d rather make fun of Nader and pretend that folks like me keep a shrine to him in our broom closet. After all, winning the public is haaaaaaaaard. You can’t expect the poor politicians to actually earn that salary and all those perks !! Tsk tsk.
Kylroy, you must be joking. The Reublican party is the party of the fundamentalist Christians. Fundies are not margianlized, or disempowered, they are not relegated to the back of the line. By the standards of most people on this site and in the general liberal blogosphere, Fundamentalist Christians are in the majority (or at least nearly 50%) of the population. And how the hell is a true fundamentalist a “viable” candidate. Dobson for President! Furthermore, Liberals and Fundie Republicans could no more build an aliance than I could cuddle with a Tazmanian Devil.
“The Reublican party is the party of the fundamentalist Christians. Fundies are not margianlized, or disempowered, they are not relegated to the back of the line.”
Actually, the Republican party is the party of big money. They’ve got the fundies on board because they need warm bodies, and the fundies don’t care about money policy and tax breaks as long as they’re being promised prayer in school and abortion bans. Problem is, now that the Rs have been in power for six years, they’re expecting them to finally deliver all these things they’ve been promised. Have you seen the slew of posts here on Pandagon about fundies threatening the Rs with a walkout if they don’t finally get theirs?
“Liberals and Fundie Republicans could no more build an aliance than I could cuddle with a Tazmanian Devil. ”
Really? Do you think if you told them that they really could run Dobson in an election, rather than being thrown scraps by a McCain or Lincoln Chafee, they wouldn’t be interested? That being at the helm of their own viable party, rather than the ballast of the GOP, holds no appeal for them? There’s a growing discontent on the right, mirroring what’s been happening on the left for the past decade. Harnessing that into a nonpartisan effort to change our electoral system seems to me the best way to get around the two party lock.
Because if the impetus for change doesn’t come from outside the current system, where would it come from?
“or at least a politician who doesn’t appear to be getting rich on their backs” Nader is a millionaire who made his money “off the backs” of the people he was advocating for. So how can you support him? If you are so interested in getting a true liberal elected, why don’t I see you talking about liberal Democrats with a chance like Wes Clark (who is very simmilar to Nader on the issues) or Edward Kennedy who is the most liberal in the Senate?
I don’t have any masters ms_xeno.
Kylroy, I don’t understand. If you are arguing that it benefits the nation to split up the Republican party and limit it’s ability to elect candidates, that’s one thing. It’s cynical and calculated, but it’s better than a theocracy.
However, if you’re arguing that we need a viable party of people who believe that the apocalypse is imminent, Jews are Christ killers and every word in the Bible is true, then I think you’re off the mark. If you are actually a liberal, or at least left of conservative, isn’t this like arguing that America needs a Nazi party or a national KKK coalition?
I don’t vote war candidates in hopes of stopping war, tiger. That includes a post-Cold War hawk like Kennedy, that calcified fucking hypocrite.
Yeah, I’m sure Clark is just like Nader, only more macho and stuff. I’m also sure that UFOs and gnomes exist. Whatever.
The fact that you can’t tell the difference between a left-leaning public advocate’s wealth and a one-time Republican general’s wealth tells me that we are not even in the same library, much less the on the same page, tiger. You know, I would frankly be more than happy to vote for a thoughtful, articulate cab driver or elementary schoolteacher. In fact, I’d be thrilled if we had people running for office routinely who rode mass transit, owed money on a student loan, had actually been on welfare and thus knew it wasn’t actually like winning at slots, and rented a dwelling instead of owned. In the post-Reagan era, however, it seems like everyone, including most pwog Dems, has abosorbed unquestioningly the notion that the rich should dictate to those beneath them how things work. The constant pathetic worship of men like Dean and Clark also makes me think that what most liberals have wanted all along was their very own version of Ronnie– Some “Great Communicator” who can use charm and machismo to roll over his enemies. His record ? Oh, piffle. Who cares ? We want our share of razzle-dazzle, too !!
I voted for Nader because his views come closest to representing mine, and because he didn’t take corporate money. Not as good as voting for a peer of my own class, but I did my best. I know it’s a remarkable thought to folks like you and the “purity” acusation-hurlers, tiger– But those on your Left are quite capable of voting for people who we don’t think are absolutely perfect. We are, in fact, capable of grasping the concept of “good enough.” However, a great many people without Nader’s baggage didn’t have his noteriety. And a great many with his noteriety and perhaps less baggage didn’t stick their necks out. They preferred cowering behind Gore/Kerry and pretending that he gave a shit about anything the base wanted– they had their careers to think of. So I took what I could get, tiger. You know, sort of like you’re always claiming you do.
“However, if you’re arguing that we need a viable party of people who believe that the apocalypse is imminent, Jews are Christ killers and every word in the Bible is true, then I think you’re off the mark. If you are actually a liberal, or at least left of conservative, isn’t this like arguing that America needs a Nazi party or a national KKK coalition?”
No, it doesn’t need it. But the formation of one will be a likely side effect of breaking the two-party system. And I don’t see a way the left, alone, can do so.
How often has she called for it since then ? 1999 was a long time ago, especially in political time.
- Clinton should be for universal child care!
- Um, she is.
- Oh, well, she should have said that more recently!
Otherwise, if 1999 is a long time ago, does that mean that nothing any Democratic politician said or did before that time can be used against them? You know, like a statute of limitations on Green bullshittery?
(Yawn.)
Dude, if she has time to constantly threaten to blast brown folks abroad into little tiny pieces, she has time to talk about universal childcare. Otherwise, why should anybody base their opinion of her on something she hasn’t bothered to do anything about ?
Talk about bullshit ! HRC has the mainstream feminist movement in her hip pocket, but instead of universal childcare, we got some twaddle about how bombing Afghani women would liberate ‘em. Whooo !! Go team !!
Of course, the real bullshit is the idea that we can even have a perpetual world-police force making war on everyone who looks the wrong way at an oil corporation, and still find any funds for such frivolities as the interests of American women inside or outside the home. But hey, if such fictions are your thing, enjoy. I’m not buying it.
That being at the helm of their own viable party, rather than the ballast of the GOP, holds no appeal for them?
Pretty much, what with how they’d lose all their funding as soon as they stopped playing repug lite.
You see, your trouble is that you A) think there’s a difference between the Religious Right and Big Business (aww, how nieve) and B) are confused as to which party sucks up to Big Business rather than the Fundies, The Dems are the party of The Military/Industrial Complex, the Repugs are the party of the Military/Industrial Grade Batshit Loony Theological Government/Repressed Homosexuality Complex.
And the repugs win because they know that the business that is already tax exempt and has near to zero over head costs on its products (how much does homophobia baiting sermons cost after all?) are the people to really back when it comes to sucking up to Big Business.
IS the people, goddamn tense shifts.
Drew, the double standard is alive and well.
HRC is held to a much higher standard than the rest. And if you try and cut through the BS about her by presenting some facts, they’ll come back at you with yet another complaint.
The Liberal circular firing squad seems to be lining up for quite the spectacular execution in the next few months and years.
Yes, because if a politician makes warm-fuzzy sounds two election cycles ago, that’s the same as her actually doing something. Oh, I feel dreadful for my petty demands that we put down the guns and buy some goddamn butter. The shame, the shame. Feminists shouldn’t demand respect and action from politicians who take money from feminists. I mean, who needs representative government ? Some ghostwritten best-selling piece of crap about family values written by a corporate war hawk: Now THAT’S our culture at its zenith.
I want a Circular Firing Squad Jar, to go with the Purity Jar. FO and others here are right, the rank-and-file has only the most cursory say in who gets the nod for a nomination in a primary. To say the least. To pretend that there’s this metaphoric circle in which we’re all equals with the same artillery, when some of us are so far down on the scale that we can’t even see who we’re “shooting” at, plus we don’t even have a fucking pea-shooter to our names, is crap.
“Pretty much, what with how they’d lose all their funding as soon as they stopped playing repug lite.”
I don’t know. The 700 club and similar groups have a solid amount of money in the bank.
“You see, your trouble is that you think there’s a difference between the Religious Right and Big Business (aww, how nieve)”
If you think there isn’t a difference between Rupert Murdoch and James Dobson, I daresay some might find that naive.
This coalition didn’t even exist 30 years ago. The fundies were lured into the party with promises of legislated morality. The Repubs have been slow to dole it out because A) If they give it to them, they need to find new issues, and B) many of them are electoral suicide (full abortion ban). Only now are some of the fundies realizing that Repubs don’t really care what the jesus freaks want. And, well, there’s another group of people who’d want to change the two-party duopoly.
xeno, you never addressed my question about Nader making his millions as a public advocate. HC’s money mostly comes from sales of her and her husband’s books and his speeches. Is he not utterly tainted?
You have also said that voting records and public announcements are not the basis for judging a candidate’s worth. What is? How can you be sure that Nader will try to implement his policies?
Again, what about Ted Kennedy, who is virtually the same (perhaps even more liberal) as Nader? What about Boxer or Reed? Why only support a candidate or party that has no hope of success in the present or near future, when you cannot even be certain of their commitment to your values?
Dude, if she has time to constantly threaten to blast brown folks abroad into little tiny pieces, she has time to talk about universal childcare.
Would it matter? Not even the Greens pay attention when she does.
Otherwise, why should anybody base their opinion of her on something she hasn’t bothered to do anything about ?
Uh-huh. I’ll remember that next time I’m told to base my opinion of the Greens on their platform, rather than their ability to make it a reality.
Sure, Drew. Whatever. Hold Hawkins to the same standards I hold Hillary to. Never mind that Hawkins’ party is tiny, he has no famous name to trade on, the “netroots” likely treats him as if he didn’t exist (even more so than the mainstream media), and his party has only existed on U.S. soil for about a decade, if that long.
Why not just find a racehorse, beat on it for seven or eight years, starve it, make it subsist on dirty water, keep it tethered in the dark, then pull it out for a race against a pampered thouroughbred. Then you can beat some more on the former for its obvious moral failings in being unable to compete with the thoroughbred in a “fair” race.
Please. Vote for whatever DLC asshole you like if that’s your bag. But stop pretending that you have or ever will give alternatives a level playing field. It’s obvious that your leaders are proud of the fact that they can starve alternatives and keep them locked away, even if those same leaders can’t produce decisive margins of victory against bona-fide Right-wingers. But everyone needs some accomplishment to point toward, I guess.
The irony of the “netroots” whining that Hillary can talk issues until she’s blue in the face and we unwashed Lefties just won’t listen isn’t lost on me– nor any Green, Independent voter, I’ll wager.
The Liberal circular firing squad seems to be lining up for quite the spectacular execution in the next few months and years.
Anybody else hearing Fucik’s Entry of the Gladiators (the Circus/Clown Song)?
Very well said jedmunds.
Tiger, my response to you is still hung up in moderation. At any rate, I can’t argue with you if you a) Don’t believe me when I write that I am quite capable of grasping the concept of “good enough” candidates even if my “good enough” definition ain’t yours, and b) distort the facts. Hillary was a fucking lawyer herself, who went to an Ivy League college and was on the fucking board of Wal-Mart, for pity’s sake. She works under the auspices of the DLC, and the DLC is all about corporate power and moving that glittering “center” as far rightward as it can. I don’t think even the Skeleton Closet website managed to produce any evidence that Nader ever sat on a Wal-Mart board.
Kennedy may have had a consicence once, but I doubt that he has for some time. One of the more unwittingly hilarious stories of last month, though I don’t know how much coverage it got here, had to be his opposition to a wind-power project in his tony part of town. He didn’t want it interfering with his view of something-or-other. At any rate, even if I agreed with you that the politicians you list are as wonderful as you say, it doesn’t address the fact that the DP itself can’t, or won’t endorse a progressive platform. Money and lives are disappearing every day into the maw of perpetual war– er, I mean “national security.” They are being cruelly wasted by “bipartisans” who will never themselves feel any direct pain from the outcomes of increased anger overseas and increased gutting of our already starved domestic programs. Without a unified position on stopping the war and preventing future excursions, all the promises of wage hikes, some Clintonian watered-down giveaway version of healthcare, and so on doesn’t mean shit.
Because nothing has ever been 100% certain except that people who don’t demand anything they want are guaranteed to not get anything they want. Because the only way to build from nothing is to start from the ground and build. The alternative is to continue throwing what privilege I have left on a bonfire for the people who bring us corporate giveaways like that fucking bankruptcy “reform” bill and so forth. I’m sick of that, Tiger. I want to work towards something better while I still have at least some scant strength and small resources to do so.
xeno, God. Dems are winning against Republicans. Look at Montanna (Tester ain’t DLC) or Missouri or Ohio. Even if I don’t like Casey, he’ll be better than Santorum and don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to see Allen go.
I’m not saying you can’t complain about Clinton. I’m just arguing that she is miles better than the alternative. Hell, if you don’t want to vote for her (and I’m sure you won’t) fine. But don’t dismiss every candidate out of hand. Not everyone is some kind of conservative running dog out to personally fuck the country over.
I don’t want Hillary Clinton to run for President. I don’t think she’d win. But neither she, nor many of the Dem polititans are some malevolant force stalking us in the high grasses.
The damn war and the people who voted for it and still, STILL, won’t stand up to stop it don’t qualify as malevolent ?
[shrugs.]
Have it your way, Tiger.
Tester ran as a populist, IIRC. So he won as one. Is HRC running as a populist ? Will any Dem in the Presidential primary so much as put their big toe near anything populist ? And will the blogs back that mythical populist candidate based on that– or will they once again back some macho jackass with a strong jaw because “he can win”– even when he doesn’t win.
xeno, I posted my reply before reading your comment. I’m not a fan of the DLC and I think we here need to try and seperate Democrats from Democratice leadership. Democratic voters need to try to push the party in the right direction. I beleive they are doing that now. Even if Dems retake positions this year or in 2008, I don’t beleive the result will be as good as I hope.
I just beleive that the alternative, Republican control, republican domination, is worse than moderate (even weak) democrats that I don’t like. Xeno, I believe I agree with you on most of your moral poistions. I’m just deathly tired of what this country has come to, and where it could go. If I thought we had the time or ability to build up a Green party, I might be saying the same things you are. I just sadly think it’s too late to expect the dream (though I still hope for it), and the only option is to work for the possible.
Good luck with that. I don’t think that you’ll get anywhere without a push from outside, though. Almost nobody has in all the time I’ve been a voter, so I can’t support your tactics. I don’t believe in monopolies, in either the literal or figurative marketplace.
You think we “don’t have time” to challenge the so-called allies that exploit us and grease the skids for the people you call dominators. I think we “don’t have time” to do anything else. WTH, ask jedmunds if he thinks that there’s no place for outside agitation even if the DP survives. I’d be curious to know, on account of it’s his thread and all…
And if you try and cut through the BS about her by presenting some facts, they’ll come back at you with yet another complaint.
that’s true, if only because I don’t think anyone’s mentioned the flag burning amendment yet. Why yes missus clinton, I’m so sorry that your attempt to give the repugs a handy legal precedent for limiting our legal right to free speech when it is deemed “unpatriotic” failed, unlike your husband’s Gitmo and the legal loopholes regarding detaining people indefinately in overseas bases he created. I’m sure more shit like that won’t be issued forth from Clinton in the future (only successfully) and then will get abused by the repugs to our detriment, I know Clinton/Chamberlin ‘08 has my vote! There will be peace in our time between The Dems and The Repugs!
Never before or since the clinton marriage has a heterosexual relationship been so goddamn homophilic in nature. If it turns out that part of clinton’s attempts to be really incredibly southern involved him marrying his twin sister I won’t be awefully surprised.
The Liberal circular firing squad seems to be lining up for quite the spectacular execution in the next few months and years.
Then stop resisting our attempts to either replace OR reform the dems if you hate the idea of us liberals fighting amongst ourselves.
It’s that simple… oh wait, I was taking your cheap ad hominem attempt to shut down sound progressive critiscism of the democratic party’s bare faced big business fellating wankery at face value for a second there, n/m. Do you have any more actual arguements or are you running on fumes already? We’ve barely even warmed up, bring it on, come on you big nancyrepugs, what else you got?
And are none of you people who are assuring us that hillary saying something in ‘99 is the same as her actually having done everything in her power to make single payer health care a reality, having any probelms with the common defense of armstrong being “he did something almost 6 years ago, therefore it’s not indicative of what sort of person he is now”? Anyone? My brain can’t handle cognitive dissonance, can someone square that circle for me?
Can someone square that circle for me ?
Sure. Lace your iced tea with enough rum, and anything’s possible.
Lemon with that ?
Christ, people. I’m a Clinton Democrat, and I think HRC is a bad choice since, just because of her last name, she’ll have to pander twice as hard to get half as much centrist credit.
She’s not my choice. I don’t think she’s the choice of anyone in this conversation. So why not agree she’s a bad choice rather than arguing how bad she is?
“Then stop resisting our attempts to either replace OR reform the dems if you hate the idea of us liberals fighting amongst ourselves.”
I was the one advocating reform. Others on this site are arguing that Liberals should not vote for Democratic candidates, only Independents or Greens. It’s not an ad hominem attack to suggest that never voting for a liberal Democrat is a bad idea. It’s not an ad hominem attack to suggest that not voting for Clinton may be a moral stand, but it won’t help too much when McCain does in Abortion.
You are not going to replace Senator Allen with a Green Candidate. You are not going to beat DeWine with Hawkin. Would it not be better to take down a man with the 10th most conservative voting record, then to run a hard liberal who garners 50,000 votes?
I don’t care about Armstrong. He could chug horse tranqulizers and ride a motorcycle in the tour for all I care.
Why not just find a racehorse, beat on it for seven or eight years, starve it, make it subsist on dirty water, keep it tethered in the dark, then pull it out for a race against a pampered thouroughbred.
I’m playin’ the world’s tiniest violin, Xeno. Politics ain’t beanbag. (Besides, I thought that ten years - or longer, for some state parties - was a long time, especially in politics.)
As for better alternatives, I’d like to see them. As yet, it doesn’t seem like the Green Party is among them. It’s a failure as a party, for many of the same reasons that the Democratic Party has been a failure, and it seems to have even less interest in critical self-assessment. Why don’t Greens accomplish their goals? It’s the mean Democratic Party! It’s the mean media! It’s the mean, non-Green lefties!
It’s certainly not the fact that the Green Party can’t mobilize, for whatever reason, the disaffected voters it claims to champion. Or, for that matter, do anything else that might resemble party building.
As a mean, non-Green lefty, my view is probably a bit jaundiced, but really. Right now, the Green Party isn’t an alternative to anything, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Sorry, Drew. But I’m bored with Moebius strips now. I get it. Everyone needs somebody to practice their version of Social Darwinism on. The Greens are yours. Check.
Hell, why not just dig up Goldwater and run him for President ? He already has ample experience at bloody, unwinnable, ill thought-out imperial crusades. Dig up Bobby Kennedy, too for veep, since the same criteria applies. You’ll have bipartisanship AND nostalgia at the same time. How can you lose ?
Kind of like everyone needs to feel morally superior to someone, huh, Xeno.
But keep blaming your failures on us nasty, non-Green lefties. I’ll be curious to see if the path to victory runs through that rationalization.
ms_xeno’s position is the very embodiment of the circular firing squad; and unfortunately she’s far from alone in her thinking. It’s just emphatically refusing to see reality or to think rationally, throwing away one’s vote in exchange for a warm fuzzy feeling about how morally superior you were in not compromising your principles, never mind that you lost more of those principles through your absolutism than you would have saved had you been willing to compromise. It’s supremely, arrogantly, self-destructively irrational. “If you won’t play by my rules, I’m taking my ball and going home! Hrmph!” But the game goes on without you, and ultimately you wind up having to play by other people’s rules. Rules you may find you don’t like at all.
Every vote for a third party candidate in a winner-take-all system in the face of a majority opposition coalition is a wasted vote. It is, dare I say, donkeyish stupidity. What could possibly be gained? Are you completely blind? Do you not see what has happened, and will continue to happen, if we don’t do whatever it takes to get the Republicans out of total control of the government? The ONLY way I see to remain 100% philosophically pure and get your philosophy implemented is through armed revolt. That’s it. Only way. Short of armed revolt, sooner or later you are going to HAVE to work with people who may not agree with you 100%. Really, how else can you possibly win?
Or is it that it’s just more fun to piss and moan about how unfair it all is and how They are all against you and all majority political parties are corrupt so why bother doing anything except more pissing and moaning etc. etc. No candidate with broad appeal is ever good enough. This is why the Right says you hate America, and to this limited extent they are right. You are as absolutist in your positions as any fundamentalist wingnut; it’s just a different brand of wingnuttery. I’m so tired of wingnuts on the Left and on the Right I get physically ill.
I’m playin’ the world’s tiniest violin, Xeno.
Man, does everyone have one of these World’s Tiniest Violins? Is it a name brand, with worldwide marketing or do you have to go to Poor Argument Props, Inc?
I prefer the world’s smallest harpsichord, myself. It adds that certain plaintive soupçon of bathos, don’tcha know.
“You are as absolutist in your positions as any fundamentalist wingnut; it’s just a different brand of wingnuttery.”
Problem is, from the Dems perspective, the leftist wingnuts are far brighter than right wingnuts. And far more likely to notice when they’re getting ignored.
Which, paradoxically, is why they’re being ignored. Damn but we need to stop this winner-take-all approach.
[snort] Sure, liberalrob. There’s nothing insane about or nutty about anti-war groups, for instance, supporting candidates who support the war consistently even as more and more Americans are turning against it.
Check.
There’s also nothing even remotely insane about blaming a minor party for the winner-take-all system, while it advocates for reforms that would change the system– reforms that your own party either won’t acknowledge the existence of or is actively hostile to.
Check.
You owe me a dime for using that pathetic “circular firing squad” line again. As if the average lefty furious enough with the DP to not support it has one iota of the power that the people we’re furious with have. Hell, we don’t even have as much as you, but keep perpetuating the illusion that we’re all equal in these little tete-a-tetes. That’s what the DLC’s all about, right ? The so-called merit society. It’s the new, improved, touchy-feely version of trickle-down. Perfect for the likes of HRC and her apologists.
It’s not me you should worry about, liberalrob. So it’s good that you don’t. I went over to the dark side much sooner chronologically but also much later in life than jedmunds. Your team got a lot of good years from me before I tried calling them out on their shit, and got my face slapped and my vote discounted for my trouble. It’s the folks his age you should worry about, because there’s more of them. Study the Whigs. A lot of healthy people/institutions look really superficially healthy mere days before they suddenly keel over dead.
Bah.
A lot of weak institutions look really superficially healthy mere days before they suddenly keel over dead.
(It’s been fun, if well-worn, but I need a sandwich now.)
Actually, Jack, you can order them from But It’s Not Fair Enterprises, care of the It’s All Your Fault department.
“A lot of healthy people/institutions look really superficially healthy mere days before they suddenly keel over dead.”
And the death of the Democratic party would be a good thing? Decades of unchecked Republican rule while an opposition struggles to form would be good how?
Actually, Jack, you can order them from But It’s Not Fair Enterprises, care of the It’s All Your Fault department.
Or I could have a sound argument before I needed it.
Or I could have a sound argument before I needed it.
Or you could argue about the argument, rather than actually argue the argument.
Well, Logic is arguing the argument, in case you never found that out. And there is no answer to the debate, other than I’m not gonna vote for the Dunce-ocrats until they change.
Out of curiosity, ms_x, Jack, and Owl: would you vote for Dems if the party was reformed by progressives from within, and was at least 90% in line with your beliefs? Or is it all or nothing?
Dunce-ocrats? Why, with clever messaging like that, I’m astonished that our political map isn’t awash in a sea of green.
Out of curiosity, ms_x, Jack, and Owl: would you vote for Dems if the party was reformed by progressives from within, and was at least 90% in line with your beliefs? Or is it all or nothing?
Depends on what they leave out. If they accept the Universal Health Care, raising the taxes of the wealthiest 1% of America and other prograssive policies, but decide to back another Federal Marriage Amendment, the deal’s off.
Dunce-ocrats? Why, with clever messaging like that, I’m astonished that our political map isn’t awash in a sea of green.
It’s my own personal name for them, one I think clearly defines how I see them. I never put it on a billboard and said, “Look! Vote Green!”
“Will any Dem in the Presidential primary so much as put their big toe near anything populist ?”
Russ Feingold will, and he’s my current pick. Wes Clark will. Schweitzer will if he runs (Kos loves him). Dean has and will (I still hold out hope for him to run). But I’m sure every one of them has some fatal flaw that will cause you to dismiss them out of hand. No candidate with a “D” next to their name will be good enough for you. Prove me wrong.
“And will the blogs back that mythical populist candidate based on that– or will they once again back some macho jackass with a strong jaw because “he can winâ€?– even when he doesn’t win.”
You should know that there is no such thing as “The Blogs.” There are lefty blogs and righty blogs. Blogs like Kos and MyDD will back whoever wins the Democratic nomination, because they realize that ANY given Democrat is closer to supporting the Progressive agenda than any Republican you can name. But since it’s not 100% adherence to your personal agenda, you will label them as corrupt and unacceptable, and you will contribute your non-vote towards 4 more years of fundamentalist theocracy. They appreciate your support by not voting against them.
You are quick to blame the Democratic Party for Kerry’s loss, but in reality it is the American people you should be blaming. 60.7% of eligible voters voted in the 2004 Presidential election, a historically high number; but where were those other 39.3%, hmm? Did they do as you suggest, and stay home rather than vote for a candidate that disagreed with them on some issues? Maybe if they had voted, the election might have turned out differently. Of those that voted, according to the Washington Post “[b]y 55 percent to 42 percent, voters accepted Bush’s view that Iraq is a part of the war on terrorism. By 51 percent to 45 percent, they still approved of the decision to go to war (though a majority expressed concerns about how the war is going).” Is it the Democratic Party’s fault that Americans felt this way? Is it John Kerry’s fault? Or is it that 50+% of Americans had been successfully duped, lied to, misled by a Republican administration that used every tool at its disposal to create fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of all Americans?
Wake up, lefty wingnuts! Please, please try to be rational, I know it’s hard, you know you’re right and compromise seems unethical, but you have got to agree that voting against your interests is stupid, and a non-vote or a vote for a third party candidate in a winner-take-all system is a vote against your interests.
a vote for a third party candidate in a winner-take-all system is a vote against your interests.
Then let’s change the system. I’m not going to vote for someone if I feel I can’t trust them in the office of the presidency.
“If they accept the Universal Health Care, raising the taxes of the wealthiest 1% of America and other prograssive policies, but decide to back another Federal Marriage Amendment, the deal’s off.”
Another member of the circular firing squad heard from. Rather than get two things I’d really really like, at the cost of one thing I really really hate, I’ll take NO things I really really like (and probably STILL get the thing I really really hate, but hey, at least I didn’t vote for it!).
Does this not seem particularly irrational to you?
Does this not seem particularly irrational to you?
Yes, I am a well-acquainted with Nash Theory of Equilibrium. You say that I should give up what I really want in order to get something intermediate, but still good. You’re argument basically says “The world is a river of shit, wade through it and you might find sometime amazing on the other side.” Problem is, we’ve been told this before, and on the other side is the same good damn river.
“Then let’s change the system. I’m not going to vote for someone if I feel I can’t trust them in the office of the presidency.”
Are you prepared to work with Pat Buchanan to make that happen?
should be “goddamn river”
I’m not saying you should “give up” anything! Never give up, never surrender. But it’s just pigheadedness to say “if I can’t have it all 100% the way I want it right now, forget it.” You’re almost never going to get that.
As far as the world being a river of shit, I realized that several years ago; and the bad news is, the shit is getting higher and higher while we sit here squabbling over how full the sandbags need to be before we put them on the levee, meanwhile some people think the best way to lower the shit level is to dynamite the levee (which is leaking anyway) and they apparently don’t see that it’s the only thing protecting our houses at all.
See, I used to believe this way and used to be furious at Nader supporters.
But, as I’ve said, Rahm “We’ll have an opinion when it’s time for us to have an opinion” Emmanuel is my representative. Mealy-mouthed appeaser.
What could possibly be gained? Well, right now the Dems seem to believe they have to fight the Rs for the fundie vote. Maybe they will eventually realize that if they reach out to their base (b/c ending the war, health coverage, etc. are all MAJORITY American concerns) and the left they might actually win.
If they count the 3rd party votes, and realize they could have won if they had them, maybe they will decide to court them in the future.
I just can’t vote for a Democrat simply b/c s/he isn’t Republican anymore. Look at Lieberman–he’s DINO and a constant source of R talking points. Look at all the Dems who have already said that they’ll support Lieberman as an independent if Ned wins the Dem primary. STUPID. Stupid for the party and stupid for not paying attention to the voters’ desires.
What could possibly be gained? Well, Carol Mosely Braun beat out Al The Pal. Yeah, she wasn’t such a hot senator when she got there, but I was furious at Al. I felt like I was wasting my vote when I voted for her, but what do you know? Al had to go home, and Carol did vote the way I preferred most of the time.
Hillary is the front-runner, for some unknown reason. Washington insider wisdom. I WON’T VOTE FOR HER. I don’t care that she may be closer to my views than whatever evil the R’s put up. She’s not a fighter. She’s supporting the FLAG AMENDMENT for god’s sake. I can’t vote for the lesser evil anymore.
B/c if it wins, then the lesser evil believes it has a mandate. And it’s a mandate to do nothing.
Yes, the world is going to hell in a handbasket under the Republicans, but with their control of the Diebold machines, what makes you think any other party has a chance anyway?
You’re not listening to me, Kylroy. What else is new ? I’m advocating building something to take the DP’s place. Your side is the one doing everything they can to prevent that from happening.
BTW, Michael J Smith, among others, has pointed out that even the GOP is an idealogically varied group of voters, with more than one agenda. Though that’s easy to forget in this day and age. He may well be right to wonder if anything holds it together other than a common hatred of the folks in Blue. Are you so sure that the GOP itself wouldn’t disintegrate with the loss of its only official major foe ?
You don’t listen, either, llberalrob. I’ve said multiple times now that stopping the war ASAP should be the centerpiece of any call for a better domestic policy, because otherwise that domestic policy is impossible. There won’t be any money or manpower for it. How does that translate into “I have to have 100%” Concentrate, will you ? If I ask for 100% or 50% it doesn’t matter. What matters is where the national resources to pay for a humane policy will come from. I’d be astonished that the simple question of “how will we pay for thiss when we’re overspent up to our chins” is all it takes by your standards for one to be cast into Wingnut Purgartory. Except that it’s nothing I haven’t heard before. Oh, well. There must be an awful lot of us across all political spectrums, then. Because it’s not at all an unusual question down here on the ground.
You can blame non-voters until you’re blue in the face, but blaming them won’t turn them out to vote. If politicians exist to serve the general public, and the general public is by and large too disgusted with them to believe in them, is it not even remotely possible that the politicians and their paid spinners are failing somehow ? It’s easy to assume all non-voters are stupid, but I’ve actually worked with many of them on local issues in recent years and trust me– A lot of them are not stupid, and a lot of them are ex-voters. Like FO, they’ve decided that our allegedly implacable two-party winner take blah blah is not a trustworthy route to concrete change. You may despise them, but your party would ultimately get on more secure footing if it acknowledged that they exist and that they aren’t automatically mouth-breathing stumps just because they don’t trust traditional party politics. In many cases, they have few or no material resources that wold allow them participation along traditional routes, anyway. They assume, rightly, it would seem, that this means that to the average highly-paid Dem spinner, they don’t exist.
I can’t speak for the rest. My opinion is that without anyone pushing from the outside, this can never happen. Read FO’s earlier posts again. He explains why, and very concisely, I think. I don’t think that I’m the one with all-or-nothing issues here. That would be folks like liberalrob, with his drivel about “wingnuts” and his mocking address of us in that tone most people only use to housetrain recalcitrent puppies.
Again, I don’t think that attitude will do much for the long-term health of your party, though it may continue on for a time like the proverbial headless/heartless automation. I’ll go further than that, in fact, and argue that on our current trajectory full of increasingly overpriced imperial crusades, crumbling infrastructure aggravated by more and more environmental disasters, and so on, that the country itself may not survive.
[…] First, quick link to a posting earlier today from Jedmunds at Pandagon that I liked. Something righteously mournful before I step into the cow patties of BlogKnot. […]
First, it’s not about purity. It’s about two political parties that both regularly announce their complete and unconditional support for mass murder in order to defend and strengthen the rich. I will NEVER support an organization of thieves, liars, and murderers.
Second, it’s not a matter of what the Democratic Party platform happens to be at a given moment. It’s a matter of its firm commitment to defending capitalism and imperialism, a commitment they share with the Republicans and in which there has been no break since the founding of either political party. This is reflected in the Democratic Party’s antidemocratic structure, its loyalty to corporate donors, and its hostility (sometimes overt and sometimes covert) to any real democratic political organization. The Democratic Party will NEVER be a truly progressive organization.
Out of curiosity, ms_x, Jack, and Owl: would you vote for Dems if the party was reformed by progressives from within, and was at least 90% in line with your beliefs? Or is it all or nothing?
What is the 10%?
Because if it means I might die as a consequence of having sex, then No. If it means someone I know may die because of their policies, then No. If One innocent person dies because of that missing 10%, then No.
War In Iraq, Bankruptcy Bill, Support for Anti-Choice Voting Politicians, You kill someone, then you do not kill someone in my fucking name.
It’s not a fucking game, it’s not red shirts versus blue shirts, it’s people’s lives, I don’t pretend that someone else can die so my ego can pretend that I’m a winner because I voted for a winner.
My ego doesn’t matter, your ego doesn’t matter, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Freaking Happiness, MATTER.
The Dems’ Politics Matter, and HAVE to be something you’re okay with supporting, because when you vote for someone you condone their actions that occur because THAT’S WHAT VOTING MEANS YOU IDIOTS.
Fuck pretending that a death toll equal to the repugs’ (minus one whole person (whoo hoo!) who wouldn’t have died in the first place if not for repug-lite democratic politicians, who COULD have been entirely not evil rather than the lesser of two if a bunch of asshat sociopaths who think that winning is the only thing that matters hadn’t been wankign about how compromise was what grown ups do, yeah, the compromise of killing myself so rich white guys can continue to be rich white guys, because immolating yourself for no apparent reason is the most grown up thing of all. Saying “No” to injustice even when it means you lose something and saying “yes” meant no loss for yourself at all? That’s not grown up? That’s not the height of correct action? That’s not what every single person should do because it’s the right thing to do?
I will not give up my first born to defeat the repugs, I will not kill my family and bathe in their blood because that’s the only way that cowards assure me there is to stop my family being killed. We did not need to destroy the village, we did not save the village.
I will renounce all privelage that I get at the expense of others, I will fight for everyone or I will kill myself rather than screw just one of them over to save my own skin, I will not accept a pro-choice democratic party if it means I have to see homosexuals sent of to prison for loving as they were made to love, I will not accept a pro-choice, pro-homosexual democratic party if it means that innocent babies get doused in napalm because some asshat decided that there be oil in them thar thrid countries. not a-fucking-gain, no more, I don’t believe I voted for a war criminal who would have continued to commit war crimes had he actually gained office, but I did because I bought this crap, because I felt homosexuals and iraqis were a fair price to pay in blood for the deficit to be combatted, or whatever the meme of the day was. I am an Asshat, a coward, an idiot. Twisty can take my blowjobs, I’ve earned it and then some.
I will not compromise because it saves me, because it saves some while fucking the rest over, because if I don’t fight for them as though they were me, then why should they do the same when it’s my back against the wall? If in fact the tables were turned after I betrayed them it would be the just thing to do for them, because if I screwed them over to save my own neck, I am a coward, and deserve what I would have dish out to others.
This is not a game, this is life and death, choose which you support, choose bravery, choose The Right Thing.
If that ten percent involves something Right being cast aside, then screw it, I’ll fight on for that ten percent, until I cannot fight any more, because someone else will just have to otherwise if I don’t, and why the hell do I get a right to place that burden on them and them alone?
I wouldn’t trust Neil the ethical werewolf or any of the “compromised” “centrist” dems with a goat, let alone children, god knows what they’d do to them if they were left to their own devices. All in the name of “compromise” and “winning” of course.
What’s the point of winning if you don’t win?
“Are you so sure that the GOP itself wouldn’t disintegrate with the loss of its only official major foe ?”
Since the two aims of the Republican party are to 1) Dismantle the Federal Government and 2) Create a Christian theocracy, no I don’t think surrendering would be the best solution. Maybe if I let this bully beat the shit out of me, he’ll stop beating the shit out of me.
“…the country itself may not survive.
”
Right, so how does surrendering to people who believe the apocalypse will happen in their life time and Jesus will come back to save them from liberals and Jews, help.
Even if every single liberal, plus some moderate Democrats and drunk republicans suddennly became Greens, gave all their possesions to the party and donated every second of their waking life to this great revolution, the Republicans would outnumber them two to one. And if you think Hillary Clinton is bad, if you think John Mccain is bad, hell if you think Allen is the worst, you haven’t seen anything yet.
“This is not a game, this is life and death, choose which you support, choose bravery, choose The Right Thing.”
Right, this isn’t a game. It’s not Risk where you get another turn after you lose your last country. It’s not some computer game where you get another life after you fuck up. The consequences of losing this conflict (which we will surely do if the Democrats are abandoned) is the disolution of this country. We don’t have 100 years to create the one true party. We don’t have 50. You do what you can, with the tools you have, or you don’t even try. Which is what you are advocating.
I am not a centrist Democrat. Apparently, I just live in the real world.
One more time, tiger:
I am not the one “letting” bullies do anything. That’s your team.
I am not the one surrendering. Again, that’s your team.
Thanks for ignoring, as do your brethren, non-voters and everything I had to say about them. That is, after all, an unofficial plank in your party’s platform. Very important to keep it lodged as firmly in your eye as possible.
You know, I get it. I got it ages ago. The Left flank, with or without a Presidential candidate, is your personal shield against self-examination and your personal scapegoat. As long as we keep mouthing off, your team will never be held culpable for anything they do.
Alas, all else in these exchanges, while frequently entertaining, is only the afterglow once that main light show is over.
What’s the point of winning if you don’t win?
Oh, but R. Mildred, the consolation prizes are LOVELY!
You do what you can, with the tools you have, or you don’t even try. Which is what you are advocating.
And you’re advocating we throw our tools away and give up and screw over who ever we have to, all to achieve a hollow and meaningless victory, if we all work together to create a good party, it would happen. Some are choosing not to, some are pretending that it is not even worth trying even though what they’re suggesting hasn’t worked the last 5 times it was tried.
but let’s try one more time, because this time, like with the last 5 times, the people who are asking us to vote for them say it will work THIS time, oh yes.
All of you who are complaining that we won’t just vote Democrat DO realize that it is possible for a third party to form and gain power in this country*, right? Of course, it takes work and time, but then, so does everything that matters.
*One of the two current major parties evolved out of a third party. I don’t remember which, and I’m too damn lazy to look it up right now.
OK, I guess the question should have been, “What 10% are you willing to sacrifice?” No candidate, ever, is going to agree with you 100% on every issue, unless you run for office (now there’s an idea! RMildred for US Senate!) So what can we compromise on, and what is absolutely necessary or the whole thing’s off? I agree: women’s rights, gay rights, equal justice, the environment, and revulsion for wars of choice are non-negotiable. So what is negotiable?
As I see it, right now, the choices before us basically boil down to: 1) hold our noses and vote for Dems (bad) or Repubs (infinitely worse); 2) maintain our principles and vote for third-party candidates that will, in most cases, never win in our lifetimes (at least for Congress, Senate, and the Presidency) or 3) abstain from voting altogether, slitting our wrists, and calling it a night. Does that about cover it?
Like Meryl Streep said in “Postcards From the Edge”: These are my choices?!
“How does that translate into “I have to have 100%â€?”
I arrived there via inference. You seem to be able to dismiss every Democrat for one reason or another. Hillary supports the war, Clark is just a macho-man, Kennedy has no conscience, etc. etc. How else am I supposed to understand that, other than you want to have it all, or forget it? Having arrived there, you wind up on the side of FoolishOwl (who you cite in your support) and those strange Vast-Left-Wing-Conspiracy-which-is-also-the-Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy theories, and tend to get tarred with the same brush of irrationality. Just as you probably lump me in with those wimpy spineless corrupted Democrats jedmunds was talking about, which I deny completely.
“You can blame non-voters until you’re blue in the face, but blaming them won’t turn them out to vote.”
If they truly felt that no candidate was more supportive of what they felt government should be doing than any other, I don’t blame them for not voting. But I find the likelihood of that to be vanishingly small, given the large numbers of candidates from a dozen different parties available (yes, I believe even a wasted vote is better than no vote at all!). And I hope that those non-voters would pragmatically weigh which candidate would better represent their interests, and that they would have chosen to vote for Kerry. Of course I could be completely wrong about that, but we’ll never know, because for whatever reason they didn’t vote.
“I’m advocating building something to take the DP’s place.”
That’s great, more power to you. I’ve signed petitions to get the Green Party on the ballot here in Dallas County, Texas, and will do so for any potential party that comes along. I signed the petition to get Kinky Friedman on the ballot for governor, even though I disagree with a lot of what he supports. I believe in diversity of opinion and an open marketplace of ideas. I don’t like winner-take-all, and would love to see some kind of proportional representation system put in. But until that happens, I have to look at who I can support today, right now, who has the best chance of getting at least some of the things I believe in put into place and of defending those things that I think should be defended. Invariably, that person is a Democrat.
Does that about cover it?
Well, for now. But the revolution won’t be televised.
Yes it is possible for a viable third party to develop in this country. I believe the odds are about 300 to 1, but there is a chance. Maybe we can have a system like Italy, with countless different parties, where the guy who owned the news won. That’ll be great.
Let’s say Greens do ridiculosly, impossibly well and convert 10% of the elcotrate to their side. That’ll be about 9.9% Democrat and .1 Republican. So, let’s say the Greens take 40 House Seats. They’ll probablly take them all away from Dems. They’ll capture a few in New York, Mass., California, Vermont, Michigan, New Jersey, maybe Rhode Island, and a bunch of other seats, mostly those of large cities like Chicago.
So, the Dems lose 40 seats. They’ll have about 160. The Republicans will have 230. No chance of any Liberal gaining control of the congress. No law they propose will pass, no ideas they put fourth will see the light of day, no chance. Both Dems and Greens will be about as relavent as the Reform party.
How is this better?
A propos of the perplexity in your first paragraph, Jedmunds: “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?” is Bernard Shaw, or more accurately, Satan in Back to Methuselah. Jack Kennedy was the first of the brothers to quote it, evidently to establish his Irish cultural capital. It may only have been when Teddy said at Bobby’s funeral that it had been the latter’s favorite line that it became indelibly associated with RFK.
2) maintain our principles and vote for third-party candidates that will, in most cases, never win in our lifetimes (at least for Congress, Senate, and the Presidency)
Except as we do that we work to build progressive organisations that are not controlled by the dems (bad), organisations that will fight the good fight outside the voting system entirely and empower the people as people should be empowered - through actions, not faith. The trouble with the dems is that yes, they vote bad, but they also have progressive politics by the balls with their “war against Eurasia”, which kylroy kinda accidentally highlighted, can never be won without them losing out, they need repugs winning, and they need progressive politics to stay weak and docile to keep their pay checks and government provided health care.
Before the dems co-opted the progressive movements, they were the party of strom thurmond, it was those “loser”, “never elected” third parties, unable to get elected but fighting becuase their principles mean they have to fight, becuase that was the only way to get things done (anarchists had done the violent terrorism thing in the earlies, it didn’t work), and that got us the civil rights bill, which was a formality that the dems could no longer deny, 24 hour filibuster or not, had to be put into law and so they finally agreed to put it into law, after decades of fighting them on the issue.
It was the third parties that drive the two party state, because the two party state is always about comfortable rich people trying to save their own privelage as best they can, who care about being laughed at, who care about being fought, who don’t really care about winning. It is the third parties who don’t lose when they are laughed at, who don’t lose when they are fought, who only lose when they give up because they believe the dems will fight on their behalf, when they believe that biased and selfish agents have progressive politics as their goal. I doubt that would have happened if King had lived, if anyone could have kept our feet to the fire it would have been him.
First they laugh at us, then they fight us, then we win, and then we keep eternally vigilant because they do not give up because they lost, and we therefore cannot give up because we won.
Getting an eventual third party win and smashing the two party state would begin to incorporate the currently ex”democracy” system of socialist activism into the system itself, and make voting a real act of democracy, it’s a long term goal which solves many of the causes of the current fucked up system (and which no green party voter has portrayed as a quick fix btw, strawprogressives are not actual progressives), which voting dem eternally fails to do, they’ll always be bad because the system encourages them to be bad, except for Mckinney for the sole reason that Mckinney wouldn’t be elected if she wasn’t slapping people with phones and asking people high up in FEMA why they shouldn’t be charged with negligent homicide in between trying to impeach the fuckers.
Mckinney shows us what you can do voting wise to help this country, hold the dems accountable for their politics by not voting for them simply because they’re dems, and aside from voting, get organized, your country needs YOU. The bastards rely on an inherently depressing and pointless voting system to keep the silent majority silent, time to air out your vocal cords and shout.
Well, for now. But the revolution won’t be televised.
But it may in fact be blogged about.
You’re revolution is nothing more than a bunch of disgruntled people giving up. I sympathize with you. Maybe I understand. But please don’t characterize it as some great undertaking. It’s a doomed gesture of contempt.
I’d like to expand on what FoolishOwl (and others, just that Owl has hammered this theme the most) said about the Democratic Party actively co-opting and undermining mass organizations and movements on the left;
The problem with voting for the lesser evil, consistently, and then defending that is that it actively contributes to moving the center.
What the right learned 30 years ago is that the key to changing society to reflect your views (both inside the electoral system and beyond it) is not to compromise, to triangulate, to accept the lesser of two evils, to play to the center but rather to move the center itself. Where FoolishOwl’s comments become key is to realize that this cannot (initially) happen within the confines of the electoral system and the major parties, nor even through third parties. It has to begin with mass organization and movements in society and with the loud, unapologetic and repeated airing of ones views so as to normalize them so as to force them into the limits of acceptable discourse. Every time you get your ideas into the discourse, you move the center. Do this consistently enough and you can move the center a long way.
This is the key to realizing progressive goals. The alternative actively hurts your goals because every time you support democratic ‘centrists’ as the lesser of two evils you’re moving the center the other way.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t vote or that you shouldn’t vote for democrats but it does mean that if you want to see your goals realized you’re going to have to organize and fight for those goals within the wider context of society. You’re going to have to fight to make you’re goals mainstream which will then pull the center in your direction, rather than the opposite.
You’re revolution is nothing more than a bunch of disgruntled people giving up. I sympathize with you. Maybe I understand. But please don’t characterize it as some great undertaking. It’s a doomed gesture of contempt.
You’re right. As long as people think like you do.
And by the way, I’ll be voting too, I’m not giving up. Just giving up on your failed party.
“This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t vote or that you shouldn’t vote for democrats but it does mean that if you want to see your goals realized you’re going to have to organize and fight for those goals within the wider context of society.”
But that is what many of the people here are saying. That they won’t vote for a democrat, and that no one else should either.
I fail to see, for the umpteenth time, how voting for a liberal democrat is moving the party or the country to the center. I fail to see how removing 4 or 5 conservative Senators and replacing them with liberal to moderate Democrats moves the country to the center. I fail to see how replacing the party leadership with liberals like Dean or Boxer or Feingold moves the country to the right. It moves the country and the party to the left. Voting against all democrats simply ensures easy Republican dominance.
I fail to see how not supporting a liberal like Wes Clark for President (and thus helping John McCain win) moves the country to the left.
Tiger, the key point you want to hammer down our throats is the fact that the Democrats are the only game in town. And you are right as long as no one else is allowed to say say “But if more people voted for X party (a much more progressive party than the Democrats and more in line with my progressive political beliefs), they would be the new game in town.” Whatever, I’m tired of having to tell you I have my own opinion.
Third parties can, in fact, gain power. It will never happen in the short term - but then, we can’t overhaul the Democratic party in the short term, either. A third party won’t get off the ground, though, as long as people keep settling for second best, or choosing the lesser of two evils, or trying to make their vote “count” by going along with the herd.
Sorry, but if my vote is an extension of my voice, then I’m going to use it to say something, even if I end up spending years, or my life, as a lone voice screaming into the wind. At least then I’m saying what I want to say, as opposed to nodding dumbly and parroting the words of others.
By the way, I found this link a while ago, which articulates a lot better than I can why it’s NOT a waste to vote for a third party - even if your candidate is NEVER elected.
I understand you have your own opinion. I just fail to see the viability in it. How many people in this country are progresive enough to align with your party? How many of those who aren’t progressive enough, will you be able to convert? The number needs to be around 50 million. And it needs to get there quickly, because in the interim (say where it’s at 5 or 25 million)Democrats will certainly lose every presidential race, and most governor and Senate races. The New Progressives will not gain any of these during this time either, since the liberal vote is split, and the Conservatives will take it all. Some House races will go your way, but nothing else. So who chooses the judges in this time? The lower courts and the Supreme court will be completely packed by the Conservatives. They will serve for life.
So even if you can convert Democrats to your progressive party (in say the next 50 years or so) The republicans will have that time to do whatever they want. And if you think things are bad now… If the Progressives take over and start winning major elections, they still have the courts to deal with, courts that have accepted ridiculosly draconian laws.
What about the environment? Most scientists suggest their is a limited time to start turning around the damage we have done before a point of no return is reached. It’s less than 50 years, if I recall. I believe Gore said somewhere around less than 20. The Republican majority of no regulationers and left behinders don’t care about the enivronement. They won’t do anything. It will be too late.
Honestly, do you believe that you can convince some 50 million plus people to accept only polices to the left of Ted Kennedy?
Honestly, do you believe that you can convince some 50 million plus people to accept only polices to the left of Ted Kennedy?
Maybe, maybe not. But as long as we lock ourselves into this two-party system, we don’t even have the conversation to begin with. After all, without a third option, there’s never a “best”.
Tiger, I never expected to hear arguments I’ve heard from Rush Limbaugh coming from you, from some of the arguments I’ve heard before. I guess you’re right. Celebrate in your victory.
Jack, that’s ridiculous. Just magnificently ridiculous.
Honestly, do you believe that you can convince some 50 million plus people to accept only polices to the left of Ted Kennedy?
I had to listen to Rush Limbaugh all the time growing up, because on long trips, my father felt his radio ownership was supreme. And my dad was a raging conservative. Almost batshit insane type conservativism. And I know, multiple times, in order to prove something false, Rush Limbaugh would use Ted Kenedy as a gauge. And, invariably, to show the heinousness of the liberal’s beliefs, he would say that the liberal was so far to the left of Kennedy as to be easily neglected and never thought about again. So yeah, your right. I’m to the far ledft of Ted Kennedy. Fuck you for marginalizing me.
My point Jack, which you see to have steamrolled right over, is that it is will be hard (understatement) to get 50 million people to become hard left progressives. It’s great that you’re liberal. So am I. I’m very liberal. Let’s both eat a cookie in celebration of how liberal we are. And I am not trying to marginalize you. If you think you are marginalized now, I beleive the plan you advocate will lead to much worse. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go fuck off for disagreeing with you.
Well, how many voting people are there in America? More than 50 million.. More than 100 million. More than 150 million. So let’s work on getting out the vote to elect the first candidate that says “Let the gays marry and bring the fucking troops home!” Anything other than that and I’m most likely not going to care.
If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go fuck off for disagreeing with you.
I shouldn’t have been so pissed off. Seriously, though. If the Democrats will nominate a man who will come out AT LEAST against any federal or stae amendment against gay marriage, I will get behind that candidate. I know that is way too much to ask. Just don’t ask me to vote for them if they will not stand for the one belief I would like them to stand for.
By the way, Sorry, Tiger. I was little hot earlier, because I was arguing with my father about something earlier today and this has sort of touched on it.
The Democratic Party is far to the right of most people in the US, including its nominal rank and file membership. The Boston Globe did a survey that found that 95% of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention in 2004 supported the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Yet no presidential candidate spoke in favor of it, and there was not a single speech opposing the war. The real question is why those delegates didn’t raise bloody Hell when their party completely rejected their position on the key issue of the day.
If the Democrats will nominate a man
Whoa! Definitely should be man/woman. Preferably woman, actually.
Jack, no offense taken. We misunderstood one another. Owl, the delegates are not most people in the United States. About half of the population supports a exit from Iraq. Frankly, most people simply don’t seem to know what to believe on this issue. The conservative media does alot to form their opinion.
Jack, you’re looking for Braun, Kuccinitch and Sharpton, on both of your issues. Clark wants a timetable for Iraq and supports civil unions. He was against the ban. It’s unfortunate the DOMA made civil unions less than marriage. I wish it were different.
I fail to see how voting for the Democratic Party moves the US to the left. Didn’t happen under Clinton. And the nature of the Democratic opposition is very telling—it’s hard to see how that opposition, once in goverment, would do any better than the status quo.
Yes, Clinton was not a very good liberal. However, would you say the country was more or less conservative under him than Bush senior or Reagen? Are we more or less conservtive now?
I’m not saying vote for the Democratic party. Vote for democratic candidates. In Virgina, Allen is the 10th most conservative Senator. Webb could beat him. The country would move left. Losing Talent, Santorum, Dewine would move it left.
Mckinney shows us what you can do voting wise to help this country
Bwah! McKinney is a perfect example of how fucked our system is. In 2004, almost half of the Democratic primary electorate voted for another candidate, and she won the general election only because most saw her as “the lesser of two evils” in the general election - which she was.
That said, she’s also a good example of how it would seem that left could broaden its influence under the current system - elect a true believer in the Democratic primary in a safe Democratic district. Even if the candidate isn’t the first choice of the majority, they’ll be the lesser of two evils, and win the general.
But that could never work. After all, it didn’t work for the right, did it?
Huh. So, liberalrob, anyone who points out that corporate capitalism left to its own un (or under)regulated devices isn’t great for democracy is completely around the bend ? Or a conspiracy theorist ?
[raises eyebrow]
Thanks for the support. I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead. If you can’t tolerate any criticism whatsoever of the current political scene without claiming that the critics are seeing invisible demons behind every lampost and tree, we haven’t really go anything more to discuss.
Yeah, Clinton couldn’t keep it in his pants for more than ten minutes at a stretch, but he still found plenty of time to beat up on welfare mothers for their purported immorality. Military pork wasn’t touched, though. Guess that’s not immoral, despite being hundreds of times more of a drain on the public welfare than some women collecting a little grocery money for their families could ever be. Let’s not forget DOMA. The screwing of the Haitians. “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” etc etc…
Don’t even get me started on those fucking sanctions in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, and our gallant Secretary of State condoning it. That’s liberalism when it’s functioning properly ? You can keep it.
Bullying poor women in America and killing little kids abroad ? What makes that liberal ? The fact that Clinton worshipped his checkbook and his dick instead of Jesus ?
Blecch.
P.S., Tiger:
During the Reagan Era, Democrats could still occasionally rouse themselves to push back Right-wing S.C. judges. Yep, pathetic as it is, we can now look back on the Bork/Ginsburg episodes as the Democratic salad days. :p
You’re revolution is nothing more than a bunch of disgruntled people giving up.
Okay I have no way to respond to that except to say, Learn English Moran.
Of all the stupid strawmen you’ve whipped out tigercourse, that’s the stupidest, people organizing and fighting = giving up, giving up your principles and doing nothing while voting dem = doing something? Oh-Kay… I didn’t realize you were a Bizarro Democrat, n/m.
ms_xeno, I said Clinton was not a liberal. I agree with everything you said. Yet, as many problems as Clinton caused, he was far better than Bush, McCaic or (shudder) future president George Allen.
R.Mildred, I don’t think I’ve insulted your intelligence or anyone else’s here. My harshest criticism has been to suggest that your plans are illogical and misguided. I have also said that I think I understand where your complete frustration is coming from. A pox on bolth their houses is a natural reaction to being screwed over by both sides. But I believe their is some good in the Democratic party and its people. I beleive that the formation of a thrid party sufficent for winning the right number of elections in the right ammount of time is impossible.
We all 1 issue that trumps others in our consideration. For some of us it’s equal rights. For others it’s pulling out of Iraq. For me, right now, it has to be the environment. Because if we do not do something about that, it’s not just America that we will be fucking over, but every other person in the world who did not ask for our internal battles over Conservtism, Liberalism and in between. The Democrats are not all good on the environment. We certainly could have done better a decade ago in the Clinton era. But the Republicans are so much worse. Something needs to be done soon, now. And we can’t wait for what I believe to be an impossibility to rise up. We have to work with our limited resources.
If my arguments are strawman arguments, they are not intended as such.
Ive read thru a bunch of posts with interest.
I do have to ask, as someone above did, why dont the Greens have more of the disaffected populace on board? I read a lot of posts afterward but no one answered that question.
Before answering, throw this into the pot. Why didnt Kucinich — a Green wearing a Dem label, for all intents and purposes — get better traction than he did? He was out there pounding the true left podium, anti war and with recompense for damages, thank you, and a “sorry” as well. A Department of PEACE. No NAFTA. Left left left, on down the line. And left behind. Deeply and widely rejected.
I liked Kucinich best on the issues. Much more than Dean. But I ended up supporting Dean after seeing how things were playing out, because I saw that Kucinich just wasnt getting anywhere and Dean was the next best choice with a lot of momentum behind him.
Why wasnt Kucinich getting anywhere?
My sad conclusion as to why he didnt get any traction is that as much as people like Howard Zinn like to say that the people have it right (progressively speaking) but the pols dont, this is missing the mark, or avoiding an inconvenient truth. That is that the people arent all that down with getting it truly right, or left, as the case may be. Kucinich was not too far behind, but rather, he was too far ahead. Too advanced for most in this assorted nut bowl that is our citizenry.
Related anecdote -
Did anyone happen to catch a PBS NOW show that was aired prior to the ‘04 election, which focused on this woman, probably late thirties, single mom, who lived in a trailer in some dusty nowheresville in Nevada, struggling to raise a 6 year old and a teen? She had never voted before and the piece was focusing on her for that reason and I believe because she was undecided.
She had never been interested in politics. But as a waitress trying to live on minimum wage and puny tips in some diner in GodForSaken, the issue of min wage began to grab her. She started writing LEs on it that got into the local paper. She was on a tear. This was HER issue. As part of her political awakening she registered to vote, said she was going to vote in the next election for the first time.
So life was tough. Bush, of course, hadnt lightened her load in the past four. Her teen daughter had a job to help out. But she was soon to be out of high school and was seriously considering the military as her only way out of the doom of Dustville. But then Bush had this ugly war she might get sent into, which worried Mom. The piece also showed Nevada’s GOP candidate who was running for senator or governor, saying she supports NO raise in min wage, thank you! (It was on the voting agenda in Nevada to raise to $6.15)
Conclusion. This single mom’s issue was the minimum wage and she was worried about her daughter having to go into a war Bush started. She knew the GOP was against the min wage. And yet, even when the election was nigh, she still hadnt decided which candidate she would vote for, Kerry or Bush.
If she is still considering a GOPper, and Bush at that, she sure as hell aint waiting for a Knight in Green Satin to make her choice easier. She wasnt asking for that. She didnt say, Kerry just isnt liberal enough. Why cant he be more like Nader? She just “still wasnt sure.” Period. Even though Kerry was pro her big issue, raising the min wage and the GOP has voted it down time after time.
I think this anecdote rather sums up the problem of ginning up interest in the Green platform, true liberal philosophy on the issues, as shown with the Kucinich candidate (who failed so thoroughly in the primaries). The public doesnt hunger for this person yet in enough numbers.
Ever see the thinking of many “Indies” or “undecideds” on Cspan’s focus groups? They say things like, well, even though Im not happy that Bush got us into this war or did it so badly, I just think we shouldnt change horses in mid stream ….” To choose Bush over Kerry negates the no choice argument. They make a choice. For reasons that have nothing to do with “waiting for Green.” They never once utter such a desire.
And people who choose not to vote, perhaps many like that min wage mom, also seem to choose not to vote for reasons other than no Green to go to. I would love to see all those unaligned and nonvoters rise up and challenge the Republican-lite Dems, create a viable third party. But some of us are all dressed up and nowhere to go. In the meantime, it’s only a Dem or Republican for president. That’s the only party in town.
So what to do? Maybe the masses will only learn in the post game, after we get wrecked so thoroughly in finishing up this disastrous game weve been playing.