"No, I think it's actually "being a total narcissist."
Better than being a stooge to Bush's war (you voted for Lieberman, i imagine?) or somebody so absolutely spineless that they can't even say word one about Israel slaughtering innocent civilians.
I'd like to see just one of you actually defend the Democrats as a whole on their merit as politicans and "leaders". Can't do it, can you?
Man, you listen to stuff like that and wonder if they're really, really stupid leftists, or explictly bought (or, I suppose, ideologically Republican) moles.
As far as I know, none of us live in Connecticut. You, on the other hand, are perfectly free to vote for a Republican sock puppet and pat yourself on the back for your moral purity.
Wow, that really makes a lot of sense. The libertarian think tanks are well funded enough, but backing individual candidates to split the right's vote...yeah, we should.
Robert Casey, Jr. has acquitted himself well in statewide Pennsylvania politics and last I checked was enjoying a 19-point lead over Santorum. He seems to be committed to telling the administration to go to hell, pro-family leave, and for Congressional ethics reform. He's also pro-life and a Dem, which while not ideal, suggests he's used to standing his ground. (We'll never get him out of Pa once he's in, but Specter's pro-choice, so we can deal.)
Also, he's not insane. And not relying on the Republican machine to put through his morally useless Green agenda.
Mahan, darling, how did you find us so quickly? Labs just put this post up! And did you bring any pastry? Being as you're a Greenie, I'm sure it'll be some kind of wheat-free vegan shit, but that's better than nothing.
And actually, you know, being as it's so hot, I'd accept gazpacho instead.
"Yes. Because voting is a referundum on my character, rather than an actual political act."
Eh? I don't understand. Narcissism is a character flaw. Standing up against the invasion of Iraq would have been an act of genuine political opposition.
13: No, no. It's his view that it doesn't matter who is in the white house, as long as Mahan and his friends aren't suckers. That's what really matters here, Dave.
16: Not wanting to be suckers explains about 95% of what's wrong with American culture, IMHO. Maybe we can talk about that after we finish our pie and ice cream.
Seriously, did you vote for Nader in 2000? In a swing state? Because if so, you should be heartily embarrassed, unless you're convinced that Gore would have been just as bad as Bush. And if you are convinced of that, for God's sake, why?
A gin milkshake? As a white man, it's not my place to say no, but I'd advise against it. At least use vodka. (I'm hoping to talk you down to a white russian before the evening is done.)
Come on, let's have an actual discussion on the merits. I want to see you all defend the people your voting for.
How about when Maliki showed up in Congress, and the Democrats needled him about not supporting Israel?
Come on y'all, I want to hear you support Israel's right to kill dozens of innocent children. Because that's what the people you're voting for are doing.
Who wants to defend Hillary Clinton?
So easy for you to speak out of both sides of your mouth, isn't it?
Blackberry pie with vanilla ice cream sounds DIVINE.
I'm thinking home made vanilla ice cream, done with rock salt and all. To go a little lighter, lemon granita wouldn't be bad--by itself, not with blackberry pie.
30: Actually, I don't know if people here know it, but I voted for Nader in 2000 as well, in NY. I didn't think much of him as a candidate, but wanted a showing for a candidate out left of where the Democrats were. If you voted for him in California, that's about the same reasonableness wise. But any nitwit who voted for him in Ohio, or FL, or any state where it was close voted for Bush, and is as responsible as a Bush voter for getting us into this mess.
Same deal with putting up a Green candidate against Casey. Democrats are anything but perfect, but Jesus Christ are they better than Republicans.
Look Mahan, we spend plenty of time being upset at Democrats, but the Green vs. Democrat discussion, at least at the national level, and usually in other races, comes down to whether one believes that there will ever be more than two viable parties in America. Most people think not. Given that, voting for the Greens is, at best, a protest vote and, at worst, in situations where the election is close, and shit is hitting the fan, it's irresponsible.
LB, have I confessed that I did exactly the same thing? I'm so ashamed now, and God, Nader is more toolicious than almost anyone, but it seemed clever at the time.
comes down to whether one believes that there will ever be more than two viable parties in America
Nah. It comes down to whether we can afford to make Principled Stands when the electorate is basically 50/50. I'm quite willing to entertain the "more than two parties" argument later, when the country's come to its senses again.
I still don't know that it was a bad decision. I was in an absolutely safe state. Assuming you were too, the existence of a voting bloc that wanted something left of the Democrats was worth announcing.
I wouldn't do it again, because the Greens have forfeited any title to be considered 'left of the Democrats' rather than 'worthless tools' by pulling idiot stunts like this, and what Nader did in 2000. But I still vote Working Family rather than Democrat (same candidates) where I can.
"You're a newbie here. Your role is to bring pie, not to tell us what to talk about."
Yeah, I didn't think you'd want to try and defend the people you're voting for either.
The funny thing is, you all pretend like it's the Green's fault the Dems can't beat the Republicans. Then you continue to vote for politicians who are utterly ineffectual and basically incompetent to lead a troop of cub scouts out of their own back yard.
Keep voting for the Dems then. See where it gets you this Fall, and in 2008. I predict at least six more years of Republican control.
Maybe by then you'll figure out there's something seriously wrong with the Dems, and hopefully you'll decide to vote for someone who is something more than Republican Lite.
I don't care if someone votes Green in non-swing states, but let's not pretend that there's a national Green candidate with a serious chance 434 times out of 435.
But what ticks me off is the moral superiority. I voted my conscience. Your conscience is an idiot who hasn't figured out how the electoral college works.
I think it was a bad decision because the marign of the popular vote has some enduring significance. Also because the Green party wouldn't have been such a great thing, had it gotten funding.
50: I don't know -- once it got funding it might have attracted some competent people who wanted to be left of the Democrats rather than the nitwits they have now.
re: 47
This is just a supercharged version of the "if democrats role out an aggresivly populist agenda, William Jennings Bryan will rise from his grave, riding a cross of gold, and conjure votes out of thin air. With ponies." myth that is so popular among certain elements of the democratic base. It won't work for the democrats, and it sure as hell won't work for the greens, who don't have a tenth of the party apparatus or entrenched support the greens have.
Also, I want pastries. Croissants, preferebly. Fuck iced drinks.
Yeah, but I suspect that would have produced a more right-tilting democratic party and left the greens getting marginal support. One annoying G fallacy is that lots of people actually agree with them but just can't quite see it because of Big Corporations.
20: I will see my mother this weekend, and if I'm a good boy, perhaps I'll get some blackberry pie out of the deal. Mom's blackberry pie is good enough to cause my vegetarian sister to pretend that she doesn't know about the lard in the crust.
I do have real e-mail addresses, but they all have my full name in them, and the firm frowns on accessing outside e-mail from their computers anyway. (They presumably frown on this place, too, but for some reason I actually abide by the blanket prohibition on outside e-mail.) How 'bout a just shoot you an e-mail through your place and then you'll have it?
Fat *and* sassy, B. The correct response is not to call the cops; it is to beat me over the head while engaging in vernacular condemnation. That's what Martin Lawrence would do, anyway.
Are the Greens going to win in 2006 or 2008? No, but if you keep voting Democratic, none of this shit is ever going to change. Because the Dems aren't actually an opposition party. They don't actually oppose most of what the Republicans do -- the wars, the tax cuts, Israel, the drug war, it goes on and on and on. You cannot deny this.
On the other hand, if you started building a viable third party, then just maybe, someday, down the road, we'll finally realize that we can get out of the giant Chinese Handcuffs we're all caught in.
Mahan, I think your analysis is deeply confused. First, the Democratic party is malleable just as national politics are. Cf. Ned Lamont. Second, keep in mind that not many people agree with your substantive positions. You talk as though only game theoretic considerations keep voters in thrall to the Democrats. Not so: Green views are marginal views, in the purely statistical sense. This might be sad, but it's still true.
If we all are confessing our voting-for-Nader sins, I should add my voice. I voted for him in Texas. Petitioned to get his name on the ballot, too.
Like Lizardbreath, I thought of it as a long term investment. If the party got funding & attracted competent people it could actually do something--I'm not sure what, though.
Gah, I am Doubleposter. Like some sort of Captain Planet villain, only with comment-spam instead of pollution.
re: 70
First of all, I don't think anyone believes the Dem's don't need to change. But that doesn't alter the fundamental reality that: A. The American political system is famously uncongenial to third parties, and B. there simply isn't an extant demographic that will make the greens viable. Third parties have always activated some heretofore unsatisfied political class which isn't served by the current political landscape. That simply doesn't exist in todays climate, c.f. tons of 50-50 razor sharp elections.
"First, the Democratic party is malleable just as national politics are. Cf. Ned Lamont."
Ned Lamont hasn't become a Senator yet. Wait 'til he does, watch his record, then come talk to me about malleability.
"Second, keep in mind that not many people agree with your substantive positions."
Well I don't know about that, given that my substantive positions are all over the place, but you know there's something called "leadership" that involves getting people to change their minds, or at the least, to trust you to lead them even if they don't agree with you about everything.
Leadership is something the Dems seriously lack. You may hate the Republicans every bit as much as I do, but they are masters at winning the loyalty of people whose interests they do not protect, and shaping the opinions of the electorate to their will. Most Republican voters weren't for big govt spending eight years ago, but has the fact that the Republican govt has turned into a giant money faucet stopped anybody from voting for them?
The trick would be for somebody to figure how to do this sort of thing in a way that is beneficent instead of malignant.
You're right, it is about leadership. It's not about fucking and balls and pussy. It's about getting people to change their minds. It's not about butthole pleasures. It's about getting people to trust you to lead them. It's not about the Cincinnatti Bow Tie, the Rusty Trombone, the Dirty Sanchez...
85: Wow, we are all recovering fringe-candidate activists here. I gave Jerry Brown money. My first vote was for Jesse Jackson in a democratic primary. I even voted for Anderson in my middle school mock-election in 1980.
"We've heard of instant runoff voting. But so long as it isn't in place..."
... you should work to get it in place.
" voting for third parties is entirely pointless except as a signal."
Well from what I'm hearing, a lot of people here aren't even advocating it as a signal. Instead, a lot of people are just slamming the Greens regardless of whether it's a swing state at issue. For example, people are calling the Greens "narcissist".
What a bizarre fucking accusation, especially coming from people who vote for politicians that charge $1,000 for a plate full of overcooked chicken and boiled vegetables.
I don't suppose Clinton was a narcissist now, do you?
90: Indeed. There's really no defense, but I was raised Republican and I think I sort of defaulted back to that for some set of reasons that I don't understand very well. Also, I live in a very solid Democratic state with a local Democratic party of the sort that you get after 40 or 50 years of one-party government. But I'm pretty damn ashamed of voting for the guy anyway. At best, it was a deeply clueless thing to do.
Dudes, I am totally going to reference this thread whenever y'all want to play me as the little pc poster girl from here on out. You are so not going to have me to kick around any more.
My first major political jig was to work on the Mondale campaign, even though I was too young to vote.
98 -- we're all of us just soaked in sin. You will never be free of its taint. Better to acknowledge your guilty, fallen status than to try to persuade yourself you are innocent, all indications to the contrary.
109: Damn, I knew I should have followed the rules and not given up my e-mail address so easily. I shall now take time out from being ashamed of electoral stupidity and just beat myself up for being a slut.
105 -- hardly any of us could vote in 200. Emerson and McManus, maybe.
First election for me was 88, Dukakis over Bush but with no real passion. In 92 I was pretty excited about voting for Clinton. (Now I'm going to post this and realize I am tired and confused about dates.)
No, those dates are right. Ooh! and get this -- I voted for Lenora Fulani in the 92 primary, and maybe the 88 primary as well, I don't remember. And I'm thinking I voted for Sharpton in the primary for NYS Governor whatever year that was. How's that for far-out and fucked-up?
Man I was rooting for you for a while Mahan. Now I see you really are just a tool.
Just face it guys. Your entire electoral system sucks.
Now I'm just gonna sit here in sunny Sydney enjoying the nice weather and basking in the glory of the preferential voting system with ballot and PENCIL in hand.
118--I can honestly say I never expected anyone to say that. Proves there's a market for anything "including people who can't let 200 go because Nader apologists are such world-class wankers..."
I have voted once for President and assorted national elections. In 2000 I wanted to, but screwed up the absentee voter registration. In 2004 I sent in my little paper ballot where it was happily shredded.
I'm packing to leave for the AAPT conference outside of Pittsburgh, tomorrow and I can't bear to look at any clothing heavier than a light weight t-shirt, because it is still a million degrees in my house. Do you think I can get away with packing shorts and t-shirts only?
"Now I'm just gonna sit here in sunny Sydney enjoying the nice weather and basking in the glory of the preferential voting system with ballot and PENCIL in hand."
Sounds a lot like isntant runoff voting, which is what I'm pushing for.
Kidding aside, it was mostly the internets, blogs especially, that finally broke down the last of my tribal identification with the Rs (well, that and the way the party went completely batshit insane). Before that I kind of drifted around voting against whoever I thought was the bigger asshole. I'm not at all partisan in the "yay team" sense, and my policy views are somewhat eclectic (probably less so now than they used to be; I understand better than I once did that fucked-up policies are worth defending if the opposition to those policies mostly comes from people who want to fuck them up worse), so I didn't see as much difference between candidates as I sometimes should have.
De-lurking (delurko-crastinating, actually, but that's beside the point) to admit to a politically ignorant youthful indiscretion. Not voting for Nader, which I nearly did in 2000 before helping to elect Al Gore, but rather canvassing for the Jackson campaign in '88. Amazing, I know, but it led to the most mind-bending experience in the development of my political consciousness.
(Harp glissandi) Early afternoon one Saturday. This door I knocked on was opened by a burly guy who seemed really pleased when I asked him about registering to vote. House is chaos, TV's on; he affirms to his wife, who's just tiptoeing through the mess with a load of dirty laundry, that he's been eager to register but just hasn't gotten around to it. Then he says, as he's filling out the form, "Yeah, you know, I think Ronald Reagan has been the best president this country has ever had. And I can't think of anyone who could follow up the job he did better than Jesse Jackson."
On the other hand, if you started building a viable third party, then just maybe, someday, down the road, we'll finally realize that we can get out of the giant Chinese Handcuffs we're all caught in.
Hey, just as an aside but still on topic. I need another American to give me their opinion on this from Billmon. I know what I think, but I'm just a stupid foreigner. What does our great Democratic Mineshaft think? Are we to hail or denounce this great man?
So here's my confession: At this point I really don't give a flying fuck whether the Democrats take the House or the Senate back. No, wait, that's not true. The truth is I hope they don't. It wouldn't save us from what's coming down the road, in the Middle East and elsewhere. It wouldn't force President Psychopath to change course or seek therapy. But it would make sure that the "left" (ha ha ha) gets more than its fair share of blame for the approaching debacle.
You know, I very nearly took the 'instant run-off' bait and started to engage, and then I looked at the thermometer and just couldn't get it up to care. At 11pm tonight it was 82 degrees here.
Instead, I demand Monte Cristos for everyone.
They are, however, awfully heavy for this weather, so I'll accept some homemade ice cream instead. The pie sounds fab - I've even got the blackberries for it in the yard - but again, the tremendous weight of a really good pie would just make this heat even worse. Heck, even ice cream sounds kind of like too much at the moment.
I'd kill a man in front of his own grandma for sorbet, however.
I've voted middle-of-the-road Dem every time, in every election. I wasn't able to vote in the primary in '92, voted Clinton in '92 and '96, would have voted for him again in '00 and '04 for that matter, would vote for him tomorrow if they gave me the chance because, honestly, his mojo just works on me. In '00 I voted Gore (primary and election). In '04 I voted Edwards in the primary, then Kerry in the election. Hopefully I'll get to vote for Edwards in at least the primary in '08.
People who are True Believers for fringe parties (the Libertarians and the Greens, after all, have basically lined up to recreate the binary divide, just scaled down) tend to think that people who vote main-party are somehow weak-kneed. In fact, I consciously lean towards slow but steady progress - and, if history is taken as a whole, American politics have produced almost nothing but progress - than extreme shifts in power because I think that's ultimately healthier for the system and the society it serves.
140: That's actually a tricky one; I remember similar stuff during the 2004 campaign, and I think it may actually have been right. That said, I'm going to have to disagree. It's been too damn long since Democrats had any power at all, and even just winning one house would be enough to open investigations and at least try to correct some of the massive problems going on right now in our government. Also, with one house you couldn't get legislation through, but you could certainly stop it. This time it's not worth putting the country through two more years of hell for an uncertain chance of winning everything in 2008.
re:135
This lead me to investigate Rudy Rucker. In the course of my explorations, I happened upon the following gems:
"Moreover, even human consciousness is computation, as shown by the lifebox."
"Master of Space and Time combines high physics and high jinks..."
"Clones and DNA-splicing have spawned the meatbop..."
"the cultured mapmaker Abraham Ortelius, who is so careful to conceal his homosexuality; the sexy and volatile half-Native American, Williblad Cheroo; and Bruegel's smart, saucy wife."
Is Breugel's wife a mammy figure? Afterall, saucy is dangerously close to sassy, although the former connotes more of an italian-vibe, for obvious reasons.
Lastly, how exactly are you familiar with this particular body of work Standpipe? Somewhat dubious, if you ask me.
It's worth noting that the Libertarians are quite different than the Greens; their ideology legitmately cross-cuts existing colations, and there may be elections where it is a matter of near-indifference who wins (at least you're an actual libertarian as opposed to the conseravtive-Republican-who-wants-to-get-laid-and-smoke-pot variety.) The Greens are just the far-left slice of the Republican colation, so voting Green is never rational.
"The Greens are just the far-left slice of the Republican colation, so voting Green is never rational."
Personally, I don't care that much about the Greens per se, I just want some kind of alternative to the Dems. I'd be even more thrilled if there was a third party whose politics were more in agreement with mine, and that likely would cut across some party lines.
But I just can't be convinced to vote for the Dems anymore when they represent me on exactly NONE of the issues I care about most.
One of my best friends from law school a few years back is an Arab guy. We've been going back and forth about the Dems for five years now. I keep tellin him....
Finally, with the events of the past few weeks, and the Dems pretty much in lock step with the Republicans on Israel. FINALLY he's had enough, and he's saying "Fuck It, I will not vote for these bastards anymore."
Who can blame him?
Once the Dems have screwed you over on all the issues you care about most, there's just no reason to keep voting for them. Even the logic that they're better than Republicans is no good, because the losers in charge of the party today can't even beat the Republicans!
149 - Oh, yes, they're very different, no argument there. I meant that the Libs and the Greens have basically squared off to recreate the Republican/Democratic binary system, not as separate ends of some big-D Democratic spectrum.
Chopper, B, hugs all around, but I'm a one-Rah man.
I've got no problem defending voting Democratic. I'm in no hurry to defend Lieberman - rather dislike him, actually - but taunts that voting Democratic means we must like like Lieberman, must in fact want to have ten thousand of his babies, prompt two reactions in me:
1) Ah, so in 2000, when he was at both best and worst an unexciting bottom (and thus ignored) half of a ticket headlined by a pretty awesome guy, I'm supposed to have psychically divined that he was, in fact, a total tool? Please do pass that crystal ball over here, I'd love to ask it some questions.
and
2) So we're objectively pro-Lieberman? Heavens, but the tone of that does sound familiar, somehow.
It's a dumb trick, and it deserves what responses it prompts.
"Alexander" without qualification means a Brandy Alexander. Lemon granita is a bit too much; instead, have some cantaloupe granita, maybe with a bit of ginger grated in during the making. SB's Having mentioned Rudy Rucker makes me think that SB might be Peter Willard.
And a question for the crowd: can one make a milkshake with gin?
A little late on this, but I was given home made gin and tonic jelly (jello?) at the w/e, and it was awesome.
There's a lot to be said for having a viable third party even if - probably preferably if - it's not actually electable nationally, because it greatly increases the number of main party candidates whose heads you can fuck with by tactical voting. But then tactical voting would imply being intelligent enough not to vote for a spoiler in an election where GWB was the issue.
my take on the shorter Mahan: "I'm new here and don't know you people, but I do know that I'm way smarter than you. And I have higher moral standards, Of Course. Also, the Greens can win because we have leadership. We're just chock full of people like me, who are practically bursting with people skills.
Even the logic that they're better than Republicans is no good, because the losers in charge of the party today can't even beat the Republicans!
By what logic do you pithily propose completely changing our constitutionally-provided voting system but also pithily give up as hopeless getting a majority vote for Dems?
Shit. In case anything in 155 can be read otherwise, the remark about not voting for a spoiler refers to 2004, not 2000, or even 200, when you should have voted for anybody but Septimius Severus.
No-one having commented on the awesomeness that is 136, it falls to me to offer jmcq his/her weight in fruit baskets. Could the gentleman of the house have been mistaking the name Jesse Jackson for one of those other Jesse's, like Mr. Helms? I know there was a point in my political Bildung when I could not distinguish between these two, and I think one other Jesse whom I am forgetting just now.
140: I think billmon's wrong to feel the way he does, but I completely understand why he does, and can't think ill of him for it. Someone needs to buy him a cooling drink and murmur soothing remarks about the lesser of two evils.
But the structural problem with new/small parties is that they're ipso facto vulnerable to being taken over by the fruitloop element. I suspect it's a question of luck if this doesn't happen. Once a party can once reach a threshold size, the nutters are condemned to permanent minority status and tend to go away. This happened to the German Greens, for example. And arguably the Scottish Nationalists, who were a tiny semi-fascist group before the war.
Canada seems to have managed to move from a 2 party to a multi-party status in my lifetime, but I'm not at all clear how they managed it.
My wife and I were Nader traders in 2000- presumably added a Gore vote in Michigan and one if Florida. Of course then there's even more game theory involved- did the person we traded with really vote Gore? Did we really vote Nader?
My voting history is pretty embarassing. In 1996 I voted for Dole in the Republican primary, because I wanted to stop Pat Buchanan. But then I voted for Dole in the general too.
In 2000 I briefly flirted with John McCain in Maine, but then I worked for Bill Bradley, because his health plan was so much better than Gore's. I also voted for Nader, then in California.
The other day I ran into a guy petitioning to get Rainbow-Green candidates on the ballot. He was clearly a volunteer and not a paid canvasser. I told him that I was pretty much a partisan Democrat and felt that nationally the Greens had done a lot of damage.
He said, "Oh I have nothing to do with them nationally, but I think that in this state, the Democrats do themselves in. We just want an alternative." I didn't really have any ammunition with which to combat that.
I misspoke in 115 -- my vote for Clinton in '92 was a lesser-of-two-evils type vote. It was in '96 that I felt excited about pulling the lever for Clinton. (Also I felt that way in 2004 as I marked Kerry, in full expectation that he was going to be the new president and banish the bullshit demons of greed and incompetency from the highest offices of our government. -- These are the only two elections of my adult lifetime that I have felt really passionately involved in.)
I've been very pessimistic since March or so. The Democrats have been very reluctant to take any chances at all resisting Bush on civil liberties or the war, and probably they'll be a little better than Bush but not a lot. There's a tremendous mess ot clean up and the Democrats just seem to want to squeak out a victory, tidy things up a bit and hope things will get better.
But the thing that really kills me is that I think that Bush might be able to win again by instigating crises and tagging the Democrats as weak. The Democrats have not prepared for that eventuality.
Oh, I'm pessmisstic. I think the Dems are going to lose in Nov. and '08. I just think that it matters that they will lose, mostly because of the Court, and that the strategy of 'maybe it'll confuse the rabbit if we run away more' isn't sound.
I think we'll pick up seats in both houses, but I don't think we'll win them back. Even that is going more by a need to lower expectations than anything else, and any speculation on 2008 is purely emotion-driven at this point (for fuck's sake, the Democratic nominee in '04 was running a nearly moribund campaign until a few weeks before Iowa). And unless the '08 nominee is Russ Feingold, I seriously doubt that Democrats are going to be vastly better on civil liberties and war than Republicans. On the whole, Democrats seem to have learned very, very specific lessons from Iraq ("invading Iraq in 2003 under a Bush administration is a bad idea") rather than broader, more useful ones ("massive military force is very often counterproductive"), and I have very little faith that current frontrunners like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards will, if elected, choose to scale back the vase increase in executive power that the Bush administration has built up over the last several years.
There is a special place in hell for all the folks who voted for Nader, even in "safe" states, because they legitimized his critique and tactic. And who is someone in NY or CA to say to someone in Florida 'I'm free to vote my precious principles, but you, you must compromise away what you believe, and vote for that way, way evil man (though just not as evil, barely, as the other guy).'
It's not just that the Nader position was objectively pro-Bush, it's also objectively wrong, both substantively and strategically. There is and since Nixon's Southern Strategy has been a tremendous difference between the parties, of a moral dimension I would say, and anyone who refused to recognize the full scope of this after the 1994 mid-terms was either clueless or self-delusional. There is also no benefit of any kind to be had from pushing the Democratic party away from the general mainstream, where it has a chance of prevailing, towards a 'purer'* and less popular place. The Dem coalition is broad enough to include anyone of Nadrist tendency, and as in any coalition, the Nadrists would have gotten a piece of the action. If they'd earned it by getting the coalition into power.
The Greenie is free to live in a land of his own imagining. In the country I live in, Dems only win when they nominate the most conservative candidate among the serious choices.
* I use this word for sake of argument only, and admit nothing.
And who is someone in NY or CA to say to someone in Florida 'I'm free to vote my precious principles, but you, you must compromise away what you believe, and vote for that way, way evil man (though just not as evil, barely, as the other guy).'
Someone who knows how the electoral college works.
180 -- "Vastly" better is the wrong measure. Play to win.
Also, I think this is simply wrong. Three seats in the Senate would make a huge difference, even if won by comparative moderates. I agree that control is a tougher go, depending as it seemingly does on winning in Missouri and Ohio. Both are possible, but deflationary rhetoric isn't going to get the job done.
184: I'm not saying Democrats wouldn't be better; they quite obviously would be. It's just that on the issues that bother me the most - torture and rendition, abuse and expansion of executive power, domestic spying - evidence indicates there's no real party-wide ideological opposition to this stuff as such, and I'm bracing for the fact that when I pull the level for President Democrat, he or she probably isn't going to make those go away.
"In the country I live in, Dems only win when they nominate the most conservative candidate among the serious choices."
That's silly. All Kerry's opponents would have been weaker nominees in the general. Same w Clinton's in '92 (and his serious opponents were even less progressive). No way Clinton, Warner, Richardson, etc would be stronger candidates than Kerry or Edwards in 08.
Lastly, how exactly are you familiar with this particular body of work Standpipe?
Rudy and I used to meatbop the lifebox.
Seriously, longtimeago I was browsing library stacks and picked up The Fourth Dimension out of curiosity. Did you know that RR is Hegel's great-great-etc. grandson? Well he is, even in the mysterious fourth dimension. And you may have heard that RR has, on occasion, seen into the fourth dimension. It's true.
When you write him a check, he cashes it with his mind.
"It's just that on the issues that bother me the most - torture and rendition, abuse and expansion of executive power, domestic spying - evidence indicates there's no real party-wide ideological opposition to this stuff as such..."
EXACTLY.
And don't even get me started on the drug war. We have more persons per capita in prison than any other country in the world. The Dems back that shit 110%. And by voting for them, you all are voting to support it.
And by voting for them, you all are voting to support it.
Hey, don't look at me. Since I'm the only one who supports my full range of positions, I do the principled thing and always write myself in for everthying.
" Since I'm the only one who supports my full range of positions, I do the principled thing and always write myself in for everthying."
I'm talking about voting for someone who represents me on more than half the issues I care about. Please explain to me why I should vote for someone who represents me on NONE of them?
Take my Arab friend: What he cares about most is justice and equality for Arabs. It's an overriding issue for him. Why in the hell should he vote for the Dems while they're proudly handing the Israelis a blank check?
"And by voting for them, you all are voting to support it."
No, by voting for Democrats I'm voting to (a) make those issues a little better, which is still an improvement on leaving Republicans in charge, and (b) make the country a much, much better place on issues where there's simply no contest between the two parties, like sexual regulation, the environment and health care. President Edwards will actually try to raise the minimum wage, provide health care to the uninsured and appoint sane justices to the Supreme Court, so you bet your ass I'll vote for him, even if he's not going to legalize drugs and prostitution.
And there's no room for ceding this stuff to the right to make the Ralph Naders of the world feel better. Let's not forget that Nader, patron saint of the leftier-than-thou spoiler candidate, doesn't give a fuck about what happens to poor people, gays and women - that he was perfectly happy with consigning us to two terms of Bush because of his psychotic loathing of the center-left. Anyone who derides gay equality and reproductive rights as "genital politcs" deserves to get run out of the Left.
"my take on the shorter Mahan: "I'm new here and don't know you people, but I do know that I'm way smarter than you. And I have higher moral standards, Of Course. Also, the Greens can win because we have leadership. We're just chock full of people like me, who are practically bursting with people skills."
My take on the shorter Michael: "If someone dares to disagree with me, they have a character flaw."
And really, I don't like Lieberman at all, but Ralph Nader has done far, far more damage to the Left in one election cycle than Joe Lieberman has in his entire career. So I don't get the constant Lieberman-harping here.
195- No two-party candidate for national office supports any of the views you care about? I think, then, that you need to face the fact that in a democratic system, you are fucked.
"No, by voting for Democrats I'm voting to (a) make those issues a little better, which is still an improvement on leaving Republicans in charge..."
I don't recall the drug war getting any better when the Dems were in charge.
"(b) make the country a much, much better place on issues where there's simply no contest between the two parties, like sexual regulation, the environment and health care."
So wow did these things get better when the Dems were in charge? How did that "don't ask don't tell" thing work out? How did the health care plan work out? Did Gore actually do one thing that slowed global warming when he was VP?
It's an illusion. Even on these issues, the Dems may pretend to represent you, but they don't actually do anything to advance these issues.
It's just like Republicans and the fundies. When it comes down to the Bible versus the Almighty Dollar, the Repubs will take the latter every time. The Dems are no different; just replace "Bible" with your pet issue.
The Democrats are not my favorite people in the land because they have such a GREAT talent for rolling over on women's issues because they're 'fringe issues', but the Greens are taking money from their ideological enemies to fund a campaign they must know will fail.
That's why I don't like the Greens- they are fully complicit in the Republican split-the-left-vote scheme while knowing that right now in reality land they are not going to win. It takes a staggering amount of assholery to do that.
There's no point in voting Green. If they're right, you can just as well kiss your ass goodbye. That's what Billmon was talking about doing, and I'm thinking about it too.
The fact is, at this point the Democrats have only made occasional weak, vague, objections to the war on terror and the encroaching police state. (One whole wing of the party seems to be pro-war first, Democratic second). For decades they've mostly been in the corporate pocket, and their failure to resist the corporate takover of the media (when they controlled government) has helped put them in a terribly weak position today. The people warning about all this stuff were laughed at, and some became Greens.
Nader didn't hate the center-left, he hated the center right, and his hatred was not pathological. Increasingly since 1980 the US has been re-normed until the right seems centrist and no one talks to the left, and that's one reason why we're in such terrible shape.
Since 2001 (note the date) I've been committed to the Democrats because I have come to understand how the cards are stacked, but that doesn't mean that I have much hope any more. Quite the opposite.
At the time of the Iraqi invasion, the democratic senators and representatives who supported it (not all of them) were operating on the assumption that weapons of mass destruction existed, an assumption that your [secret] party pushed while fudging the evidence, red-stater.
Most if not all of those senators and representatives have since reprented and are, like I am, outraged at the way they were misled.
With regard to tax cuts, the democrats were at the time not in a position to defeat them. They did not have the seats. You do know how legislatures work, right?
Of course you do. None of this is serious.
Why don't you come out and support your actual positions?
207 is exactly how I feel. I occasionally sputter with rage about it, but mostly I just mope.
It's too hot, though, to do either today. It's ninety with eighty percent humidity. I think I'm breathing through a wet sponge when I go outside. Yech.
Anybody who starts in with the "not a dime's worth of difference between the parties" nonsense instantly gives up any chance of me taking them with the least bit of seriousness. The Democrats and Republicans are further apart than at any time in your or my life. If you can't recognize that, you aren't paying attention.
Voting Green in a 50-50 country is political masturbation. Keep on stroking and enjoy your feelings of ethical purity. That and a buck will get you a cup of coffee.
181: There is also no benefit of any kind to be had from pushing the Democratic party away from the general mainstream, where it has a chance of prevailing, towards a 'purer'* and less popular place.
I'm not sure I buy this. I know where I want to push the Democrats -- largely toward more economic redistribution -- and I am not sure that, properly handled, that that is a less popular place among the electorate.
203: Clinton strengthened environmental regulations - the same ones Bush is gutting - while appointing sane Supreme Court justices who have defended gay rights, choice, and have even tried to roll back George Bush's wartime power grabs. And half the Democratic field for '08 already has a health care plan; by the time the primaries hit, every viable Dem candidate will have one.
And really, for fuck's sake, I'd like to end the war on drugs as much as anybody, but it's not going to happen today and it's not going to happen tomorrow and it's not going to happen ten years from now. Making that your single issue is just plain stupid.
Exhibit B: The Dems inability to oppose Bush's enormous tax cuts.
ZOMG they couldn't stop the war and they couldn't stop the tax cuts! They couldn't even stop Hurricane Katrina, either! Why didn't I see Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi powering up their Congressional-issue weather machine to save New Orleans? Because they were spineless Republocrats, that's why!
Now, it seems to me to be an easier task to get 5 or so more Democrats into office to block such bills, rather than starting from 0 with Green candidates, or even better, throwing your vote away and helping to elect Republicans like Santorum. There may be a couple of conservative Dem defectors, but if you elect a Democratic majority, 1) they can afford a couple defections, and 2) they can block such bills from coming to the floor.
(NB- use of the phrase "throwing your vote away" has an effect on Green supports similar to "Klaatu barada Nikto")
"At the time of the Iraqi invasion, the democratic senators and representatives who supported it (not all of them) were operating on the assumption that weapons of mass destruction existed, an assumption that your [secret] party pushed while fudging the evidence, red-stater."
1) I have no idea why you think I'm a "red-stater". Your assumption appears to be that someone couldn't possibly be genuinely disagreeing with you. That's pretty sad.
2) If you believe any of what you wrote, you're a bigger sucker than they are.
3) Even if Saddam had possessed some form of WMD, he still presented no threat to the U.S., and no justification for the invaston.
"Most if not all of those senators and representatives have since reprented and are, like I am, outraged at the way they were misled."
Right. Outraged! OUTRAGED I say!
"With regard to tax cuts, the democrats were at the time not in a position to defeat them. They did not have the seats. You do know how legislatures work, right?"
Oh I know how legislatures work. For example, there's something called a "filibuster", for which you don't need a majority.
But even the Dems couldn't filibuster the tax cut. You know why? Because half of them voted for it.
I'm talking about voting for someone who represents me on more than half the issues I care about.
And I'm talking about voting for someone who represents me on all the issues I care about. All: even more than "more than half". Now tell me why I should settle for anything less.
I see -- so you fully support all the Liebermans in the Democratic party.
Over Bush? In a goddam heartbeat.
I can see how people who live in delusion-land, or only interact with the national government through headlines might not get this, but it makes a whole hell of a lot of difference if the chair of Senate Judiciary is occupied by Leahy rather than Specter, or Armed Services has Levin rather than Warner. And Specter and Warner are at least members of the same species as me. I'm saddened that Billmon, who should know better, is feeling this discouraged.
Don't vote for democrats! I'm really just like you, only better! Be like me! Throw away your vote! Follow my happy piping tune! Right here, over this cliff!
188 -- Yeah, it's an overstatement. Clinton played some serious triangulation even in '92, though, and the choice of Kerry over Edwards or Dean was not the most progressive choice. The notion that a Dem candidate who runs left of where they've been is going to do better is maybe more believable than cold fusion, but it's still pretty far out there.
229: Okay, now I think he's just a right-wing troll. Even a well-intentioned idiot probably would've backed down when shown actual numbers instead of insisting that two plus two really does make five.
Mahan, may I kindly suggest that we are at an impasse, and further that you either
1. Make a cock joke and have at the persiflage; or
2. Declare victory and go home?
231: ie an arrogant misanthrope, needing to always see everyone but him as stupid or corrupt, and the the world as going to hell. He's often smart and often morally serious too, but he does have that streak.
Ah - OK I see the numbers. You're right, it wasn't half, it was 12 vs 31 in the 2001 Senate. So not a "half", but it was enough to prevent a filibuster, which was my point.
"Okay, now I think he's just a right-wing troll. Even a well-intentioned idiot probably would've backed down when shown actual numbers instead of insisting that two plus two really does make five."
No, I just didn't see the numbers -- I apologize. But my point is that enough Dems voted for it to prevent any effective opposition.
What the Democrats need to do is put more energy between elections getting the message out. Not trimming their positions to what the polls say people think already. The Dems have been moving to the center since 1988, and it's failed, because they've done nothing to keep public opinion from moving even faster to the right.
The Republicans have an enormous, multi-faceted message machine, and the Democrats haven't bothered. Their effort is piddly.
That doesn't help in the short term, and it's not a sure thing that there is a long term. But continuing to try to find the center will continue to be a loser. Even if the Democrats win, they are unlikely to know what they want to do, or to be able to do it.
I'm writing in support of Billmon, not Mahan Atma. You are choosing the weaker opponent, which is a bad sign.
It's not Nader's fault, of course, or even his enablers. I blame the decline in the popularity of baseball.
Everyone knows that the sacrifice bunt is a legitimate play in the proper context, and that only an idiot would call for one when either (a) there are two outs or (b) there's no one on base. And of course there are no situations where a sacrifice bunt is better than a home run, it's just that the probability of getting the latter is low enough that one plays for the former with some frequency, depending on the hitter. And you don't gripe about the hitter -- you take the bunt, advance the runner(s), and see what the next at-bat can bring. You don't prefer to strike out looking, hoping to score better while the other team is at bat.
In addition, since there seems to be confusion on this issue that extends beyond Mahan, allow me to make the obvious point that foreign policy is dominated by the executive branch. Whether that's right or wrong, that's how it works. To make inferences of how a foreign policy would be conducted based on largely symbolic Congressional votes is sheer idiocy. The Iraq war wouldn't have been stopped if John Kerry went on a hunger strike to protest the AUF, and it also wouldn't have happened if Al Gore had been in the White House.
But wasn't Billmon saying that even if the Democrats get control of Congress in the fall, all that will happen is that they'll get blamed for the mess we're in? I can see thinking that bitterly, and it's kind of true, but it doesn't relieve us of the obligation to get back into power so that we can do something about clearing the mess up, regardless of whether we're blamed for it.
OK I have to go to work I and I don't have time for this anymore.
But one last thing: I have to say, it's pretty disturbing (and very bizarre, from my perspective) to see people who simply cannot believe that somebody might be genuinely disagreeing with them - people who assume that I MUST be a red-stater troll solely because I take a different viewpoint than they do.
That's pretty fucking group-think. You all ought to seriously reconsider why it is that you are so 100% ABSOLUTELY SURE of your worldview, even to the point where nobody on the left could possibly be disagreeing with you... It's awfully sad that discourse in this country has fallen so low.
246: Yeah, that kind of thinking just leads to paralysis. At this point, there's never going to be a convenient time to step back into power, because the world is going to hell and it's going to take a serious and concerted effort to hold what we can together, and whenever the Dems get back in charge they're still going to take a good portion of the blame for the Bush-era messes that haven't been cleaned up. But it's morally irresponsible to basically pick up our ball and go home because the other side has fucked it up so badly.
Heh, sure. But I think even he has underestimated the mendacity of the Bushies a few times.
He taps into some of the more unfortuante tendencies among US lefties. If most lefty bloggers were like Billmon, and not like Atrios or Chris Bowers say, we/you would be in trouble. I could see him agreeing with that himself, actually. I do think he's a good guy overall.
No, I think it's actually "being a total narcissist."
Both for the candidates and for the people who vote for them.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:13 PM
"No, I think it's actually "being a total narcissist."
Better than being a stooge to Bush's war (you voted for Lieberman, i imagine?) or somebody so absolutely spineless that they can't even say word one about Israel slaughtering innocent civilians.
I'd like to see just one of you actually defend the Democrats as a whole on their merit as politicans and "leaders". Can't do it, can you?
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:18 PM
It's his first bid, too, the wee fuckwit. And I suppose he's just so goldarned surprised the Republicans are funding him.
Dems should fund the libertarians.
Anyhow. I'm not too worried as Santorum is quite far behind Casey in the polls and Green's never done that well in Pa.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:19 PM
Man, you listen to stuff like that and wonder if they're really, really stupid leftists, or explictly bought (or, I suppose, ideologically Republican) moles.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:19 PM
you voted for Lieberman, i imagine?
As far as I know, none of us live in Connecticut. You, on the other hand, are perfectly free to vote for a Republican sock puppet and pat yourself on the back for your moral purity.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:20 PM
if they're really, really stupid leftists
Yes.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:21 PM
I'd be so much happier to think they were explicitly corrupt.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:22 PM
Is "being a complete tool" a central plank of the Green platform?
I think "useful idiot" is the precise term.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:23 PM
Better than being a stooge . . . or . . . absolutely spineless
Yes. Because voting is a referundum on my character, rather than an actual political act.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:26 PM
Dems should fund the libertarians.
Wow, that really makes a lot of sense. The libertarian think tanks are well funded enough, but backing individual candidates to split the right's vote...yeah, we should.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:26 PM
"As far as I know, none of us live in Connecticut. "
And as far as I know, you didn't have to live in Connecticut to vote for Lieberman when he was running for VP on the Democratic ticket in 2000.
You all are the ones being played for suckers, not me.
If you don't think so, let's debate the merits of the Democratic Party's position on any number of issues. I bet I can win that debate hands down.
Why don't we start with the long list of Democrats who supported the invasion of Iraq?
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:28 PM
Robert Casey, Jr. has acquitted himself well in statewide Pennsylvania politics and last I checked was enjoying a 19-point lead over Santorum. He seems to be committed to telling the administration to go to hell, pro-family leave, and for Congressional ethics reform. He's also pro-life and a Dem, which while not ideal, suggests he's used to standing his ground. (We'll never get him out of Pa once he's in, but Specter's pro-choice, so we can deal.)
Also, he's not insane. And not relying on the Republican machine to put through his morally useless Green agenda.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:28 PM
11: So it's your view that we're better off with George Bush in the White House than Al Gore?
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:31 PM
Mahan, darling, how did you find us so quickly? Labs just put this post up! And did you bring any pastry? Being as you're a Greenie, I'm sure it'll be some kind of wheat-free vegan shit, but that's better than nothing.
And actually, you know, being as it's so hot, I'd accept gazpacho instead.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:31 PM
"Yes. Because voting is a referundum on my character, rather than an actual political act."
Eh? I don't understand. Narcissism is a character flaw. Standing up against the invasion of Iraq would have been an act of genuine political opposition.
You were being sarcastic, right?
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:31 PM
13: No, no. It's his view that it doesn't matter who is in the white house, as long as Mahan and his friends aren't suckers. That's what really matters here, Dave.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:32 PM
Ack. Yes, I fed the troll. The troll is supposed to be feeding me. I'm thinking a nice blackberry pie with good vanilla ice cream would be nice.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:32 PM
How many Green senators voted against the Iraq war?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:33 PM
"Being as you're a Greenie, I'm sure it'll be some kind of wheat-free vegan shit, but that's better than nothing."
Hilarious.
What I always love is that starting this debate with Democrats has them sounding *exactly* like Republicans in about 30 seconds.
Only a few more posts before you all start defending the Iraq war.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:33 PM
I know, I fed him too. It's hot. And it's better than arguing about bad movies.
Blackberry pie with vanilla ice cream sounds DIVINE. I hate you. Also, why do you not have a real email address?
And a question for the crowd: can one make a milkshake with gin?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:34 PM
16: Not wanting to be suckers explains about 95% of what's wrong with American culture, IMHO. Maybe we can talk about that after we finish our pie and ice cream.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:35 PM
Seriously, did you vote for Nader in 2000? In a swing state? Because if so, you should be heartily embarrassed, unless you're convinced that Gore would have been just as bad as Bush. And if you are convinced of that, for God's sake, why?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:35 PM
Wouldn't the gin either melt the ice or curdle the milk?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:35 PM
a milkshake with gin?
Isn't that an Alexander?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:36 PM
A gin milkshake? As a white man, it's not my place to say no, but I'd advise against it. At least use vodka. (I'm hoping to talk you down to a white russian before the evening is done.)
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:37 PM
Come on, let's have an actual discussion on the merits. I want to see you all defend the people your voting for.
How about when Maliki showed up in Congress, and the Democrats needled him about not supporting Israel?
Come on y'all, I want to hear you support Israel's right to kill dozens of innocent children. Because that's what the people you're voting for are doing.
Who wants to defend Hillary Clinton?
So easy for you to speak out of both sides of your mouth, isn't it?
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:37 PM
I thought they had brandy in Alexanders.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:38 PM
That's it, I'm voting for Santorum.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:38 PM
Pfft. You can't vote for Santorum. You don't live in Connecticut.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:39 PM
"Seriously, did you vote for Nader in 2000? In a swing state?"
I voted for Nader in 2000, in California, if you must know.
So now your turn: You voted for Lieberman, right?
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:39 PM
Those would be Brandy Alexanders. And FL, we're tolerant and all that, but no one wants that sort of detail about your sex life.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:39 PM
"Yes. Because voting is a referundum on my character, rather than an actual political act."
No no no, you miss the point. Voting is an aesthetic act--performance art, if you will. Mustn't soil such purity with dirty politics.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:42 PM
21: Comity!
25: If I had vodka, would I be asking if I could make a milkshake with gin? No. No, I would not. God, white people are so stupid.
26: You're a newbie here. Your role is to bring pie, not to tell us what to talk about. We're discussing cold drinks now.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:42 PM
Speak for yourself, LB.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:42 PM
#14: Vegans can't eat wheat?
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:42 PM
Blackberry pie with vanilla ice cream sounds DIVINE.
I'm thinking home made vanilla ice cream, done with rock salt and all. To go a little lighter, lemon granita wouldn't be bad--by itself, not with blackberry pie.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:43 PM
30: Actually, I don't know if people here know it, but I voted for Nader in 2000 as well, in NY. I didn't think much of him as a candidate, but wanted a showing for a candidate out left of where the Democrats were. If you voted for him in California, that's about the same reasonableness wise. But any nitwit who voted for him in Ohio, or FL, or any state where it was close voted for Bush, and is as responsible as a Bush voter for getting us into this mess.
Same deal with putting up a Green candidate against Casey. Democrats are anything but perfect, but Jesus Christ are they better than Republicans.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:43 PM
Look Mahan, we spend plenty of time being upset at Democrats, but the Green vs. Democrat discussion, at least at the national level, and usually in other races, comes down to whether one believes that there will ever be more than two viable parties in America. Most people think not. Given that, voting for the Greens is, at best, a protest vote and, at worst, in situations where the election is close, and shit is hitting the fan, it's irresponsible.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:44 PM
LB, have I confessed that I did exactly the same thing? I'm so ashamed now, and God, Nader is more toolicious than almost anyone, but it seemed clever at the time.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:46 PM
Re:29
Labs means Santorum
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:46 PM
comes down to whether one believes that there will ever be more than two viable parties in America
Nah. It comes down to whether we can afford to make Principled Stands when the electorate is basically 50/50. I'm quite willing to entertain the "more than two parties" argument later, when the country's come to its senses again.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:47 PM
#37: I, too, voted for Nader in 2000 in NY. It was something of a protest vote, since I didn't think that either Gore or Bush was a good candidate.
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:47 PM
37, 39: And y'all act like I'm little Ms. Leftier-than-thou. Jesus.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:48 PM
I still don't know that it was a bad decision. I was in an absolutely safe state. Assuming you were too, the existence of a voting bloc that wanted something left of the Democrats was worth announcing.
I wouldn't do it again, because the Greens have forfeited any title to be considered 'left of the Democrats' rather than 'worthless tools' by pulling idiot stunts like this, and what Nader did in 2000. But I still vote Working Family rather than Democrat (same candidates) where I can.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:49 PM
Holy shit. It's like we're in a little club of tool-enablers.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:49 PM
My very conservative cousin voted for Nader in 2000, for pretty much the same reasons as GB. I don't have much problem with that.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:49 PM
"You're a newbie here. Your role is to bring pie, not to tell us what to talk about."
Yeah, I didn't think you'd want to try and defend the people you're voting for either.
The funny thing is, you all pretend like it's the Green's fault the Dems can't beat the Republicans. Then you continue to vote for politicians who are utterly ineffectual and basically incompetent to lead a troop of cub scouts out of their own back yard.
Keep voting for the Dems then. See where it gets you this Fall, and in 2008. I predict at least six more years of Republican control.
Maybe by then you'll figure out there's something seriously wrong with the Dems, and hopefully you'll decide to vote for someone who is something more than Republican Lite.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:50 PM
I don't care if someone votes Green in non-swing states, but let's not pretend that there's a national Green candidate with a serious chance 434 times out of 435.
But what ticks me off is the moral superiority. I voted my conscience. Your conscience is an idiot who hasn't figured out how the electoral college works.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:50 PM
47: He's not really reading much of this, is he?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:50 PM
I think it was a bad decision because the marign of the popular vote has some enduring significance. Also because the Green party wouldn't have been such a great thing, had it gotten funding.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:50 PM
Keep voting for the Dems then. See where it gets you this Fall, and in 2008. I predict at least six more years of Republican control.
Yes! I'm convinced. I'm going to vote Green in the fall. I'm sure that that will completely turn things around.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:52 PM
50: I don't know -- once it got funding it might have attracted some competent people who wanted to be left of the Democrats rather than the nitwits they have now.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:53 PM
52: And those people would be electable?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:54 PM
re: 47
This is just a supercharged version of the "if democrats role out an aggresivly populist agenda, William Jennings Bryan will rise from his grave, riding a cross of gold, and conjure votes out of thin air. With ponies." myth that is so popular among certain elements of the democratic base. It won't work for the democrats, and it sure as hell won't work for the greens, who don't have a tenth of the party apparatus or entrenched support the greens have.
Also, I want pastries. Croissants, preferebly. Fuck iced drinks.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:54 PM
Yeah, but I suspect that would have produced a more right-tilting democratic party and left the greens getting marginal support. One annoying G fallacy is that lots of people actually agree with them but just can't quite see it because of Big Corporations.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:55 PM
53-55: We speak as one!
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:56 PM
Yeah, the claims the Greens could fix things might mean more if they had a warchest and a coherent platform.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:56 PM
Gah, "support the democrats have." rather.
I guess this means no croissant.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:56 PM
53: They might have done something productive, although I must admit I'm not sure what.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:56 PM
56: Except for that whole, "I voted Green" thing. I'm not chiming in on that one, Toolio.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:57 PM
It was a fatal error to let B have even a taste of moral superiority. I'll have to plant the "Big Mama's House" dvd in her purse.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:58 PM
59: Yeah, that's the problem with third parties generally. There's just no place for them in the system we have.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 8:59 PM
20: I will see my mother this weekend, and if I'm a good boy, perhaps I'll get some blackberry pie out of the deal. Mom's blackberry pie is good enough to cause my vegetarian sister to pretend that she doesn't know about the lard in the crust.
I do have real e-mail addresses, but they all have my full name in them, and the firm frowns on accessing outside e-mail from their computers anyway. (They presumably frown on this place, too, but for some reason I actually abide by the blanket prohibition on outside e-mail.) How 'bout a just shoot you an e-mail through your place and then you'll have it?
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:00 PM
Taste? I live on moral superiority, my friend. I am fat on it.
Also, if you touch my purse, I'm calling the cops.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:01 PM
61 resulted in spilled beverages.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:01 PM
63: That would work. But now I'm gonna insist you attach a slice of pie.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:02 PM
65: Yeah, I laughed too.
And then I clutched my purse closer to my body. Just *thinking* of
black peoplephilosophers makes me do that.Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:03 PM
Fat *and* sassy, B. The correct response is not to call the cops; it is to beat me over the head while engaging in vernacular condemnation. That's what Martin Lawrence would do, anyway.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:04 PM
frowns on accessing outside e-mail from their computers anyway.
Mine blocks it, which is maddening. I can get outside email forwarded to my work, but I can't answer it anonymously.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:04 PM
Listen, change has to start somewhere.
Are the Greens going to win in 2006 or 2008? No, but if you keep voting Democratic, none of this shit is ever going to change. Because the Dems aren't actually an opposition party. They don't actually oppose most of what the Republicans do -- the wars, the tax cuts, Israel, the drug war, it goes on and on and on. You cannot deny this.
On the other hand, if you started building a viable third party, then just maybe, someday, down the road, we'll finally realize that we can get out of the giant Chinese Handcuffs we're all caught in.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:04 PM
Also, is this the first righteous lefto-troll Unfogged has gotten?
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:06 PM
Also, is this the first righteous lefto-troll Unfogged has gotten?
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:06 PM
Um, maybe? (Coughbitchcough).
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:07 PM
Mahan, I think your analysis is deeply confused. First, the Democratic party is malleable just as national politics are. Cf. Ned Lamont. Second, keep in mind that not many people agree with your substantive positions. You talk as though only game theoretic considerations keep voters in thrall to the Democrats. Not so: Green views are marginal views, in the purely statistical sense. This might be sad, but it's still true.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:08 PM
"Yeah, that's the problem with third parties generally. There's just no place for them in the system we have."
That's because of the plurality-take-all voting system we have.
There's something called "instant runoff voting". Look into it:
http://www.instantrunoff.com/
It's a superior, more democratic system of elections. Push it at the local level. Shit happens.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:08 PM
66: Pie, alas, does not e-mail well. If it did I would be even more buoyant and well-insulated (but not sassy!) than I'm getting already.
69: Mine may too. I actually did what I was told for once and stopped even trying to check the outside accounts when they told us not to.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:08 PM
We've heard of instant runoff voting. But so long as it isn't in place, voting for third parties is entirely pointless except as a signal.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:09 PM
If we all are confessing our voting-for-Nader sins, I should add my voice. I voted for him in Texas. Petitioned to get his name on the ballot, too.
Like Lizardbreath, I thought of it as a long term investment. If the party got funding & attracted competent people it could actually do something--I'm not sure what, though.
I'm real sorry about the whole thing.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:11 PM
You do not even want to know what I did in 2000.
(Hangs head in shame.)
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:13 PM
Gah, I am Doubleposter. Like some sort of Captain Planet villain, only with comment-spam instead of pollution.
re: 70
First of all, I don't think anyone believes the Dem's don't need to change. But that doesn't alter the fundamental reality that: A. The American political system is famously uncongenial to third parties, and B. there simply isn't an extant demographic that will make the greens viable. Third parties have always activated some heretofore unsatisfied political class which isn't served by the current political landscape. That simply doesn't exist in todays climate, c.f. tons of 50-50 razor sharp elections.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:13 PM
I see from 70 that Mahan still thinks of the Greens as a long term investment. Can't you see you are throwing good money after bad?
Its so much easier just to throw Leiberman out of the democratic party. That's what we lefty bloggers are up to these days.
Also: are you paid by the right to troll?
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:14 PM
Jeebus. Don't blame Mahan; y'all keep engaging and then disengaging. You're troll-flirting.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:14 PM
DaveL, I kind of do what to know.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:15 PM
"First, the Democratic party is malleable just as national politics are. Cf. Ned Lamont."
Ned Lamont hasn't become a Senator yet. Wait 'til he does, watch his record, then come talk to me about malleability.
"Second, keep in mind that not many people agree with your substantive positions."
Well I don't know about that, given that my substantive positions are all over the place, but you know there's something called "leadership" that involves getting people to change their minds, or at the least, to trust you to lead them even if they don't agree with you about everything.
Leadership is something the Dems seriously lack. You may hate the Republicans every bit as much as I do, but they are masters at winning the loyalty of people whose interests they do not protect, and shaping the opinions of the electorate to their will. Most Republican voters weren't for big govt spending eight years ago, but has the fact that the Republican govt has turned into a giant money faucet stopped anybody from voting for them?
The trick would be for somebody to figure how to do this sort of thing in a way that is beneficent instead of malignant.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:15 PM
I bet he volunteered for them. It's all right if you did -- I handed out leaflets for Jerry Brown in 1992.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:16 PM
Dave. DL. D-Money. You didn't...?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:16 PM
78 -- me too, in New York. Probably passed LB at the voting booth and gave her the secret vote-for-Nader-saboteur signal. Not.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:16 PM
68: I'm white. We don't make scenes like that. It's so. So. So. Well, it's just not done.
73: You deeply misunderstand me. I'm wounded.
Also, I'm not the one who voted for Nader.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:18 PM
DaveL obviously wrote in Motumbo in 2000.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:18 PM
Oh, I didn't even think. The B word?
It's still okay. We're a forgiving party. Hell, my husband voted for Giuliani (and I knew it before I married him and did it anyway.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:18 PM
You're right, it is about leadership. It's not about fucking and balls and pussy. It's about getting people to change their minds. It's not about butthole pleasures. It's about getting people to trust you to lead them. It's not about the Cincinnatti Bow Tie, the Rusty Trombone, the Dirty Sanchez...
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:20 PM
Green Party booster
Must become his quantum self
If you ask me, dawg
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:21 PM
90 -- I thought that was just something he said to turn you on.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:21 PM
85: Wow, we are all recovering fringe-candidate activists here. I gave Jerry Brown money. My first vote was for Jesse Jackson in a democratic primary. I even voted for Anderson in my middle school mock-election in 1980.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:21 PM
What's the word for a word formed from the letters of another word?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:22 PM
#72: "righteous lefto-troll" sounds like an oxymoron.
I hereby coin the word "lefteous", defined as "marked by or exhibiting a sense of moral superiority on the basis of one's stridently leftist views."
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:22 PM
"We've heard of instant runoff voting. But so long as it isn't in place..."
... you should work to get it in place.
" voting for third parties is entirely pointless except as a signal."
Well from what I'm hearing, a lot of people here aren't even advocating it as a signal. Instead, a lot of people are just slamming the Greens regardless of whether it's a swing state at issue. For example, people are calling the Greens "narcissist".
What a bizarre fucking accusation, especially coming from people who vote for politicians that charge $1,000 for a plate full of overcooked chicken and boiled vegetables.
I don't suppose Clinton was a narcissist now, do you?
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:22 PM
Not me. I couldn't vote in 2000. No sins to absolve myself of here!
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:22 PM
An anagram, you mean?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:23 PM
What's the word for a word formed from the letters of another word?
A permutonym.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:23 PM
99: Yeah. I was spacing.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:24 PM
90: Indeed. There's really no defense, but I was raised Republican and I think I sort of defaulted back to that for some set of reasons that I don't understand very well. Also, I live in a very solid Democratic state with a local Democratic party of the sort that you get after 40 or 50 years of one-party government. But I'm pretty damn ashamed of voting for the guy anyway. At best, it was a deeply clueless thing to do.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:24 PM
LB, don't play tricks on Tim.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:24 PM
Dudes, I am totally going to reference this thread whenever y'all want to play me as the little pc poster girl from here on out. You are so not going to have me to kick around any more.
My first major political jig was to work on the Mondale campaign, even though I was too young to vote.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:24 PM
Jesus, you guys. You obviously didn't spend the 90s in a state that was getting fucked over royally by the Green Party.
And I couldn't vote in 200 either.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:24 PM
93: It was dirty because it was true.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:25 PM
You are little pc poster girl. We don't have to play you as nuttin.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:25 PM
My first major political jig
Outreach to the Irish community?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:26 PM
102: Oh. Mah. Gawd. Okay, I am *so* breaking up with you now.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:26 PM
98 -- we're all of us just soaked in sin. You will never be free of its taint. Better to acknowledge your guilty, fallen status than to try to persuade yourself you are innocent, all indications to the contrary.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:26 PM
I annoyed my friends with my endless contempt for Nader before it was cool! But now it's gone all corporate and shit.
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:27 PM
Scott, DaveL has shattered my illusions. Will you marry me instead?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:28 PM
109: Damn, I knew I should have followed the rules and not given up my e-mail address so easily. I shall now take time out from being ashamed of electoral stupidity and just beat myself up for being a slut.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:29 PM
111: The levels of meta. They are glorious.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:29 PM
105 -- hardly any of us could vote in 200. Emerson and McManus, maybe.
First election for me was 88, Dukakis over Bush but with no real passion. In 92 I was pretty excited about voting for Clinton. (Now I'm going to post this and realize I am tired and confused about dates.)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:30 PM
I missed the 88 election by 10 months, and was really annoyed about it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:31 PM
115: Fuck you, clown. First B dumps me and now I'm too old to find anyway else.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:31 PM
Scott, your posts on Nader are outstanding.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:31 PM
Shit. 2000.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:32 PM
117: Have I mentioned that I'm also stupid and can't read?
Do carry on.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:32 PM
No, those dates are right. Ooh! and get this -- I voted for Lenora Fulani in the 92 primary, and maybe the 88 primary as well, I don't remember. And I'm thinking I voted for Sharpton in the primary for NYS Governor whatever year that was. How's that for far-out and fucked-up?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:34 PM
I have just finished entering my July time (or some crude approximation thereof) and am going home.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:34 PM
113: You say that like being a slut is a bad thing.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:35 PM
far-out and fucked-up
The Fulani thing I mean. Sharpton is totally middle-of-the-road fucked-up.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:35 PM
I voted for Lenora Fulani in the 92 primary,
No, really? Fulani's a weird, weird person.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:35 PM
Yeah I was kind of weird myself in that time-frame.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:36 PM
And LB -- somehow I thought you were 3 years older than I; but apparently you are like a half-year younger.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:37 PM
Clown-aethesiologist wins the voting for fringe-candidates contest. I looked into Fulani but quickly realized that she was just far to weird.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:38 PM
Man I was rooting for you for a while Mahan. Now I see you really are just a tool.
Just face it guys. Your entire electoral system sucks.
Now I'm just gonna sit here in sunny Sydney enjoying the nice weather and basking in the glory of the preferential voting system with ballot and PENCIL in hand.
Juicy Lurker
Posted by Juicy Lurker | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:39 PM
112--Yes.
118--I can honestly say I never expected anyone to say that. Proves there's a market for anything "including people who can't let 200 go because Nader apologists are such world-class wankers..."
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:40 PM
I have voted once for President and assorted national elections. In 2000 I wanted to, but screwed up the absentee voter registration. In 2004 I sent in my little paper ballot where it was happily shredded.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:41 PM
I'm packing to leave for the AAPT conference outside of Pittsburgh, tomorrow and I can't bear to look at any clothing heavier than a light weight t-shirt, because it is still a million degrees in my house. Do you think I can get away with packing shorts and t-shirts only?
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:46 PM
"Now I'm just gonna sit here in sunny Sydney enjoying the nice weather and basking in the glory of the preferential voting system with ballot and PENCIL in hand."
Sounds a lot like isntant runoff voting, which is what I'm pushing for.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:48 PM
123: OK, I feel better now.
Kidding aside, it was mostly the internets, blogs especially, that finally broke down the last of my tribal identification with the Rs (well, that and the way the party went completely batshit insane). Before that I kind of drifted around voting against whoever I thought was the bigger asshole. I'm not at all partisan in the "yay team" sense, and my policy views are somewhat eclectic (probably less so now than they used to be; I understand better than I once did that fucked-up policies are worth defending if the opposition to those policies mostly comes from people who want to fuck them up worse), so I didn't see as much difference between candidates as I sometimes should have.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:51 PM
levels of meta
Flag on the play, unironic use of "meta". Ten slaps with a Rudy Rucker paperback, still first down.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:54 PM
De-lurking (delurko-crastinating, actually, but that's beside the point) to admit to a politically ignorant youthful indiscretion. Not voting for Nader, which I nearly did in 2000 before helping to elect Al Gore, but rather canvassing for the Jackson campaign in '88. Amazing, I know, but it led to the most mind-bending experience in the development of my political consciousness.
(Harp glissandi) Early afternoon one Saturday. This door I knocked on was opened by a burly guy who seemed really pleased when I asked him about registering to vote. House is chaos, TV's on; he affirms to his wife, who's just tiptoeing through the mess with a load of dirty laundry, that he's been eager to register but just hasn't gotten around to it. Then he says, as he's filling out the form, "Yeah, you know, I think Ronald Reagan has been the best president this country has ever had. And I can't think of anyone who could follow up the job he did better than Jesse Jackson."
Posted by jmcq | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:54 PM
On the other hand, if you started building a viable third party, then just maybe, someday, down the road, we'll finally realize that we can get out of the giant Chinese Handcuffs we're all caught in.
Sorry for the Godwin, but:
Nach Hitler, Uns!
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:54 PM
Sounds a lot like isntant runoff voting, which is what I'm pushing for.
Yes you are correct. And while you're pushing for it the world can look forward to 768 million years of Republican Rule™. Joy.
Posted by Juicy Lurker | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 9:59 PM
130: Excellent.
I'm surprised you're surprised re. the Nader posts. They really are awesome. I read them and cheer.
134: And people say that blogs aren't good for anything! Woo!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:05 PM
Hey, just as an aside but still on topic. I need another American to give me their opinion on this from Billmon. I know what I think, but I'm just a stupid foreigner. What does our great Democratic Mineshaft think? Are we to hail or denounce this great man?
So here's my confession: At this point I really don't give a flying fuck whether the Democrats take the House or the Senate back. No, wait, that's not true. The truth is I hope they don't. It wouldn't save us from what's coming down the road, in the Middle East and elsewhere. It wouldn't force President Psychopath to change course or seek therapy. But it would make sure that the "left" (ha ha ha) gets more than its fair share of blame for the approaching debacle.
Posted by Juicy Lurker | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:13 PM
This comment wins the internet.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:14 PM
Yeah, but who wants to win that?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:18 PM
Shorter Mahan: The Single Member Plurality system is over, if you want it,/i>. Vizualize Cockburn/Mumia '08!
For further entertainment, let us recall St. Ralph yammering about feticide and "corporate pornography" with his buddy Pat Buchanan. Now that's the kind of purity it's worth throwing the election to the most reactionary president since McKinley for!
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:23 PM
You know, I very nearly took the 'instant run-off' bait and started to engage, and then I looked at the thermometer and just couldn't get it up to care. At 11pm tonight it was 82 degrees here.
Instead, I demand Monte Cristos for everyone.
They are, however, awfully heavy for this weather, so I'll accept some homemade ice cream instead. The pie sounds fab - I've even got the blackberries for it in the yard - but again, the tremendous weight of a really good pie would just make this heat even worse. Heck, even ice cream sounds kind of like too much at the moment.
I'd kill a man in front of his own grandma for sorbet, however.
I've voted middle-of-the-road Dem every time, in every election. I wasn't able to vote in the primary in '92, voted Clinton in '92 and '96, would have voted for him again in '00 and '04 for that matter, would vote for him tomorrow if they gave me the chance because, honestly, his mojo just works on me. In '00 I voted Gore (primary and election). In '04 I voted Edwards in the primary, then Kerry in the election. Hopefully I'll get to vote for Edwards in at least the primary in '08.
People who are True Believers for fringe parties (the Libertarians and the Greens, after all, have basically lined up to recreate the binary divide, just scaled down) tend to think that people who vote main-party are somehow weak-kneed. In fact, I consciously lean towards slow but steady progress - and, if history is taken as a whole, American politics have produced almost nothing but progress - than extreme shifts in power because I think that's ultimately healthier for the system and the society it serves.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:26 PM
McManlyPants, I'm going a little gay for you.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:33 PM
140: That's actually a tricky one; I remember similar stuff during the 2004 campaign, and I think it may actually have been right. That said, I'm going to have to disagree. It's been too damn long since Democrats had any power at all, and even just winning one house would be enough to open investigations and at least try to correct some of the massive problems going on right now in our government. Also, with one house you couldn't get legislation through, but you could certainly stop it. This time it's not worth putting the country through two more years of hell for an uncertain chance of winning everything in 2008.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:46 PM
Yeah, it's a good thing you're gay, McManly, because I'm already engaged to Scott.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:48 PM
re:135
This lead me to investigate Rudy Rucker. In the course of my explorations, I happened upon the following gems:
"Moreover, even human consciousness is computation, as shown by the lifebox."
"Master of Space and Time combines high physics and high jinks..."
"Clones and DNA-splicing have spawned the meatbop..."
"the cultured mapmaker Abraham Ortelius, who is so careful to conceal his homosexuality; the sexy and volatile half-Native American, Williblad Cheroo; and Bruegel's smart, saucy wife."
Is Breugel's wife a mammy figure? Afterall, saucy is dangerously close to sassy, although the former connotes more of an italian-vibe, for obvious reasons.
Lastly, how exactly are you familiar with this particular body of work Standpipe? Somewhat dubious, if you ask me.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 10:50 PM
It's worth noting that the Libertarians are quite different than the Greens; their ideology legitmately cross-cuts existing colations, and there may be elections where it is a matter of near-indifference who wins (at least you're an actual libertarian as opposed to the conseravtive-Republican-who-wants-to-get-laid-and-smoke-pot variety.) The Greens are just the far-left slice of the Republican colation, so voting Green is never rational.
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 11:29 PM
Er, Democratic colation (at least if we're talking about theory rather than practice.)
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 11:31 PM
"The Greens are just the far-left slice of the Republican colation, so voting Green is never rational."
Personally, I don't care that much about the Greens per se, I just want some kind of alternative to the Dems. I'd be even more thrilled if there was a third party whose politics were more in agreement with mine, and that likely would cut across some party lines.
But I just can't be convinced to vote for the Dems anymore when they represent me on exactly NONE of the issues I care about most.
One of my best friends from law school a few years back is an Arab guy. We've been going back and forth about the Dems for five years now. I keep tellin him....
Finally, with the events of the past few weeks, and the Dems pretty much in lock step with the Republicans on Israel. FINALLY he's had enough, and he's saying "Fuck It, I will not vote for these bastards anymore."
Who can blame him?
Once the Dems have screwed you over on all the issues you care about most, there's just no reason to keep voting for them. Even the logic that they're better than Republicans is no good, because the losers in charge of the party today can't even beat the Republicans!
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 1-06 11:44 PM
149 - Oh, yes, they're very different, no argument there. I meant that the Libs and the Greens have basically squared off to recreate the Republican/Democratic binary system, not as separate ends of some big-D Democratic spectrum.
Chopper, B, hugs all around, but I'm a one-Rah man.
I've got no problem defending voting Democratic. I'm in no hurry to defend Lieberman - rather dislike him, actually - but taunts that voting Democratic means we must like like Lieberman, must in fact want to have ten thousand of his babies, prompt two reactions in me:
1) Ah, so in 2000, when he was at both best and worst an unexciting bottom (and thus ignored) half of a ticket headlined by a pretty awesome guy, I'm supposed to have psychically divined that he was, in fact, a total tool? Please do pass that crystal ball over here, I'd love to ask it some questions.
and
2) So we're objectively pro-Lieberman? Heavens, but the tone of that does sound familiar, somehow.
It's a dumb trick, and it deserves what responses it prompts.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 1:03 AM
Even if I do say so myself, "an unexciting bottom" made me giggle on preview.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 1:10 AM
"Alexander" without qualification means a Brandy Alexander. Lemon granita is a bit too much; instead, have some cantaloupe granita, maybe with a bit of ginger grated in during the making. SB's Having mentioned Rudy Rucker makes me think that SB might be Peter Willard.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 1:57 AM
And a question for the crowd: can one make a milkshake with gin?
A little late on this, but I was given home made gin and tonic jelly (jello?) at the w/e, and it was awesome.
There's a lot to be said for having a viable third party even if - probably preferably if - it's not actually electable nationally, because it greatly increases the number of main party candidates whose heads you can fuck with by tactical voting. But then tactical voting would imply being intelligent enough not to vote for a spoiler in an election where GWB was the issue.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 2:00 AM
my take on the shorter Mahan: "I'm new here and don't know you people, but I do know that I'm way smarter than you. And I have higher moral standards, Of Course. Also, the Greens can win because we have leadership. We're just chock full of people like me, who are practically bursting with people skills.
Posted by michael | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 2:08 AM
It's actually kind of sad that Greens like Mahan don't get why no one listens to them.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 2:12 AM
Even the logic that they're better than Republicans is no good, because the losers in charge of the party today can't even beat the Republicans!
By what logic do you pithily propose completely changing our constitutionally-provided voting system but also pithily give up as hopeless getting a majority vote for Dems?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 2:15 AM
Shit. In case anything in 155 can be read otherwise, the remark about not voting for a spoiler refers to 2004, not 2000, or even 200, when you should have voted for anybody but Septimius Severus.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 2:27 AM
The australian system kind of sucks too, just not as much as fptp.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 2:38 AM
No-one having commented on the awesomeness that is 136, it falls to me to offer jmcq his/her weight in fruit baskets. Could the gentleman of the house have been mistaking the name Jesse Jackson for one of those other Jesse's, like Mr. Helms? I know there was a point in my political Bildung when I could not distinguish between these two, and I think one other Jesse whom I am forgetting just now.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 4:03 AM
That would be Jesse James, whose radical interventions against the banking system led to his being dropped from the ticket by Gerald Ford.
136 is truly awesome.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 4:23 AM
It's a tricky one. What could anyone conceivably like about Ronald Reagan that he would think could be carried on by Jesse Jackson?
"Vote Jackson - because an alliterative president is a great president." (Hmm. Woodrow Wilson. Calvin Coolidge. Herbert Hoover. Maybe not.)
Both great communicators? Both given to doing things that were a little strange?
Posted by ajay | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 4:23 AM
140: I think billmon's wrong to feel the way he does, but I completely understand why he does, and can't think ill of him for it. Someone needs to buy him a cooling drink and murmur soothing remarks about the lesser of two evils.
127: Legal practice is terribly aging.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 4:48 AM
And 136 is wonderful. I wonder if that guy represents a voting bloc, and what it is they might possibly want.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 4:49 AM
Government by oratory?
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:02 AM
I was Secretary of the Treasury for Alan Keyes' shadow cabinet in 1996.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:09 AM
155: Yeah, that kind of sensible tactical voting was the sort of thing I was hoping a useful Green party would allow for.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:12 AM
But the structural problem with new/small parties is that they're ipso facto vulnerable to being taken over by the fruitloop element. I suspect it's a question of luck if this doesn't happen. Once a party can once reach a threshold size, the nutters are condemned to permanent minority status and tend to go away. This happened to the German Greens, for example. And arguably the Scottish Nationalists, who were a tiny semi-fascist group before the war.
Canada seems to have managed to move from a 2 party to a multi-party status in my lifetime, but I'm not at all clear how they managed it.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:26 AM
My wife and I were Nader traders in 2000- presumably added a Gore vote in Michigan and one if Florida. Of course then there's even more game theory involved- did the person we traded with really vote Gore? Did we really vote Nader?
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:35 AM
My voting history is pretty embarassing. In 1996 I voted for Dole in the Republican primary, because I wanted to stop Pat Buchanan. But then I voted for Dole in the general too.
In 2000 I briefly flirted with John McCain in Maine, but then I worked for Bill Bradley, because his health plan was so much better than Gore's. I also voted for Nader, then in California.
The other day I ran into a guy petitioning to get Rainbow-Green candidates on the ballot. He was clearly a volunteer and not a paid canvasser. I told him that I was pretty much a partisan Democrat and felt that nationally the Greens had done a lot of damage.
He said, "Oh I have nothing to do with them nationally, but I think that in this state, the Democrats do themselves in. We just want an alternative." I didn't really have any ammunition with which to combat that.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:39 AM
170: You're not supposed to reveal you have a wife.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:41 AM
Wait, 170 is just some random dude. I'm even more absentminded than usual. Carry on.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:47 AM
I think billmon needs a cookie.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 5:55 AM
I misspoke in 115 -- my vote for Clinton in '92 was a lesser-of-two-evils type vote. It was in '96 that I felt excited about pulling the lever for Clinton. (Also I felt that way in 2004 as I marked Kerry, in full expectation that he was going to be the new president and banish the bullshit demons of greed and incompetency from the highest offices of our government. -- These are the only two elections of my adult lifetime that I have felt really passionately involved in.)
173 -- 170 is SP, not some random dude.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:00 AM
I think billmon needs a cookie.
But he's totally got Blair's number (unless you mean you want to track his site usage).
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:05 AM
Well, he's a random dude to me. I meant no offense.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:08 AM
I've been very pessimistic since March or so. The Democrats have been very reluctant to take any chances at all resisting Bush on civil liberties or the war, and probably they'll be a little better than Bush but not a lot. There's a tremendous mess ot clean up and the Democrats just seem to want to squeak out a victory, tidy things up a bit and hope things will get better.
But the thing that really kills me is that I think that Bush might be able to win again by instigating crises and tagging the Democrats as weak. The Democrats have not prepared for that eventuality.
So I can understand where Bush is coming from.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:16 AM
Oh, I'm pessmisstic. I think the Dems are going to lose in Nov. and '08. I just think that it matters that they will lose, mostly because of the Court, and that the strategy of 'maybe it'll confuse the rabbit if we run away more' isn't sound.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:27 AM
I think we'll pick up seats in both houses, but I don't think we'll win them back. Even that is going more by a need to lower expectations than anything else, and any speculation on 2008 is purely emotion-driven at this point (for fuck's sake, the Democratic nominee in '04 was running a nearly moribund campaign until a few weeks before Iowa). And unless the '08 nominee is Russ Feingold, I seriously doubt that Democrats are going to be vastly better on civil liberties and war than Republicans. On the whole, Democrats seem to have learned very, very specific lessons from Iraq ("invading Iraq in 2003 under a Bush administration is a bad idea") rather than broader, more useful ones ("massive military force is very often counterproductive"), and I have very little faith that current frontrunners like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards will, if elected, choose to scale back the vase increase in executive power that the Bush administration has built up over the last several years.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:42 AM
There is a special place in hell for all the folks who voted for Nader, even in "safe" states, because they legitimized his critique and tactic. And who is someone in NY or CA to say to someone in Florida 'I'm free to vote my precious principles, but you, you must compromise away what you believe, and vote for that way, way evil man (though just not as evil, barely, as the other guy).'
It's not just that the Nader position was objectively pro-Bush, it's also objectively wrong, both substantively and strategically. There is and since Nixon's Southern Strategy has been a tremendous difference between the parties, of a moral dimension I would say, and anyone who refused to recognize the full scope of this after the 1994 mid-terms was either clueless or self-delusional. There is also no benefit of any kind to be had from pushing the Democratic party away from the general mainstream, where it has a chance of prevailing, towards a 'purer'* and less popular place. The Dem coalition is broad enough to include anyone of Nadrist tendency, and as in any coalition, the Nadrists would have gotten a piece of the action. If they'd earned it by getting the coalition into power.
The Greenie is free to live in a land of his own imagining. In the country I live in, Dems only win when they nominate the most conservative candidate among the serious choices.
* I use this word for sake of argument only, and admit nothing.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:43 AM
178 Bush --> Billmon
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:44 AM
And who is someone in NY or CA to say to someone in Florida 'I'm free to vote my precious principles, but you, you must compromise away what you believe, and vote for that way, way evil man (though just not as evil, barely, as the other guy).'
Someone who knows how the electoral college works.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:44 AM
180 -- "Vastly" better is the wrong measure. Play to win.
Also, I think this is simply wrong. Three seats in the Senate would make a huge difference, even if won by comparative moderates. I agree that control is a tougher go, depending as it seemingly does on winning in Missouri and Ohio. Both are possible, but deflationary rhetoric isn't going to get the job done.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:46 AM
SJ -- sure, on the pragmatic level. No one operating on that level has any business entertaining fantasies of third parties.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:47 AM
the most reactionary president since McKinley for
Oh, be fair. McKinley was conservative, not reactionary. Harding and Coolidge, they were reactionary.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:49 AM
184: I'm not saying Democrats wouldn't be better; they quite obviously would be. It's just that on the issues that bother me the most - torture and rendition, abuse and expansion of executive power, domestic spying - evidence indicates there's no real party-wide ideological opposition to this stuff as such, and I'm bracing for the fact that when I pull the level for President Democrat, he or she probably isn't going to make those go away.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:51 AM
"In the country I live in, Dems only win when they nominate the most conservative candidate among the serious choices."
That's silly. All Kerry's opponents would have been weaker nominees in the general. Same w Clinton's in '92 (and his serious opponents were even less progressive). No way Clinton, Warner, Richardson, etc would be stronger candidates than Kerry or Edwards in 08.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 6:56 AM
Lastly, how exactly are you familiar with this particular body of work Standpipe?
Rudy and I used to meatbop the lifebox.
Seriously, longtimeago I was browsing library stacks and picked up The Fourth Dimension out of curiosity. Did you know that RR is Hegel's great-great-etc. grandson? Well he is, even in the mysterious fourth dimension. And you may have heard that RR has, on occasion, seen into the fourth dimension. It's true.
When you write him a check, he cashes it with his mind.
Somewhat dubious, if you ask me.
Yes, exactly.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:29 AM
"It's just that on the issues that bother me the most - torture and rendition, abuse and expansion of executive power, domestic spying - evidence indicates there's no real party-wide ideological opposition to this stuff as such..."
EXACTLY.
And don't even get me started on the drug war. We have more persons per capita in prison than any other country in the world. The Dems back that shit 110%. And by voting for them, you all are voting to support it.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:30 AM
"In the country I live in, Dems only win when they nominate the most conservative candidate among the serious choices."
I see -- so you fully support all the Liebermans in the Democratic party.
If not, do tell: where's the stopping point in your logic?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:34 AM
And by voting for them, you all are voting to support it.
Hey, don't look at me. Since I'm the only one who supports my full range of positions, I do the principled thing and always write myself in for everthying.
P.S. I am not a crackpot.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:39 AM
Ooh, drugs! That would be way better than pastries.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:39 AM
193 -> 190
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:40 AM
" Since I'm the only one who supports my full range of positions, I do the principled thing and always write myself in for everthying."
I'm talking about voting for someone who represents me on more than half the issues I care about. Please explain to me why I should vote for someone who represents me on NONE of them?
Take my Arab friend: What he cares about most is justice and equality for Arabs. It's an overriding issue for him. Why in the hell should he vote for the Dems while they're proudly handing the Israelis a blank check?
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:48 AM
Face it Mahan -- you are only going to be accepted around here if you bring drugs. Or pastries.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:52 AM
"And by voting for them, you all are voting to support it."
No, by voting for Democrats I'm voting to (a) make those issues a little better, which is still an improvement on leaving Republicans in charge, and (b) make the country a much, much better place on issues where there's simply no contest between the two parties, like sexual regulation, the environment and health care. President Edwards will actually try to raise the minimum wage, provide health care to the uninsured and appoint sane justices to the Supreme Court, so you bet your ass I'll vote for him, even if he's not going to legalize drugs and prostitution.
And there's no room for ceding this stuff to the right to make the Ralph Naders of the world feel better. Let's not forget that Nader, patron saint of the leftier-than-thou spoiler candidate, doesn't give a fuck about what happens to poor people, gays and women - that he was perfectly happy with consigning us to two terms of Bush because of his psychotic loathing of the center-left. Anyone who derides gay equality and reproductive rights as "genital politcs" deserves to get run out of the Left.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:55 AM
"my take on the shorter Mahan: "I'm new here and don't know you people, but I do know that I'm way smarter than you. And I have higher moral standards, Of Course. Also, the Greens can win because we have leadership. We're just chock full of people like me, who are practically bursting with people skills."
My take on the shorter Michael: "If someone dares to disagree with me, they have a character flaw."
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:57 AM
And really, I don't like Lieberman at all, but Ralph Nader has done far, far more damage to the Left in one election cycle than Joe Lieberman has in his entire career. So I don't get the constant Lieberman-harping here.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 7:57 AM
I don't get the constant Lieberman-harping here.
You wouldn't -- it's an anti-Semite thang.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:01 AM
oh come on, guys, quit feeding our facetious young Mahatma. He's not so much green as red, seems clear to me.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:01 AM
195- No two-party candidate for national office supports any of the views you care about? I think, then, that you need to face the fact that in a democratic system, you are fucked.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:02 AM
"No, by voting for Democrats I'm voting to (a) make those issues a little better, which is still an improvement on leaving Republicans in charge..."
I don't recall the drug war getting any better when the Dems were in charge.
"(b) make the country a much, much better place on issues where there's simply no contest between the two parties, like sexual regulation, the environment and health care."
So wow did these things get better when the Dems were in charge? How did that "don't ask don't tell" thing work out? How did the health care plan work out? Did Gore actually do one thing that slowed global warming when he was VP?
It's an illusion. Even on these issues, the Dems may pretend to represent you, but they don't actually do anything to advance these issues.
It's just like Republicans and the fundies. When it comes down to the Bible versus the Almighty Dollar, the Repubs will take the latter every time. The Dems are no different; just replace "Bible" with your pet issue.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:05 AM
The Democrats are not my favorite people in the land because they have such a GREAT talent for rolling over on women's issues because they're 'fringe issues', but the Greens are taking money from their ideological enemies to fund a campaign they must know will fail.
That's why I don't like the Greens- they are fully complicit in the Republican split-the-left-vote scheme while knowing that right now in reality land they are not going to win. It takes a staggering amount of assholery to do that.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:06 AM
Let's see: election losses are the result of "lack of leadership." And the evidence for "lack of leadership"? Why it's election losses, of course.
You've had your fun and now it's my turn. Give me pie now Mahatma Condi.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:07 AM
healthcare got shot down by disingenuous conservatives such as yourself.
know what didn't happen when democrats were in power? we didn't start unnecessary wars, and set up torture camps.
baby killer.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:09 AM
There's no point in voting Green. If they're right, you can just as well kiss your ass goodbye. That's what Billmon was talking about doing, and I'm thinking about it too.
The fact is, at this point the Democrats have only made occasional weak, vague, objections to the war on terror and the encroaching police state. (One whole wing of the party seems to be pro-war first, Democratic second). For decades they've mostly been in the corporate pocket, and their failure to resist the corporate takover of the media (when they controlled government) has helped put them in a terribly weak position today. The people warning about all this stuff were laughed at, and some became Greens.
Nader didn't hate the center-left, he hated the center right, and his hatred was not pathological. Increasingly since 1980 the US has been re-normed until the right seems centrist and no one talks to the left, and that's one reason why we're in such terrible shape.
Since 2001 (note the date) I've been committed to the Democrats because I have come to understand how the cards are stacked, but that doesn't mean that I have much hope any more. Quite the opposite.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:13 AM
"Let's see: election losses are the result of "lack of leadership." And the evidence for "lack of leadership"? "
Exhibit A: The Dems inability to oppose the invasion of Iraq.
Exhibit B: The Dems inability to oppose Bush's enormous tax cuts.
You want me to keep going? Even better, do you want to try to actually defend the Dems' stance on these issues?
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:14 AM
At the time of the Iraqi invasion, the democratic senators and representatives who supported it (not all of them) were operating on the assumption that weapons of mass destruction existed, an assumption that your [secret] party pushed while fudging the evidence, red-stater.
Most if not all of those senators and representatives have since reprented and are, like I am, outraged at the way they were misled.
With regard to tax cuts, the democrats were at the time not in a position to defeat them. They did not have the seats. You do know how legislatures work, right?
Of course you do. None of this is serious.
Why don't you come out and support your actual positions?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:19 AM
207 is exactly how I feel. I occasionally sputter with rage about it, but mostly I just mope.
It's too hot, though, to do either today. It's ninety with eighty percent humidity. I think I'm breathing through a wet sponge when I go outside. Yech.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:19 AM
Anybody who starts in with the "not a dime's worth of difference between the parties" nonsense instantly gives up any chance of me taking them with the least bit of seriousness. The Democrats and Republicans are further apart than at any time in your or my life. If you can't recognize that, you aren't paying attention.
Voting Green in a 50-50 country is political masturbation. Keep on stroking and enjoy your feelings of ethical purity. That and a buck will get you a cup of coffee.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:20 AM
all youse republicans, your party isn't really conservative enuff! Vote for greenies! I'm extra conservative, that's what I do!
Posted by greenytext | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:21 AM
181: There is also no benefit of any kind to be had from pushing the Democratic party away from the general mainstream, where it has a chance of prevailing, towards a 'purer'* and less popular place.
I'm not sure I buy this. I know where I want to push the Democrats -- largely toward more economic redistribution -- and I am not sure that, properly handled, that that is a less popular place among the electorate.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:24 AM
203: Clinton strengthened environmental regulations - the same ones Bush is gutting - while appointing sane Supreme Court justices who have defended gay rights, choice, and have even tried to roll back George Bush's wartime power grabs. And half the Democratic field for '08 already has a health care plan; by the time the primaries hit, every viable Dem candidate will have one.
And really, for fuck's sake, I'd like to end the war on drugs as much as anybody, but it's not going to happen today and it's not going to happen tomorrow and it's not going to happen ten years from now. Making that your single issue is just plain stupid.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:24 AM
It's ninety with eighty percent humidity
Woo-hoo! 103 degrees, 58% humidity! Heat index of 114! But at least there's a chance of thunderstorms.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:24 AM
I really do want you to keep going, Mahatma Condi. It's fun to watch someone with no integrity take false positions in a meaningless blog thread.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:27 AM
Exhibit B: The Dems inability to oppose Bush's enormous tax cuts.
ZOMG they couldn't stop the war and they couldn't stop the tax cuts! They couldn't even stop Hurricane Katrina, either! Why didn't I see Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi powering up their Congressional-issue weather machine to save New Orleans? Because they were spineless Republocrats, that's why!
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:29 AM
216 -- "fun" might be going a little far... kinda diverting I guess...
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:30 AM
208-
Estate tax repeal- Has been blocked by Democrats.
2003 tax cuts:
House:
Republicans: 224 yea, 1 nay
Democrats- 7 yea, 198 nay
Senate:
Republican- 48 yea, 3 nay
Democrat- 2 yea, 46 nay (+1 Ind)
VP tiebreaker- yea
2001 tax cuts:
House:
Republican- 211 yea, 0 nay, 10NV
Democrat- 28 yea, 153 nay, 29NV
Senate:
Republican: 46 yea, 2 nay, 1 abstain, 2 NV
Democrat: 12 yea, 32 nay, 2 abstain, 5 NV
Now, it seems to me to be an easier task to get 5 or so more Democrats into office to block such bills, rather than starting from 0 with Green candidates, or even better, throwing your vote away and helping to elect Republicans like Santorum. There may be a couple of conservative Dem defectors, but if you elect a Democratic majority, 1) they can afford a couple defections, and 2) they can block such bills from coming to the floor.
(NB- use of the phrase "throwing your vote away" has an effect on Green supports similar to "Klaatu barada Nikto")
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:30 AM
"At the time of the Iraqi invasion, the democratic senators and representatives who supported it (not all of them) were operating on the assumption that weapons of mass destruction existed, an assumption that your [secret] party pushed while fudging the evidence, red-stater."
1) I have no idea why you think I'm a "red-stater". Your assumption appears to be that someone couldn't possibly be genuinely disagreeing with you. That's pretty sad.
2) If you believe any of what you wrote, you're a bigger sucker than they are.
3) Even if Saddam had possessed some form of WMD, he still presented no threat to the U.S., and no justification for the invaston.
"Most if not all of those senators and representatives have since reprented and are, like I am, outraged at the way they were misled."
Right. Outraged! OUTRAGED I say!
"With regard to tax cuts, the democrats were at the time not in a position to defeat them. They did not have the seats. You do know how legislatures work, right?"
Oh I know how legislatures work. For example, there's something called a "filibuster", for which you don't need a majority.
But even the Dems couldn't filibuster the tax cut. You know why? Because half of them voted for it.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:31 AM
Does everyone else suspect Mahan is really a Red who is trolling?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:32 AM
(supports s/b supporters)
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:32 AM
I'm hungry for some tasty red-and-green christmas pie.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:32 AM
I'm talking about voting for someone who represents me on more than half the issues I care about.
And I'm talking about voting for someone who represents me on all the issues I care about. All: even more than "more than half". Now tell me why I should settle for anything less.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:33 AM
220- This word half- I do not think it means what you think it means.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:34 AM
You know why? Because half of them voted for it.
219: Hmmmm. Either I'm greatly mistaken as to what "one half" means, or The Great Soul here is talking out of his ass.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:36 AM
I see -- so you fully support all the Liebermans in the Democratic party.
Over Bush? In a goddam heartbeat.
I can see how people who live in delusion-land, or only interact with the national government through headlines might not get this, but it makes a whole hell of a lot of difference if the chair of Senate Judiciary is occupied by Leahy rather than Specter, or Armed Services has Levin rather than Warner. And Specter and Warner are at least members of the same species as me. I'm saddened that Billmon, who should know better, is feeling this discouraged.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:37 AM
Does everyone else suspect Mahan is really a Red who is trolling?
He's definitely trolling, but that doesn't mean he's not a Green. They often really are this belligerently ignorant.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:38 AM
"Hmmmm. Either I'm greatly mistaken as to what "one half" means, or The Great Soul here is talking out of his ass."
Nope. Go look at the votes. Start with the first 2001 tax cut, the biggest one (about $700 billion I believe). Half the Dems supported it.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:42 AM
Don't vote for democrats! I'm really just like you, only better! Be like me! Throw away your vote! Follow my happy piping tune! Right here, over this cliff!
Posted by Karma Chameleon | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:42 AM
Why would Billmon know better? That the kind of person he is.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:43 AM
please see 219, Karma Chameleon.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:45 AM
208 -- apparently the effect of the phrase "throwing your vote away" on Green supporters is to erase from their consciousness all traces of your post.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:45 AM
188 -- Yeah, it's an overstatement. Clinton played some serious triangulation even in '92, though, and the choice of Kerry over Edwards or Dean was not the most progressive choice. The notion that a Dem candidate who runs left of where they've been is going to do better is maybe more believable than cold fusion, but it's still pretty far out there.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:45 AM
229: Okay, now I think he's just a right-wing troll. Even a well-intentioned idiot probably would've backed down when shown actual numbers instead of insisting that two plus two really does make five.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:46 AM
em, 208 s/b 219
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:46 AM
Mahan, may I kindly suggest that we are at an impasse, and further that you either
1. Make a cock joke and have at the persiflage; or
2. Declare victory and go home?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:48 AM
231: ie an arrogant misanthrope, needing to always see everyone but him as stupid or corrupt, and the the world as going to hell. He's often smart and often morally serious too, but he does have that streak.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:49 AM
Ah - OK I see the numbers. You're right, it wasn't half, it was 12 vs 31 in the 2001 Senate. So not a "half", but it was enough to prevent a filibuster, which was my point.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:49 AM
"Okay, now I think he's just a right-wing troll. Even a well-intentioned idiot probably would've backed down when shown actual numbers instead of insisting that two plus two really does make five."
No, I just didn't see the numbers -- I apologize. But my point is that enough Dems voted for it to prevent any effective opposition.
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:51 AM
everyone but him as stupid or corrupt, and the the world as going to hell
You have to admit that's put his stuff pretty much on target for the last five and a half years.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:51 AM
Can you filibuster a budget? I can't recall, but I don't think it's ever done, or would be wise.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:52 AM
What the Democrats need to do is put more energy between elections getting the message out. Not trimming their positions to what the polls say people think already. The Dems have been moving to the center since 1988, and it's failed, because they've done nothing to keep public opinion from moving even faster to the right.
The Republicans have an enormous, multi-faceted message machine, and the Democrats haven't bothered. Their effort is piddly.
That doesn't help in the short term, and it's not a sure thing that there is a long term. But continuing to try to find the center will continue to be a loser. Even if the Democrats win, they are unlikely to know what they want to do, or to be able to do it.
I'm writing in support of Billmon, not Mahan Atma. You are choosing the weaker opponent, which is a bad sign.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:53 AM
It's not Nader's fault, of course, or even his enablers. I blame the decline in the popularity of baseball.
Everyone knows that the sacrifice bunt is a legitimate play in the proper context, and that only an idiot would call for one when either (a) there are two outs or (b) there's no one on base. And of course there are no situations where a sacrifice bunt is better than a home run, it's just that the probability of getting the latter is low enough that one plays for the former with some frequency, depending on the hitter. And you don't gripe about the hitter -- you take the bunt, advance the runner(s), and see what the next at-bat can bring. You don't prefer to strike out looking, hoping to score better while the other team is at bat.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:54 AM
219-Exactly right.
In addition, since there seems to be confusion on this issue that extends beyond Mahan, allow me to make the obvious point that foreign policy is dominated by the executive branch. Whether that's right or wrong, that's how it works. To make inferences of how a foreign policy would be conducted based on largely symbolic Congressional votes is sheer idiocy. The Iraq war wouldn't have been stopped if John Kerry went on a hunger strike to protest the AUF, and it also wouldn't have happened if Al Gore had been in the White House.
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:55 AM
But wasn't Billmon saying that even if the Democrats get control of Congress in the fall, all that will happen is that they'll get blamed for the mess we're in? I can see thinking that bitterly, and it's kind of true, but it doesn't relieve us of the obligation to get back into power so that we can do something about clearing the mess up, regardless of whether we're blamed for it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:55 AM
"Can you filibuster a budget?"
No.
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:55 AM
246 to 243, and I think CC was making roughly the same point in 244, but sports metaphors puzzle me.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 8:56 AM
244 -- well-built sporting metaphor.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 9:00 AM
OK I have to go to work I and I don't have time for this anymore.
But one last thing: I have to say, it's pretty disturbing (and very bizarre, from my perspective) to see people who simply cannot believe that somebody might be genuinely disagreeing with them - people who assume that I MUST be a red-stater troll solely because I take a different viewpoint than they do.
That's pretty fucking group-think. You all ought to seriously reconsider why it is that you are so 100% ABSOLUTELY SURE of your worldview, even to the point where nobody on the left could possibly be disagreeing with you... It's awfully sad that discourse in this country has fallen so low.
Later. Pile away...
Posted by Mahan Atma | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 9:01 AM
246: Yeah, that kind of thinking just leads to paralysis. At this point, there's never going to be a convenient time to step back into power, because the world is going to hell and it's going to take a serious and concerted effort to hold what we can together, and whenever the Dems get back in charge they're still going to take a good portion of the blame for the Bush-era messes that haven't been cleaned up. But it's morally irresponsible to basically pick up our ball and go home because the other side has fucked it up so badly.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 9:01 AM
Heh, sure. But I think even he has underestimated the mendacity of the Bushies a few times.
He taps into some of the more unfortuante tendencies among US lefties. If most lefty bloggers were like Billmon, and not like Atrios or Chris Bowers say, we/you would be in trouble. I could see him agreeing with that himself, actually. I do think he's a good guy overall.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 2-06 9:01 AM