People here do realize that McCain is an unquestioning supporter of the war in Afghanistan AND the one in Iraq, and that electing him means giving up on stopping either war, don't they?

And people here do realize that the man is rabidly antichoice and antigay as well, don't they?

I don't entirely agree with it, but I do understand it. It's a bit like when the SSM debate (and particularly the Desjarlais incident) were raging. Some posters (many of whom are no longer here) were slamming the NDP and Jack Layton for not taking a harder line against Bev Desjarlais. Some NDP partisans reacted by accusing the critics of giving the Liberals, who had far more openly homophobic MPs in their caucus, a 'free pass' on the issue. The critics (not unreasonably in my view) countered that if the NDP was going to take a 'holier-than-thou' stance on SSM and paint itself as the sole defender of rights for gays and lesbians, it had better get its own house in order.

As I say, I don't necessarily agree with the Obama-bashers or their tactics, but I understand where they are coming from. And no, they are most certainly not giving John McCain a 'pass'. Trashing McCain on a leftist website isn't really going to spark much serious debate. I don't think there's anyone here who would seriously support McCain over Obama.

Edited to add: yeah, what Boom Boom said in about two sentences.

[ 04 August 2008: Message edited by: ghoris ]

The fact is (as you well know) that there is a big controversy among progressives, liberals, social democrats, and leftists over support for the Democratic Party in general and Obama in particular. There is no controversy among those constituencies (who make up the majority of babblers) over support for McCain.

I have no problem with criticism of the man's stances on the issues. My only points of disagreement were and are:

a) On the question of third-party or independent presidential candidacies;

b) On the assertion that everyone in the American left who opts to cast tactical antifascist votes for Obama is, essentially, a sellout or a coward.

c)On the apparent belief that the election of McCain will not be any major hindrance to building a strong progressive movement in America.

It just seems to me that the implications of a McCain victory are being ignored by some people just as studiously as the implications of a Nixon victory were ignored by the New Left in 1968.

[ 04 August 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

If they had held their noses and gone to the polls, the bombing of Cambodia and the violent overthrow of Salvador Allende would likely have been avoided, and the Vietnam War might well have been four years shorter. And it's much less likely that J. Edgar Hoover would've been allowed to stage the COINTELPRO program.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
If they had held their noses and gone to the polls, the bombing of Cambodia and the violent overthrow of Salvador Allende would likely have been avoided, and the Vietnam War might well have been four years shorter. And it's much less likely that J. Edgar Hoover would've been allowed to stage the COINTELPRO program.

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The change must be made from the bottom up. But those working from the bottom up have the chance to succeed when the Democrats, with their great flaws, hold the White House.

The only way to break out of this situation is for those who want alternative parties to put their energies first into working for electoral reform.

I'm as dissatisfied with Obama on the issues with anybody else. But it goes without saying that voting for a third-party can't push him to be better on the issues.

quote:

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But it goes without saying that voting for a third-party can't push him to be better on the issues.

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No it doesn't.

quote:

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
It's simply a case of already knowing that the Republicans are scum, like our Conservatives. The Democrats (and our Liberals) present themselves as progressive alternatives, and deserve tighter scrutiny for that very reason.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
I'm as dissatisfied with Obama on the issues with anybody else. But it goes without saying that voting for a third-party can't push him to be better on the issues.

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quote:

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Originally posted by M. Spector:

The fact is (as you well know) that there is a big controversy among progressives, liberals, social democrats, and leftists over support for the Democratic Party in general and Obama in particular. There is no controversy among those constituencies (who make up the majority of babblers) over support for McCain.

And so your title question and opening post is merely a disingenuous attempt to once more beat the drums for Obama as the saviour who will deliver your people from McCain - at least for the next four years. What you really want is for Obama to be given a free pass. That's not going to happen.

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Exactly.

quote:

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:

Exactly.

This trying to make us ignore what Obama says (and who owns his candidacy, especially) and support him because he isn't a Republican is as dumb as if someone were to say, "Well, that Hitler's a bad guy, but Mussolini isn't Hitler, so progressives should support Mussolini."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Briguy:

I doubt this point. If enough serious progressives poll for McKinney or Nader, Obama will have to reconsider his rightward shift.

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Would you settle for a pie in the sky hope for a change in the US political climate in five or ten years, when the air becomes unbreatheable, drinking water is scarce, drought and floods make growing food difficult, oil runs out, fish become extinct, the third world takes up arms once again against imperialism, China calls in its loans, and a flood of climate-change refugees are knocking on the door? If you think the USA can afford business-as-usual for the next 8 years, with President O-bomb-a and his coterie of neoliberal hack advisers, then go ahead and cast your absentee ballot for him.

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All of which would be valid points If Nader or McKinney could actually win. Since they can't, and since we've already established that voting for people who CAN'T win can't prevent any of the above, all of that is sophistry.

It won't be possible to stop the scenario you speak of or to have any progressive gains whatsoever in the next four years at least(and you and I both know much longer in reality)if McCain wins.

If the result was something like 50% McCain, 35% Obama, 15% third party, all of the above would be locked into place for good. Nothing progressive could be built on such a result. Why would anyone think a result like that(which is the best you could hope for) would be a reason for optimism?

[ 05 August 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
If the result was something like 50% McCain, 35% Obama, 15% third party, all of the above would be locked into place for good. Nothing progressive could be built on such a result.

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I guess we might as well pack up the NDP and go home.

While we're packing, perhaps you could tell us how ANYTHING progressive (i.e., nothing to do with the Democratic Party) can ever be accomplished in the USA without mobilizing at least 15% support along the way?

quote:

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
I think McCain probably will win the next election...

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quote:

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
You heard it HERE first.

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If McCain won by that 15% margin, he'd take every electoral vote. That would mean that progressives would be so overwhelmingly demoralized that forward progress wouldn't be possible.

You'd once again have nothing but defensive battles. The left can't grow while it's having to fight to defend past gains. Defensive battles can't led to advances.

And there'd be nothing at all holding the far extreme right accountable. They'd get to dismantle the remainder of the New Deal, weaken civil rights laws to the point of meaninglessness, and appoint enough Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe V. Wade(thus causing the death of the feminist movement) and permanently enshrining discrimination against LGBT people and the dominance of white males over all society.

People like me would survive(because straight white male gentiles can't be victims of political repression) but the half of the country that rejected McCain's agenda would have no way of fighting back.

And it goes without saying that, with the size of the U.S. war machine, armed resistance would be impossible.

That's the reality you'd be saddling us with in the kind of electoral result you want in the U.S. You'd guarantee that the reactionaries could never be stopped.

That's why responsible leftists in the U.S. can't
accept the idea of splitting the antifascist vote.

A McCain administration would mean a left-free, resistance U.S.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
That's why responsible leftists in the U.S. can't accept the idea of splitting the antifascist vote.

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[ 05 August 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

There won't be free speech or any chance of political growth.

I've never said Obama was perfect. But voting third-party can't make him better, and the third-party candidates can't win. Thus the votes for them simply disappear down a rathole and no message is sent.

The only way to change things is to get the GOP out of the White House, then work for electoral reform and mobilize to push for more radical change. That's the only path that leads to anything.

I've never said "vote Obama and then shut up and take what you're given without a peep". I've said get the extremist anti-democracy party out of executive power and use the space thus created to build a left. Why act like that is some sort of unspeakable betrayal? Nothing left is going to be grow in the U.S. while McCain is in. What the U.S. was like after 1973 bears me out on this.

[ 05 August 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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Yes. If McCain is elected, all constraints on the Homeland Security machine will be gone. They'll be nothing left to stop political repression. All McCain federal court appointees will vote like robots to uphold everything he does.

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You can't claim Obama will defend when the stakes are high that which he has already betrayed while the stakes were low.

[ 05 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

If you call for support for third-party candidates, you have to be prepared to defend the argument that there's nothing to lose. Neither you nor Spector can defend that argument with regard to U.S. politics.

You're asking us to leave the poor, the workers, women, the Rainbow and LGBT people completely without protection from repression. You know that they're all going to get immiserated without respite.

The religious right will be unchecked.
The power of management over labor will be unchecked.
The ability of corporations to ignore environmental regulations will be unchecked.

This is simple reality. There will be no remaining constraints on right-wing power if McCain wins. There will be no way to fight back.

The notion that it's no big deal if McCain wins is blase, naive and irresponsible. Only people who are of the priveleged race, class, gender and orientation have the luxury of making it.

[ 05 August 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

What your saying to progressives, and the many causes that fall under that umbrella, is that they must support the other right wing party and then maybe have a few crumbs thrown at them.

But in practice, is isn't true. Democrats routinely back down on important issues for fear of being painted as "soft" on something. They play to the perception they have of how the media will portray them then any solid base of principles or policy agenda.

The Democrats have a long record of abandoning and betraying the progressive constituency. It is high time progressives said "enough" and put a high price on their votes. Vote McKinney and have a spine.

[ 05 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

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Need I bother to add in conclusion that leftists believe in organizing and fighting alongside ordinary people for justice and democracy at home and abroad, not in holding up as saviors great leaders from (whatever their alleged humble origins ala Obama or John Edwards) within the privileged "elite"? It was probably inherent in the nature of Obama's keynote assignment that he would finish by saying that the swearing in of Kerry and John Edwards as president and vice president will allow America to "reclaim its promise" and bring the nation "out of this long political darkness." It's inherent in my leftist sense of what democracy and justice are about and how they are attained to say that a desirable future will be achieved only through devoted, radically democratic rank and file struggle for justice and freedom and not by hoping - or voting - for benevolent "elite" actors working on behalf of any political party and/or its corporate sponsors.

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The left never grows while waging defensive battles.
We couldn't grow while having to continue to expend all our energies simply defending what remains of the New Deal, which is what we'd have to be doing if we did what you asked.

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You know we couldn't build a progressive movement during a McCain presidency.

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The civil rights movement was born and raised in an atmosphere of hate and adversity and achieved its greatest moments at the crest of that adversity.

The Democratic Party like all status quo parties only ever sell a false hope. It is like religion: wait; just wait, and you will be delivered unto the promised land. Yeah, after your dead.

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You know we couldn't build a progressive movement during a McCain presidency.

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Who do you think you're talking to?

The left in the USA has been in a coma since about 1908. The closest you came to having a government initiate progressive anything was under FDR.

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In the United States of America we are allowed to pick a president from Column A or Column B. We may have a Republican or we may have a Democrat. There are differences in style and demeanor, or course, but both parties are more interested in perpetuating their dominance than they are in making the world or this country or the lives of its citizens better or happier. The press is almost wholly committed to this affair, even producing editorials from time to time in praise of the glories of “Our Two-Party System.”
Third-party candidates are variously flaky, far-out, insubstantial, light-weight, or sometimes just too short. They are always, by definition and prophesy, unelectable. Do not vote for one, the parties and the press tell us. Don’t waste your vote.

So we dutifully vote for a Democrat or a Republican and get one or the other. And we get, over and over and over again, corruption, lies, waste of resources, willful ignoring of desperate problems, wars and invasions and illegal clandestine operations oversees, and erosion or violation of domestic rights. In our country children still go hungry.

My desperate liberal friends tell me there is a difference between the parties. And so there is. The amount and degree of misery is apportioned differently under the alternating regimes, but every fundamental problem or issue that has irritated or devastated this country and planet since I was a child has gotten worse, and not one has been solved or retired or even markedly improved in my almost fifty-nine years.

All my life I have seen the establishment parties in control and I have seen war and lies and theft and incompetence and murder, and more poison in the air and water and land, and more money in the pockets of the poisoners and thieves and their friends in high places. And every Democratic and every Republican presidential candidate has given over his or her normal, whole, sane life, made bad deals with evil interests in furtherance of that candidacy and with the results that you and I have seen. I hold no faith or optimism that turning out these admittedly disgraceful Republicans and letting Pelosi and Reid and Rahm Emanuel and an assortment of investors and CEOs in consultation with whatever operatives Obama or Clinton will bring to the meetings build a government will get us out of the pattern our love of these parties and their methods has laid so heavily on our land and our lives.

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Those on the left who think there’s just a “dime’s worth of difference” between corporate-Coke Kerry and corporate-Pepsi Bush will not get far with African-Americans this fall. Most issue-attentive blacks know that small variation between the two major-party presidential candidates translates into some very big disparities for people of color and those at the bottom of the nation’s deep race and class wells. They know that one person’s dime’s worth of difference is another person’s dollar’s worth and that that dollar’s worth can be the difference between keeping one’s head above water or not. Kerry might be Coke, but many blacks think, Bush is crack.

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In fact, if you read the whole article I excerpted it from, you will see that Street was one of those leftists who held his nose and voted for Kerry. He's also going to hold his nose and vote for Obama in November.

Does that make you more disposed to accept his opinion?

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It's inherent in my leftist sense of what democracy and justice are about and how they are attained to say that a desirable future will be achieved only through devoted, radically democratic rank and file struggle for justice and freedom and not by hoping - or voting - for benevolent "elite" actors working on behalf of any political party and/or its corporate sponsors.

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quote:

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
...Does that make you more disposed to accept his opinion?

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quote:

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My desperate liberal friends tell me there is a difference between the parties. And so there is. The amount and degree of misery is apportioned differently under the alternating regimes, but every fundamental problem or issue that has irritated or devastated this country and planet since I was a child has gotten worse, and not one has been solved or retired or even markedly improved in my almost fifty-nine years.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Left J.A.B.:

After all cutting off your nose to spite your face really worked with the last two Democrat candidates. I mean that worked out really well didn't it over the last 8 years.

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The Real McCain 2

[ 17 September 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:
McCain and Palin will make Crazy George the Second appear somewhat sane.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sven:

How is that possible? I thought GWB was the very pinnacle of evil — worse than combining the nastiest component parts of Stalin, Hitler and Satan himself?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:

No better or worse than Bill McKinley through Truman and the pipe to the doctor and the madman - mass murdering psychopaths all.

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Voting for any candidate that does not want to completely overhaul the political system from the ground up is a waste of time. It doesn't matter what candidates would like to do, or what their morals would indicate. It doesn't matter how scummy they are or aren't, or the reasons they want to be president, or what promises they are making to what constituency to get elected. Let me lay it down for you: it doesn't matter who is president.

In this day and age, presidents have zero autonomy. All their decisions are going to be given to them by the same evil cabal of corporate interests that ruled the Bush administration, in the interests of "expediency". "I'll never get re-elected if I don't appease these powerful interests, so I have to do great evil now to do some good later." That later good will never come. It will literally not be allowed. Last time a president tried that, they shot him.

More specifically, Obama is a lost cause because the Republican machine has such a stranglehold on the electoral apparatus that it makes a Dem victory a virtual impossibility. With the illegal paper-trail-less voting machines, and the excising of voters in Democrat-rich demographics, and a whole host of dirty tricks that remain unprosecuted and unopposed, there would have to a Dem landslide to actually win an election.

Kerry was beating Bush just before the election, then on election day he suddenly dropped a few points. Then directly after the election he was suddenly more popular than Bush again in polls. Gosh, he dropped a few points just for that one day long enough to lose the election. What a coincidence! Sorry buddy. I know it's a hard pill to swallow, but it was no coincidence, and if Obama actually got it together to "beat" McCain (which looks like it won't happen anyway) he still wouldn't beat him.

Progressives in the US haven't figured out yet that they don't live in a democracy anymore and are wasting all the time and energy that should be used restoring it on these mock elections.

quote:

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Originally posted by Uncle John:
YEEE HAWWW!

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quote:

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Kerry was beating Bush just before the election, then on election day he suddenly dropped a few points. Then directly after the election he was suddenly more popular than Bush again in polls. Gosh, he dropped a few points just for that one day long enough to lose the election. What a coincidence!

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Jake we have talked about before and we disagree. Your memory of the polling going into the the election is off.

This is taken from the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/usatodaypolls.htm

Kerry/ Edwards Bush/ Cheney Nader/ Camejo Other (vol.) None (vol.) No opinion
Likely Voters
2004 Oct 29-31 ^† 47 49 * 1 * 3
Final Allocated Estimate 49 49 1 1 -- --

2004 Oct 22-24 ^† 46 51 1 * * 2
2004 Oct 14-16 † 44 52 1 * * 3
2004 Oct 9-10 † 49 48 1 * * 2
2004 Oct 1-3 † 49 49 1 1 * *
2004 Sep 24-26 44 52 3 -- * 1
2004 Sep 13-15 ‡ 40 54 3 2 * 1
2004 Sep 3-5 45 52 1 -- * 2
2004 Aug 23-25 46 48 4 * * 2
2004 Aug 9-11 46 48 3 * 1 2
2004 Jul 30-Aug 1 45 51 2 * 1 1
2004 Jul 19-21 47 46 4 * 1 2
2004 Jul 8-11* 50 45 2 * 1 2
2004 Jun 21-23 47 48 3 * * 2
2004 Jun 3-6 49 43 5 1 * 2
2004 May 21-23 47 46 4 * 1 2
2004 May 7-9 45 47 5 -- 2 1
2004 May 2-4 47 47 3 * 1 2
2004 Apr 16-18 44 50 4 * * 2
2004 Apr 5-8 43 47 4 1 2 3
2004 Mar 26-28 45 49 4 -- 1 1
2004 Mar 5-7 50 44 2 1 1 2

Well I can't get the formatting right, the two numbers after the † are the Kerry and then Bush numbers. Just go look at the site they have a nice graph on the site as well, which I could not figure out how to cut and paste over.

In the Sept-Oct time frame there was only one poll showing Kerry ahead, and that was by a single point, and the final poll shows them tied.

I think there were lots of dirty tricks by both sides, but I am not convinced that they stole the election. The really worry in the US system comes from the amount of money required to run. There is no way to raise that sort of money and not owe people.

[ 17 September 2008: Message edited by: Rand McNally ]

Huge Voter Protection Effort Launched

quote:

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Huge Voter Protection Effort To Be Launched Today
By Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld - September 17, 2008, 9:35AM

A group of civil rights lawyers is launching what it bills as the largest voter-protection effort in American history, planning to raise and spend millions of dollars to station hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers at polling places across the country to help voters having trouble with the polls on Election Day.

The non-partisan group, called Election Protection -- to be announced at a press conference later this morning -- is being headed up by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a legal group established in 1963 in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement.

While the group ran a similar effort in 2004, the new effort will be on a far grander scale, reflecting a growing sense that private efforts to combat the bureaucratic ineptitude and premeditated shenanigans that continue to mar the voting process just haven't been up to the task.

"This will be the largest voter protection effort in the history of the country," project head Jonah Goldman, a longtime civil rights and election reform lawyer, insisted in an interview yesterday with Election Central. The backbone of their effort is a hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE, that voters can call to have their questions answered, and to report problems.

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I can't find the link but I've read of two so far. Something about the Repubs getting the lists of bank foreclosures in traditionally democratic voting area and planning on going to the polls with it to challenge people on the basis of their proper addresses.
I believe the Obamba campaign has filed some sort of suit over this.
Also something in Florida about them sending out letters to people registered as Democrats and saying that no they're actually Republican with confusing message on what that means.

Florida Mailing