Sorry, I’m expressing many of these arguments for the first time, and so I haven’t learned how to express them concisely yet. I’ll work on it!

TO EVERYONE WHO’S POSTED HERE THIS WEEK:

I need to give a big THANK YOU.

It feels really good to argue this stuff out. Keep on criticizing my viewpoints if you disagree– I LIKE it. I’m a glutton for punishment. No, but seriously, I’ll never know if I can really trust my own views unless I see if they can stand up to other people’s challenges.

Please trust me that I *am* listening to you, and not discounting your opinions out of hand. It’s just that I *will* keep on fighting any opposing arguments, until such time as my own argument might fall apart. THEN I’ll change my opinion.

In fact, I really relish it when that happens. Nothing gives me more pleasure than that feeling where I’ve suddenly discovered an entirely new viewpoint that I didn’t have before. So whether you’re on my team, or think I’m out to lunch– as long as you’re making intelligent arguments, you’re making me just SO happy!

There’s no clearer illustration of the dangers of Democratic rule than the fact that supporters of the Democrats will express such concern for the deaths of Iraqis killed by a Republican, but will endlessly rationalize the deaths of Iraqis killed by a Democrat (if they’re aware of them at all; as Orwell observed, a partisan “not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”).

Damn, but that Orwell fella said some good shit sometimes.

I’m really no expert on FDR, but it seems to me that his sins were of a much greater magnitude (even without going for controversial routes like arguing that he knew about Pearl Harbor in advance). He was elected to four terms in office, and considering the police state apparatus he was busily putting in place while he still lived– as well as the totalitarian actions he had already been taking– this country may have been quite lucky that he bit the dust when he did. He consciously lead his administration to dehumanize the enemy to a degree unprecedented in American history (well, except for Native Americans), he laid the foundation for the modern military-industrial complex, and he took prisoner over a hundred twenty thousand American citizens and residents (of Japanese, German, and Italian descent) for no good reason, a majority of whom lost nearly everything they owned as a result. So yeah, not so sure FDR was really any better than some other president would have been at that time, especially once the war got rolling in Europe and FDR got that greedy glint in his eye.

Not really sure anymore how this applies to arguments about why we should vote Democrat, but it sure is fun to talk history sometimes!

The surest way to political irrelevancy is now and always has been by pricing your vote out of competition, as the history of third parties in this country amply demonstrates. Even if you don’t think the proposed alternatives will work, for whatever reason, it’s impossible to deny that the Green party approach of trying to punish Democrats has been worse than ineffectual - it’s downright counterproductive. A reality-based solution would take that recent history into account and adapt to it, rather than just trying the same thing again, but harder.

MH, if none of the mainstream choices please me at all, why should I care whether my vote is “priced out of competition”? That’s not a competition I care to win anymore, then. It’s a mug’s game.

As for recent history, please remember that there is more than one way to analyze it. Nobody has all the answers; what is clearly the only “reality-based solution” to you, may be but one of many realities.

The Democrats came very close in 2000 and 2004, but they lost. Please correct me if I’m mischaracterizing you, but it appears to me that you are not blaming the Democrats for their loss. You’re not even blaming their direct enemies, the Republicans, who worked actively and with more resources than anyone else to make the Democrats lose. No, you’re blaming third parties.

So, we see the same history. You say, “If only all those third party members had voted for our centrist Democrats, and then the Dems would have won!” I say, “If only the Democrats had gone just a little bit left, and then so many more people would have been inspired to actually vote for them!” See, glass half-empty, glass half-full. Both reality-based.

I’m an optimist, so I’m just choosing the glass half-full. The Democrats CAN earn the votes of people like me who are currently disaffected. They just have to work for it a little! But if they’re not willing to bend to the left at all, then not only I’ll hardly care if they win– they’re probably just going to lose anyway. Again.

And the path to political relevancy is paved by guaranteeing your vote to a political party, no matter what they do? I can just imagine those negotiations:

————————————
DEMOCRATS: So what do we need to do to get your vote?

VOTER: Well, let me make it crystal clear at the outset that you already have my vote, and let me assure you that there is absolutely nothing you can do or say that will change that, so long as you’re at least marginally better than the Republicans! I wouldn’t want you to be worried about that unnecessarily. Now, about what I want…

DEMOCRATS: …Oh, hey, look at the time. We’ve got to be going. Thanks for voting Democratic!
————————————

You’ve got it exactly backwards. The surest way to political irrelevancy is now and always has been by making it eminently clear that your vote can be counted before the election has even begun.

And regarding this:

…the Green party approach of trying to punish Democrats has been worse than ineffectual…

I find it interesting that both you and Amanda appear to conceive of voting for Greens (or any third party, presumably) solely in terms of the potential effects on the Democratic Party. Which makes it clear that no matter what you’re doing, you’re still just Democratic partisans—entirely in the Democratic orbit, and constrained by a world view that sees the Democrats as the only possible reality.

(By the way, the “Green party approach” isn’t to punish Democrats—it’s to grow the Green party by participation at the local and national levels. Exactly as any other independent political party would do.)

Quin: Your point about deaths from sanctions couldn’t possibly be more important. There’s no clearer illustration of the dangers of Democratic rule than the fact that supporters of the Democrats will express such concern for the deaths of Iraqis killed by a Republican, but will endlessly rationalize the deaths of Iraqis killed by a Democrat (if they’re aware of them at all; as Orwell observed, a partisan “not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”).

People who are “non-voters” turn into voters if you actually give them a candidate who inspires them.

If you believe that, then you have to ask yourself: so why haven’t the Greens done this?

Case in point: me.

Well there’s your problem: you’re projecting your own reasons for not voting [for Democrats] onto tens of millions of other people.

I would like to note that while the Democrats don’t deserve your vote, the Republicans DEFINITELY deserve to taste defeat. So bear that in mind if you’re going to choose your vote based on deserved-ness.

he IS a Sacred Cow– not to 100% of the public, as you are seeming to think I meant, but to those partisans who just want a Democrat to win.

Hey now, there are plenty of us partisans who just want the Republicans to lose, too! And yes, this means by corollary that the Democrat has to win. But don’t confuse the process with the end goal.

Franklin Roosevelt oversaw an Office of Censorship, made plans to detain hundreds of peaceful political enemies, imprisoned war opponents, and interned 110,000 innocent Japanese Americans. That’s all commonly accepted, yet swept under the rug.

Yeah, and Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, and Washington owned slaves, and my grandfather just didn’t trust black people. So what? We still admire and respect these people because they left the world a better place than they found it.

The surest way to political irrelevancy is now and always has been by pricing your vote out of competition, as the history of third parties in this country amply demonstrates. Even if you don’t think the proposed alternatives will work, for whatever reason, it’s impossible to deny that the Green party approach of trying to punish Democrats has been worse than ineffectual - it’s downright counterproductive. A reality-based solution would take that recent history into account and adapt to it, rather than just trying the same thing again, but harder.

The Democrats did in fact screw the pooch by leveling milder versions of the same deregulation scams as Republicans. But were they as bad? No.

Sorry, not clear on whether you’re referring to the specific recent past in a way I’m not quite getting or to the general deregulation that’s been occurring piece by piece over the last 20 years. But whichever, the Dems were definitely as bad– because the Republicans kept on inviting them to play their game, and the Dems kept on agreeing to, over and over. Most recent case in point: the bailout bill. (Which only thankfully failed due to a rift in the Republican ranks, and the American people finally getting active about something. Funny how it wasn’t the *Democrats* who listened to the activists…)

And the Al Gore wouldn’t have invaded Iraq is a major, unavoidable difference to the tune of hundreds of thousands of lives.

I’ll save my full argument here for my impending Gore post. But please remember– though it’s easier to block out this inconvenient truth from one’s mind– that Gore was an enthusiastic supporter of the sanctions which, even according to the UN’s own figures, killed over a million Iraqis, over half of them children, during his tenure (and according to others it was half again as much). And that he was one of the most vocal proponents of bombing Iraq… at least, when it was Democrats who were doing it.

I think there is a strong case for moral equivalence here; the only difference is that Bush has been spending a lot more money and killing a lot more American soldiers to do the same nasty.

“Support Democrats! They’re more EFFICIENT murderers!”

On the subject that I know well, you see how this works. Right wing extremists declared abortion to be “murder”, which opened the window enough on the right for right-leaning politicians to allude to “life”.

I’m not sure the situation you’re describing is properly analogous to the question of whether it’s an effective Overton-Window-opening tactic for extremists to directly criticize politicians for their stances. Unless you can point to pro-choice Republicans that the Far Right stayed away from criticizing, I don’t see how your example demonstrates historical precedence. (I mean, maybe you can. Please correct me if I’m wrong.)

In the meantime, I’m going to go on believing that publicly expressing leftist viewpoints (unfortunately “radical” as they apparently appear to Centrist Democrats, but for the most part within the mainstream of public opinion), even if it takes the form of criticizing Democrats, will always minutely nudge the Overton windowframe a bit further left.

Do you agree with me that public criticism and debate of the candidates’ stances is healthy and good? If so, then please disagree with my (and the Left’s) particular criticisms of Obama because they’re wrong (and show us why). But don’t disagree with it just because you’re afraid it hurts your preferred candidate’s chances.