(updated below)
As part of my attempt to bridge the gaps between my own counter-establishment views and those who argue for voting for the Democrats, I shall follow John Caruso’s lead and ask, “What could the Democrats possibly do to lose your vote?”
…I’ve found that that’s a useful question. When I’m talking to an angry Democrat—filled with righteous fury at my ignorant, foolish, idealistic, naive refusal to go along with their chosen party—I’ll sometimes ask: is there anything whatsoever the Democrats could do to lose your vote? Is there any policy so amoral, any strategy so calculating and unethical, any crime so odious that you’d feel you could no longer support them in good conscience?
If the answer is “no”, you’re dealing with a cultist and there’s no point in continuing the conversation. But if the answer is “yes” you can say “I feel the same way, and they already have crossed the line for me”—and then proceed to explain why, calmly and rationally. Once you’ve established that you both accept the underlying principle, it’s just a matter of degree.
It’s probably unfair for me to ask everyone else to go first, so let me take the first puff of the peace pipe and offer some things that Obama or any Democrat, for that matter, could do to earn my vote.
- Run on a platform calling for the US to lead the way in the kinds of massive project it would take to actually do something about bringing, and keeping, world atmospheric carbondown to 350 parts per million
- Fight for something genuinely approaching universal health care for all Americans
- Promise to pull all forces out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and anywhere else we’re sending troops to kill and die in an illusory “Great War on Terror” which is actually a “Great War on Innocent Civilians”
- Call for government transparency, restoring habeas corpus, obliterating warrantless wiretapping, investigating the high government crooks of the last decade and holding them accountable for their crimes
- Anti-corporate rights pro-labor populism
See, I don’t need “purity” from my candidate. If a mainstream candidate had taken a strong, positive stand on any one of these positions– even just one of them, while being just as waffly and triangulating as they have already been on all of the others– I’m pretty sure I could have been persuaded to vote for them after all.
Your turn. Assuming that they haven’t already… What could the Democrats possibly do to lose your vote?
UPDATE: Three people in a row have answered, “Run against a better Republican.” So to people who feel this way (if any more should show up), I’d like to offer a slightly different question:
What would be an example of a policy which, if both major party candidates supported it, you wouldn’t be able to support either of them in good conscience? (Or do you have no such lower limit?)
Interesting points. Also interesting that the last point will probably completely crater our economy, finishing the jobs that our “free market” neocon Bushite leaders are well on their way to completing.
Perhaps the Republicans and the Dems aren’t too far apart after all……
Any Democrat who becomes legislatively pro-life loses my vote.
I can probably think of a few things, starting with “Be Joe Lieberman.”
Since the Dems have already lost me, here’s what they could do to get me back:
Swear that they will never again use or condone or ignore misogyny as a campaign tactic.
That’s about it, really. I know that they will always fail to go as progressive as I like on economics or international relations or the environment. But I’m not giving my vote to any Democrat who profits politically from misogyny.
My working theory is that since we effectively force 95% of the population to choose from just two parties, the United States is really a sort of confederation of two oligarchies.
This theory explains the otherwise-bizarre overlap in the two parties’ legislative actions (as opposed to their
marketing slogansplatforms) and is why popular movements effect political change only by ‘taking over’ one of the major parties, as with MoveOn/Netroots, the religious right, “neocons”, etc. The real political action takes place in local elections and federal primaries; by the time of the national election you’re just choosing which constituent state will control the superstate.I’m not a partisan (I’m also not a US voter – I just live here). The Dems lose my support when another candidate is better than theirs, quite simply. I’d rather have Spector and Snowe as my senators than Lieberman and Musgrove, for example.
Thene, but Lieberman is not a Dem.
A plurality-wins system will tend toward two-party rule, because any viable third party acts as a spoiler. On a national level, this makes third-party candidacies into jokes. If we had proportional representation, or even instant runoff voting, things would be different, and I’d vote for the candidate or party which actually represented my views. They aren’t, and I don’t get to do that. I vote for the candidate who comes closest.
On a national level (local elections are another matter), I wouldn’t vote for the Democratic candidate if they didn’t represent my views better than the Republican candidate. Simple as that. If the choices are both so horrific that I can’t bring myself to vote for them, it’s time to start driving north.
But the question, I suspect, isn’t “what would it take to make you not vote Dem”, but “what would it take to make you vote third-party”. For the Presidential race, my vote doesn’t matter, since I’m in a non-swing state. I vote for whoever represents me the best… but the whole reason I do so is because my vote won’t be influential.
There’s not going to be a massive defection from one of the major parties. The system isn’t built like that, and unless we get a new constitution, it won’t be built like that. It’s why I vote in the primary; it’s far closer to a real choice than the general is.
Mjaybee, it seems to me that handing trillions of dollars to the business crooks who got us into this economic mess in the first place, in a spectacular rebranding of the Trickle-Down Theory, is far more sure to crater our economy than spending that same money on aiding the innocent common people who are being hardest hit. Money which, I’ll add, obviously existed before and was capable of being spent directly on the good of society all along.
MH, policy specifics please. What, in particular, is it that you don’t like about Lieberman that, if other Democrats did it, you would cease to support them?
Red Queen, I accept your position, but I’m surprised that it’s not their agenda which loses them your support. Or is it that you think the misogyny of their campaigns will flow over into every thing they touch, and so it’s inextricably related to their treatment of women in public policy as well as on the campaign trail? That seems pretty reasonable actually, assuming I follow you correctly.
Stacy– one oligarchy, not two. They work for the same people– each other– they just have little disagreements sometimes about the best way to serve themselves, and they each have their own favored tactic for snookering the peasants into supporting them.
Thene, whether instinctively or consciously, I feel you’ve used a nice bit of jiu-jitsu to avoid actually answering the question I posed. You are leaving third parties out of the equation in your reasoning, yes? In other words, you’ll only consider candidates on their merit if they’re either Democrat or Republican. If so, I guess I was clumsy to phrase the question only in terms of Democrats. Let me ask it a different way. If I haven’t misconstrued you, you want to support the better major party candidate; or, if they’re both bad, you’ll take the one that’s a little less bad than the other one. I get this. So the question is: What would be an example of a policy which, if both major party candidates supported it, you wouldn’t be able to support either of them in good conscience? (Or do you have no such lower limit?)
Grendelkhan, don’t even worry about third parties right now, or what you view as realistic there. May I pose the same question to you that I just did to Thene?
Quin – first, I added a link on my blog post. Sorry about that, I just must’ve gotten distracted.
Second, I really do think it’s two oligarchies, differentiated by branding. One sells itself as progressive, future-oriented and intellectual. The other sells itself as stolid, “values”-oriented, sober and skeptical. Again, that’s branding not (obviously) reality. Clearly, elected politicians of either party are mainly interested in prolonging their tenure.
Quin, the point at which I can no longer stomach voting for either major-party candidate is the point at which I start trying to leave the country; if I’m that far out of the mainstream, I don’t really belong here, and I don’t have the stomach to become a rabble-rousing activist. For me, the figurative Rubicon is crossed if/when the Democrats invade Iran. It’s different for everyone, though, I suppose.
Things Democrats could do to lose my vote:
Basically, be worse* than the Republican, as noted above. As long as the Republican would be worse, and the Republican has a non-negligible chance of winning, it will be very difficult to pry my vote away from Democratic. I am less pro-Dem than anti-Republican. Mostly I just want to see the conservatives decimated, denounced, discredited, and left on the ashheap of history.
It actually would not be difficult for a Dem to lose my vote, as long as I wouldn’t be helping a conservative’s chance of winning by doing so. If you show me an election that’s between the Democrat and some Independent or third party candidates…well, we can talk about that, and I could be convinced not to vote Dem – probably over half the time, since for any given candidate, there’s going to be plenty I disagree with, either in opposition to his/her policies or just because they don’t go far enough.
But I will NOT run the risk of letting conservatives back into power. “Never again,” I say. Exactly which stripe of liberal (corporate/mainstream Democrat-style, or green liberal, or democratic-socialist liberal, etc.) wins is vastly less important to me.
*98% of the time this will mean “more conservative”, but not always; I don’t buy that all political stances fall into a neat spectrum of liberal vs. conservative.
I should add that what it would take for the Democrat to lose my vote does not necessarily imply my support for any particular third party. What it would take for a third party to gain my vote is a whole other discussion.
Stacy– we’re arguing semantics now. Let’s just say “right on” to each other and keep moving forward.
Grendelkhan– A very fair answer. Just out of curiosity, what happens if Bush invades Iran before the end of the year, and Obama doesn’t immediately pull out? (By the way, I certainly would never be able to fault anyone for leaving the country, if I’m not making any plans currently to move back there myself!)
MH– so it looks like you’re more or less in line with Thene and Grendelkhan’s original answers. You mind if I extend the same auxiliary question to you? Which is:
Sorry MH, just to clarify, I say that you are in line with them because of your big caveat “It actually would not be difficult for a Dem to lose my vote, as long as I wouldn’t be helping a conservative’s chance of winning by doing so“. After all, just how often do Democrats NOT run in races where the other leading alternative is a conservative? Maybe it happes in local races sometimes, but I was hoping for answers that are applicable to all levels of the voting system.
When the system has narrowed itself down to two choices, voting for the least-bad one doesn’t preclude you from working to break or change the system at the same time. So I’m unlikely to be inclined to vote for “no one” because I could still fight the system while trying to reduce its evils at the same time. And I don’t vote Democrat because I self-label as Democrat or because of a single issue, I vote Democrat because they’re somewhat more likely to reduce total pain/death/suffering, so as long as I think that’s true, I’ll vote for them. When I don’t, then I won’t.
But simply saying the system’s broken and not voting and not creating a viable alternative action (be it a political party or large-scale protest mechanisms or what have you) will never accomplish any of the goals we would like to see happen. You have to do SOMETHING.
The best way I see us making change in America is to follow the civil rights model and just pound the fuck away from inside the system. MLK was right. Shit slowly gets better, which is more than we can say about the results of sudden, massive leftist revolutions that usually just become excuses to install even bleaker totalitarianism. (See the French Revolution, Russia, China, etc.)
Even today, we’re closer now to universal health care (Obama’s plan will be a necessary compromise to move the nation that direction long-term). We’re closer now to real environmental progress. We just defeated all anti-choice measures. We elected a black president. (Antigone’s right that we failed on gay rights again, though). None of this is happening fast enough, but as far as I can tell, this is as fast as we can move this reluctant nation to change. I’m all ears for how we can do it without voting if there’s a way. Until then, I think we should rally as many people who *do* vote to make as much noise as possible about what matters to them. It’s a dull instrument but I don’t see any others lying around.
Above all, Quin, I want you to talk about what we *can* do as opposed to what we shouldn’t do (like vote for the least-bad candidate). How do we make change? Gimme a post on THAT.
I try to leave. Which I’m kind of fucking terrified of, for a couple of reasons. I just managed to eke out a slice of middle-classness for myself and my partner; I have a job with bennies and a good place in the industry. Hell, my grandparents floated across the Atlantic nearly a century ago to escape a nation that was actively trying to set them on fire, and if/when I have to leave here, it’ll be just that little bit sadder for me.
But, y’know, principles. If I don’t stand for something, I’ll end up conscripted as a prison guard, wondering how I got here while gunning down yet another attempted-escapee. No, a line must be drawn.
Hey Marc– answer the FUCKING QUESTION!!!
Just kidding.
I know you’re attempting to in your own way.
Well, I suppose you’re right that voting for the system’s safely vetted candidates doesn’t preclude you from attempting to change the system, but it certainly can hamper your efforts to do so, since you’re helping to uphold the way that destructive system works by engaging it on its chosen terms. In the most direct example, let’s say that you really did think that working towards making third parties viable was the best plan forward. How could voting for a main party candidate instead ever help your cause, exactly? It couldn’t possibly!
I am so on board with adopting the MLK model of massive civil resistance. But, MLK did not work from within the system. If he is perceived to have done so today, that is because the system he helped to change has embraced his image (and watered it down) over the years since his death. MLK organized groups of people in how to thwart laws which he felt were unjust. He and his followers were regularly arrested, beaten, or even killed, sometimes by official members of the system that he worked to alter. This is not working from within the system, at least not as I understand it. (An interesting question I’d like to learn the answer to: what candidates did MLK endorse, if any? What were the terms of his endorsement?)
I’m certainly not calling for a massive leftist coup d’etat resulting in an entirely new government, as you appear to imply. As I wrote in your recent thread, I also support incremental change– I just disagree on the increments we should be fighting for. You said it yourself to Antigone: “No one should have to ask nicely for their basic rights.” And no one should have to ask nicely for anybody else’s basic rights, either.
I ain’t no expert on history, but it’s starting to seem to me that it almost doesn’t matter what political system people live under– Democracy, Communism, Dictatorship– big changes beneficial to the common people only come when the overlords start to feel like their survival is threatened. Usually this comes in the form of the commoners becoming unruly, as in the massive civil unrest in the early 30s that led FDR toward the New Deal. (Occasionally the path is more indirect, like when Lincoln just happened to time the freeing of the slaves for when it was most likely to help the Union quell the Southern Secession– but I don’t see a practical lesson we can draw from that right now.)
So when you say things like
, I think you are misunderstanding me a little bit. It’s not that I think that not voting for system-approved candidate will accomplish our goals all by itself… but it’s a necessary first step.
(1) As I see it, elections are a fatally huge distraction, and the ruling elites like it that way. It gets masses of people to Get Involved, but they do so by fighting for candidates who go around promising to uphold the current, harmful system in the most inspirational language possible. So people expend all their energies fighting for what’s merely a lesser evil, and the press spends all their time covering it all (at the expense of covering even ongoing wars where Americans die every day), and then once the election’s over, there’s always the next one to worry about. Back on the hamster wheel. If more people had their consciousness raised that it nearly always hardly matters which candidate they support, sure some might check out altogether.. but others would look for ways they can actually push for change in a way that might make more of a difference.
(2) By giving your vote to any candidate without making them court you for it, they’ll never change in a direction that serves you. I know I disagree with many Dems on this point, and I won’t rehash the arguments right now since it’s not really what this is all about right now.
And I agree with you completely about the need to support viable alternative actions– I’m becoming more inclined toward the “large-scale protest” route at the moment. And as for your desire to see me post more in that direction, well, that’s my desire too. Frankly, I see us able to work together very effectively on many many things. Just don’t ask me to support things I actively disagree with just because it’s the lesser evil. Take MLK, and Gandhi, and Thoreau, as your models. I mean, Gandhi didn’t go around telling the “nicer” Brits that, okay, they could stay in charge of India as long as the crueler ones left town.
We have to get over is the passive urge to sit back and accept The Man’s assurances that he’s on our side. The Man is never on our side. That’s his nature to lie to us little people– in a way, it’s not his fault, that’s just the system. But there it is. And right now Obama is about to become the main face of The Man. Instead of supporting him and our other leaders in their usual bloody, humanity threatening, status-quo preserving inclinations, let’s work to push them in a better direction.
Wow Quin, you gave a lot of points that I agree with.
I didn’t vote in this election and because I’m black, I got an earful from my parents. The whole “people fought and died for you to have the right to vote” thing. What I’ve realized is that voting hasn’t done much for me and that MLK had more power organizing and fighting with Civil Disobedience than I’ve ever seen with voting. Gandhi was able to bring about change without voting.
I’ve felt that change doesn’t happen without a crisis. The New Deal happened because of a crisis. Bush being able to go to war – a crisis. Had 9/11 happened he never would have had the same power to begin with. Passing $700 billion bailout for Wall Street – a crisis. Big change happens during a crisis incremental change happens other wise.
I don’t view them as a lesser of two evils but the same evil. Even if one was voting for the lesser of two evils, why vote for evil period?
Wow, we fundamentally disagree over whether or not MLK worked within the system. Civil disobedience is totally within the system — it’s protest. Since when is that outside the system?
Just to follow up on the King discussion, he was not only a leader in huge voter registration drives in the South, he firmly believed the ballot was one of critical pieces to achieving equality – he wanted every black person to vote. King believed that voting was the key to showing your political strength. This is the opposite of your contentions, Quin.
Basically, the future I’m envisioning is one where the liberals/Democrats just keep obliterating conservatives/Republicans in elections until there’s effectively a one-party state, then having that center-left party split into two or more parties, the centrists and liberals, and let those duke it out, with the centrists becoming the new conservatives. This requires the complete vanquishing of Nixon/Reagan/Bush-style capital-c Conservatism as a necessary first step.
Well I guess maybe we do have different ideas of what constitutes “working within the system”. Just because King’s resistance was non-violent doesn’t mean that he wasn’t sometimes working outside the system. True, he did pursue the legal routes available from within the system; but when those didn’t work, he went outside the system. When King directed Rosa Parks to not give up her seat on a bus, he was asking her to break an (unjust) law. And whenever he was arrested for his role in organizing illegal boycotts, he was, indeed, breaking (unjust) laws himself.
If you want to define Civil Disobedience as working “within” the system– because Thoreau and Gandhi and King were all willing to be arrested when they broke unjust laws, and so therefore were willingly “participating in the system”– what would be an example of working “outside” the system for you? Breaking unjust laws and then going on the lam?
On the King/voting issue, absolutely he fought for universal suffrage– because it was effectively being denied to his people. If you look above at what I actually wrote in my post above, you’ll see that I am not saying “no one should ever vote for anybody”– I’m saying “Democrats need to earn my vote before I vote for them”. I’m pretty sure King felt similarly in that regard. Surely it’s self-evident that the right to vote means nothing if you are not able to vote for changes that matter to you.
MH, all right, that’s an interesting vision for the future. How would you answer the question given today’s world, where the conservative movement, though bruised, still may yet recover?
It might be worthwhile to draw a distinction between electoral activism and liberal activism, the former being focused on getting people to vote in a particular way, and the latter being focused on influencing the behavior of state institutions generally. They’re often conflated, and I feel like they’re both somewhat overemphasized, but I feel like electoral activism is overemphasized to a much higher degree.
This is kindof a semantic quibble, but I don’t see how that can be. What then would qualify as being outside the system?
I think that depends to a substantial degree on what you’re trying to change. Sometimes altering the behavior of the state is a good way to enact that change—particularly if we’re talking about reducing the amount of violence performed by the state—but (1) influencing the state’s actions takes a lot of energy, and (2) the scope of its influence is severely limited.
Civil rights are a good example, actually. I don’t think you can suggest that the civil rights movements worked purely within electoral politics, but it was definitely directed at legal justice—equality in the eyes of the state. And that was certainly an important accomplishment, but if we’ve learned anything from the last 40 years, it’s that one of the most sweeping and powerful acts of state reform in the history of the nation was not enough, or anything like enough, to achieve justice.
Well, King believed that high black voting rates were part of the solution. And it’s also the case that massively increasing black voter turnout was itself an act of resistance against white supremacy, given the amount of effort white leaders put into disenfranchising the black community, and given how important that disenfranchisement was to their marginalization.
The situation today is not directly comparable, particularly since the most marginalized groups in this country are gleefully denied the right to vote.
Quin:
Right. If the right to vote doesn’t benefit you or others, why vote? Voter turnout has been low for the last few decades, as that because Americans don’t care or because they don’t have the opportunity to vote for changes that matter to them? It’s amazing to me that politicians that have been in the system, have caused numerous problems, etc. are able to run on platforms of change. How is electing the same politicians to office change?
Here’s how the inside/outside the system distinction works for me:
Outside the system activities are focused on fundamental alterations to the system and how it works as the way to affect change. For example, we have a two-party system of government. Trying to topple a political party or actually making some other political party viable would be breaking/changing the system, which I would consider outside of it. Also, I think you could argue that the system is corporate-controlled, so trying to break or change that would also be outside the system.
But simply trying to change laws by civil disobedience? That’s just getting the system to listen to you and make its changes accordingly. Consciousness shifts don’t *do* anything to the system (unless they’re focused on altering it), and you could argue that it’s long been part of the American system of government to use civil disobedience to make your point and get the powers that be (lawmakers + corporations, for example) to change law.
The question is basically, do you need to alter the system to get the change you need, or can you use the system to get the change you need? If the system stays the same — the same controls and power structure remains, then I think you worked inside the system.
Now, maybe in/out is just a semantic debate. But I do firmly believe that MLK was intending to work inside the system. He met with LBJ frequently. And he didn’t just want folks who couldn’t vote to be granted the right — he wanted them to use it *in concert* with other actions. Which is precisely what I have been arguing for from the beginning.
thebigmanfred:
Ah, this is the same exact argument I keep on having. I wish more people who disagreed with us here could at least respect us for the fact that we’re trying to adhere to a strongly moral principle just as much as they are.
Marc:
Hey, I want that too. I’m with you on that. If I were MLK, I’d meet with LBJ and other political leaders too, on either side of the aisle if they’re willing to listen. I just wouldn’t ask my supporters to vote for any of them unless they committed to some of the things we were asking for. According to your argument, MLK should have asked the black community to vote for Democrats even if every single one of them opposed universal civil rights– as long as the Democratic platform was marginally more beneficial to some black people than the Republican one.
Marc, let me pose this question to you– essentially a more vivid version of the same question I’ve already asked (and this one also suggested by John Caruso). Let’s say the Democrats ran on a platform of killing and eating children. If the Republicans’ platform suggested torturing the children before killing and eating them, would you still support the Democrats?
It’s a bit strange to me that running for office as a Green is working “outside the system,” whereas torching police cars and breaking windows at the Gap is working, “inside the system.”
I should say that I’m primarily taking inside v. outside to be similar to liberal v. radical, which may not be exactly how you’re using it.
But in that sense, I think trying to alter the institutions of state, no matter how substantially, is a liberal goal. The underlying philosophy is that those institutions, while not perfect, are okay, and we can certainly make them better and improve the lives of many people by doing so. Maybe one way of improving those institutions is to open them to third parties; maybe your activism project is creating a viable third party. That’s still liberal reform—change from within.
In radical terms, though, it doesn’t matter if there are two parties or ten if the state is supported by violence. The notion is that our present institutions cannot become just without being remade utterly; the gist of radical politics (at least, the radical politics I focus on) is in developing and constructing new institutions. I see radical activism as working outside the system—working, I almost want to say, as if the state didn’t exist (except, of course, the state does exist, and is very very large, and any radical politic has to address the whale corpse in the room). I think of radical feminist consciousness-raising, for example, not as a way to get people to vote for candidate X or to cause the state to act in Y way, but as a way to help people build institutions in their own communities, independent of the institutions of state.
Of course, this divide, while useful, is definitely artificial. Neither individuals nor activist communities are not going to be completely radical or completely liberal. I identify with radical politics, but I’ve volunteered for NARAL, as have many of my
fellow terroristsfriends.Well, I think MLK intended to do whatever worked. Which isn’t just quibbling—there are reasons why those tactics worked for that movement, and though there’s definitely a lot to learn from that, those same tactics might not be effective (or might not be effective in the same ways) for other movements.
I should say that as long as the slaughter was humane, the rights of abattoir workers were maintained, the environmental impacts of the processing plants were minimized, and strong precautions against coerced pregnancy (including coercion through economic factors) were in place, there’s no reason not to avail ourselves of this delicious and nutrient-filled source of sustenance and assorted animal products (baby gelatin, baby leather).
Torture, however, is right out.
I think that’s a wonderful and useful way of looking at it.
Even if the children might be withholding information that could stop a suitcase nuke going off in Times Square?
(Yes, I’m still awake. Awake yes, thinking straight, no.)
Well, we needn’t go that far. I believe the official feminist position is that if they’re male children, you just have to really want to torture them very much, and then it becomes ethically acceptable.
When your actions are designed to get the system to do what you want — ie work the way it has always worked to pass/repeal the laws you want, then I see that as using the system. Even violence to get the system to listen to you can still be seen as supportive of the system; after all, you’re not acting out at the system itself, you are just trying to get it to use its mechanisms to give you ant you want. I guess I just think that as long as you aren’t fundamentally altering the system and how it works, you’re simply looking for ways to make it do what you want. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
On the baby-killing argument, there are two responses. First, if, like imperialism, there was an eternal tradition of powerful nations chomping their young and we were fighting an eons-long battle to change that, I would say that we would all of us be looking at the same level of difficulty changing it as we do imperialism. So I would probably be voting against the pre-kill torture and then campaigning to end the killing as well. Secondly, if this was instead a new development, then I would say the system has totally failed and we’ve moved backwards reeeeally far instead of forwards and I would probably actively engage in revolution. So would pretty much everyone else.
But we are moving forwards against this battle in my opinion, or at least we have a chance to. And if you would stop dismissing many of the things Obama says in favor of highlighting only the ones that alarm you, I think you could see the same. If he fails to reduce our imperialism at all, then I will be willing to re-evaluate my position that we can make progress through the system. But I see enough potential here to say that he was worth voting for.
I should say that I’m not opposed to seeing protest—violent or otherwise—as engaging with a broader political system, and thus being a form of liberal activism (in fact, I’m inclined to think that it is). It’s mostly that I also see third parties as engaging with that system—certainly, the American state has a place for third parties, and they are for the most part trying to effect some kind of change involving the state, even if they aren’t actually trying to get elected.
I think we broadly agree on that point, though.
I think I disagree that there’s nothing wrong with liberal activism. Sometimes, it’s on balance a good idea—i.e. one that helps people—but I think we need to be aware of the violence inherent in the state, even and especially when we try to use it for good.
Right. Violence is inherent in the state, every state at present basically, and needs to be removed. But I guess I am just a believer that it will take almost as long to undo this truth as it did for it to be fused to politics and government. I don’t see another quicker path to this fundamental change, though I am open to one if it can be presented.
Quin:
When I hear the lesser of two evil argument, it’s usually from people I don’t actually think believe they are choosing from the lesser of two evils. Usually people who make such an argument are highly critical of one party and one party only. If you’re not critical or very critical of both parties then you’re probably applying the “best candidate” test, which is completely different from the lesser of two evils.
I hear you on the adhering to a strong moral principle part, which is why I’m not bothered that people vote on those grounds. I do wish however, that people would consider that those that they’ve voted for, Democrats and Republicans, have both caused a great deal of harm in this country and that there are better options them both of these parties. I wish Americans would wake up to the fact that if the government was a business then most of the employees in it would deserve to be fired. The national debt alone would be grounds for firing. I hope for the day where political parties will not run and ruin this country, where people elect people with good ideas and not people beholden to a political machine.
Well, on the one hand, you have the removal of state violence, and practically speaking, the dissolution of anything like what we now call a state. And I agree that that’s a very, very long term goal, and that the global system of capitalist imperialism is not likely to collapse any time soon, no matter how many times the Market St. Gap gets its windows smashed.
But on the other hand, there’s the question of how we address problems on the ground—like, say, domestic violence, or the violence imperialist oppression. And we can look to the state and say, “well, we can pass this or that legislation, and try to get more funding for this-and-that program.” That approach can be effective in a limited way, but it has serious problems, particularly when we talk about leveraging the criminal justice system—notably, we increase our reliance on the state as it is, and our programmes inherit some of the systems of oppression built into the machinery of state.
And that’s where I think radical activism has a strong role to play. We can build institutions within our communities to address the problems affecting them without invoking the institutions of state. These radical institutions are almost definitionally more localized and cellular, but that gives them, ideally, the flexibility to respond to actual problems people are having right now in a way that avoids replicating the oppression and violence of state institutions. The value of radical politics is particularly acute in instances (and I’m not just talking about the U.S., here) where state actors are part or all of the problem, and where however much you might want to change the actions of the state, you need your self and your community to survive as the state lumbers itself into better shape (or not, depending).
I like it! Local level radical activism. I can get behind this entirely.
The jiujitsu was unintentional but you read me more or less right – I’m from a country where there are three viable parties, and the least powerful of these is regularly used as a refuge for disaffected supporters of the other two. It finishes in second place in most constituencies, naturally, so voting third party is usually a strong, productive thing to do.
But in America, where there’s no such outlet for useful protest voting? Well, don’t ask me, I only just got here. I’ve voted three times, for two different parties, but none of them were tight races and only one was a general election; it’s pretty easy to lose my vote, and in local elections in 2006 the Lib Dems managed it with one stupid offensive mailer about how people like me were ruining the area. (If it had been a national race I might not have been deterred by that, but if you’re running for local office on the platform that I am the problem, then fuck you too).
There has never been a point in my adult life when I’ve considered myself to be a loyalist to any party. It’s all very well saying ‘Vote for a small party!’ but what if none of those represent my views either? They don’t. Just like the big parties, they’re a collection of priorities and opinions that I may or may not agree with. All votes are a compromise. So in a tight race for an office that mattered I would likely vote for the major candidate I hated least – particularly if the other major candidate was threatening me personally, eg. with an anti-choice or anti-queer platform. (I think that tends to supercede all else, too – if I had to pick between an anti-choice Democrat and a pro-choice Republican, I’d take the Republican every time, because you can lobby someone who disagrees with you about how the numbers add up, or about foreign policy, but you can’t lobby someone who thinks you have no sovereignty over your own fucking body).
But if they were both anti-choice queer-bashers, and it was a really tight race, and it was for something important? Well, they’d both equally want to destroy me personally, so I’d look at the next level – how many other human beings they want to destroy, or maim, or kill. I’d rate them on doveishness and on emphasis on other issues that actually matter and aren’t just about moving numbers around. If it’s still a tie I’d go third-party. If. But only as a protest, because there’s no third party I like the look of much either.
Yup! With the caveat that “community” may not be equivalent to “local” in the sense of being geographically localized, thanks to the tubes. (Projects like Food not Bombs and The Backup Project require some kind of physical presence and action, but a lot of design and organizing can happen in a global community).
Thene– so (again, if I understand you correctly, and please correct me if I’m misrepresenting you), basically, you’re with Marc– you’ll look at the total destruction which both candidates promise, and no matter how destructive they both are, you’ll vote for the one who promises to hurt or kill the least people (even if it’s only a little bit less)? And it’s only in the case of a tie that you’ll choose to vote for a party that’s polling low enough to not appear to have a realistic chance.
Violet/Marc: “Local level radical activism” also appeals to me. Far more than trying to get the vote out for candidates who cause the oppression I’m hoping to fight. And in fact, it is probably the best route for bringing about the larger changes we’d all like to see.
Thebigmanfred: If you’re looking for a “lesser-of-two-evilist” who really, truly does understands that it is the lesser of two evils which they support, you need look no further than Punkass Marc. His response to the child-killing argument is, I think, the best that I could ever imagine hearing.
Marc: Your response to the child-killing argument is, I think, the best that I could ever imagine hearing. You have successfully defused the visceral repugnance of child-killing by comparing it to imperialism before I had a chance to. But, I would still contend that, even in the “they’ve killed children for generations, so only fight for small change” scenario, agreeing to support the Non-Torturing Child-Killers until all child-killing can be stopped just means you’re supporting child-killers. The fact that you fight against child-killing when you’re not busy handing out flyers for the NTCK doesn’t change this fact. To me, it makes more sense just to do the same fighting against child-killing without giving support to any bad guys.
But, obviously, this is utterly and transparently the same argument I’ve already been making, so I’ll let it drop for now unless I can come up with a fresher argument.
This is impossible.
You live in an oppressive society, which means that you, presently, as you sit in your chair, are contributing to and benefiting from the oppression of others.
Voting for a third party does not change that.
I filled in the box for McKinney/Clemente with a ballpoint pen made with plastic produced from vanishing petroleum stores and iron mined by workers who, like villagers who live around the mine, will generally live to be about 30. The pen was assembled by Chinese children working in slave-labor conditions, and shipped to me in a rusting container ship that pushed three species of marine life closer to extinction.
All this happened so I could feel a bit better about symbolically not supporting, y’know, oppression and environmental destruction.
Here, let me reword:
Forgot to mention, too– nice comment.
You’re right, living in an oppressive society means some forms of oppression are more or less unavoidable. The only completely pure option is to withdraw from that society, and that’s assuming that’s something that your oppressive society would even allow you to do. Still, there are some things that society says you MUST do; and they say that you must do these things because they give strength to the status quo. Now, if you, say, stopped paying taxes, the penalties for that are steep enough that it’s tough to fault citizens who continue to do so. But when it comes to voting for mainstream candidates who promise to uphold the oppression in every meaninful way, shape and form, nobody’s going to throw you in jail if you don’t. (Yet. :p) So… don’t!