Hillary’s Cakewalk to Blow
I am (along with a long list of Left U.S. writers and activists) on record against Lesser Evil voting (LEV) in general and in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The standard LEV counsel from left intellectuals seems particularly ill-advised this election cycle. The Republican presumptive Donald Trump is, yes, a revolting white-nationalist and arch-misogynist who denies the existence of human generated climate change and has encouraged racist violence at his rallies. He promises to deport millions of Mexican migrants, close the borders to Muslims, and build a giant Nativist wall on the nation’s southern border “and make Mexico pay for it.” He says he wants to adopt torture as a public policy. He advocates using nuclear missiles against Islamist terrorists in the Middle East, and even calls for the killing of their families. His persona and language drip with violence, abuse, and flippant, sociopathic idiocy. Madness!
All of that would be quite a bit scarier if Trump wasn’t wildly unpopular, bizarre, and too hopelessly narcissistic to function as a serious presidential candidate. He is shunned by many atop his new “party” (if that’s what the Republicans even are anymore), which is in historic disarray at the national level. I’ve already seen my first political advertisement in which an incumbent Republican – U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) – declares early opposition to Trump.
Hillary Clinton is the approved ruling class presidential candidate. She has received the open or tacit endorsement even of many elite Republicans who cannot stomach the ridiculous Donald. She’s out-fundraising Trump by significant margin, a reflection of her sumptuous backing by the financial elite.
The nation’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money and empire want a third Clinton term and they will have it. Trump is no Ronald Reagan 1980. He’s more like the reckless Barry Goldwater 1964, a right-wing nut who (among other ridiculous statements) said that the United States would be better off if the nation’s entire east coast floated out to sea (Goldwater also advocated the use of “low-yield” nuclear weapons in Vietnam and Europe and called for making Social Security “voluntary”).
Trump’s going to get clobbered regardless of what United States leftists do or don’t do in voting booths in contested states next November. I’m not sure he cares. Speaking in Scotland on the day of the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote, Trump mused that Britain leaving the European Union would benefit his Turnberry golf resort and said that running a nation is a lot like running a golf course.
Does anyone seriously believe the American ruling class will let this loose-lipped/loose-cannon clown move his reality television show into the White House? The nation’s remarkably class conscious bipartisan domestic and imperial power elite surely knows that such an event would have calamitous consequences both for the domestic legitimacy of authority and for Brand USA abroad.
It’s Mrs. Clinton’s and the DNC’s imperial and plutocratic cakewalk to blow. Obama and others in the ruling class surely aren’t going to let Hillary’s email scandal put Trump in the Commander-in-Chief spot. It’s on her and her campaign if she somehow fails to seal the deal. The notion that a relatively small group of left progressives in contested states who couldn’t hold their noses and mark ballots for yet another fake-progressive right-wing Democrat will be responsible for Trump’s (very unlikely) triumph is pretty hard to take seriously.
Corporate-Financial Queen of Imperial Chaos
For her part, Mrs. Clinton (who supported Goldwater during her final year of high school) is about as fanatically right wing, corporatist and military-imperialist as a Democrat can be. That’s saying a lot in an era when the whole party system has moved well to the right of the population (thanks in some part to the dedicated corporate neoliberalism and “humanitarian” imperialism of the hyper-mendacious Clintons in the last quarter of the last century.) Few sentient leftists familiar with Mrs. Clinton’s atrocious, power-serving record (which is easily accessible in two handy volumes: Doug Henwood, My Turn [OR Books, 2015] and Diana Johnstone, Queen of Chaos [AK Books, 2015]) are going to have much luck trying to talk their hand into marking a ballot for this monstrous ruling class agent. (This is especially true when the “greater evil” put up under the name of the Republican Party is as unelectable as the preposterous Trump.)
Some leftists lecture fellow progressives in contested states on how a President Trump’s crimes will be on those progressives’ moral hands if they fail to do their nose-holding LEV duty and Trump somehow slithers into the Oval Office. But turnabout is fair play. Will lefties who hold their noses to vote for Hillary on LEV grounds take moral responsibility for the many crimes and outrages she is certain to commit against fellow human beings and the environment – the common good – when she becomes president? LEV leftists may not want to hear that but it’s a fair question.
One argument on the LEV left is that Trump represents a greater threat than Hillary does of precipitating nuclear war and of accelerating climate change. Maybe Trump does. Or maybe he doesn’t. Nobody really knows since Trump has no policy record and seems willing to say anything he wants to from one moment to the next. he longstanding arch-imperialist Hillary seems considerably more aggressive than Trump towards nuclear Russia. She appears to be more likely than the Donald to sign off on the Trans Pacific Partnership, an arch-global-corporatist measure designed among other things to hamstring governmental efforts to reign in the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.
A Lesser Evil is an Evil
All that said, I see no reason to engage in the quadrennial intra-leftist bloodletting over what to do or not do in the latest major party presidential extravaganza. We are saddled with a painfully narrow, constricting, and corporate-dominated elections and party system and political culture that stands well to the right of the American working class majority of people. The binary choices on offer (with all due respect for the third party candidates I always vote for) are both terrible but it’s only natural that people who participate in the process are going to try to make some calculation as to which of two is least awful. And it’s absurd to argue that leftists who tell other leftists to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate as the Lesser Evil in a contested state are swooning for that candidate. How does one “swoon” for Hillary or Obama when one describes Hillary or Obama as “evil” and even accompanies one’s tactical voting advice with statements of abject contempt for Hillary or Obama? Say you’ve been driving for hours one evening without having eaten dinner and you pull into a town to find that the only two restaurants still open there are both filthy, greasy-spoon diners. Leaving aside the arguably superior option of eating at neither restaurant, you will hardly swoon over the one you resign yourself to dining at. Anti-LEV leftists may not like to hear this but it’s a fair analogy.
The Politics of Changing Electoral Politics
Why do we focus so little on the politics of changing the rules of U.S. electoral politics compared to how much we focus on the fleeting voting decision? As Greg Wilpert rightly argues, the standard once-every-4-years intra-left debate on whether and how to participate in the presidential election “tends to appear to assume that the US is actually a democratic country…[and] that our participation in the electoral system could actually make a real difference…It sometimes seems to me,” Wilpert adds, “that every four years progressives spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, and money on the presidential race, which usually leads nowhere, instead of focusing more on making sure that the political system becomes something that might one day deserve the designation ‘democracy.’” The current reigning U.S. political system is an openly oligarchic institutional plutocracy, something that is widely acknowledged even outside left circles.
The specific electoral and party system changes required to make U.S. elections worthy of passionate citizen engagement and the notion of popular government are well known. “We need,” Wilpert writes, “to address issues such as: the influence of money on political campaigns, the lack of any proportionality in representation (first past the post system), gerrymandering, inequality in representation (that small states have about 40 times the weight in the Senate as a large state, and three times in a presidential election), lack of access to mass media in campaigns, etc.” Yes: imagine the introduction of an elections and party system aligned with the notion of popular sovereignty (the U.S. Founders’ worst nightmare, by the way). A Democracy Amendment to the U.S. Constitution anyone?
Popular Movement Politics Beyond the Election Cycle
Here’s another consideration that should make leftists think twice about engaging in their quadrennial bloodletting: electoral politics once every four years is only one small part of the politics that ought to matter most to serious left activists. Listen to the nation’s top left intellectual Noam Chomsky speaking to Abby Martin on teleSur English last fall:
“Take, say, the Bernie Sanders campaign, which I think is important, impressive. He’s doing good and courageous things. He’s organizing a lot of people. That campaign ought to be directed to sustaining a popular movement that will use the election as a kind of an incentive and then go on, and unfortunately it’s not. When the election’s over, the movement is going to die. And that’s a serious error…The only thing that’s going to ever bring about any meaningful change is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don’t pay attention to the election cycle. It’s an extravaganza every four years. You have to be involved in it, so fine. We’ll be involved in it, but then we go on. If that were done, you could get major changes.”
Now, I don’t (sorry) really share Chomsky’s notion that there was all that much noble or courageous about Bernie Sanders and his campaign. And while I always vote (third party left), I don’t really agree that “you have to be involved” in the quadrennial extravaganza (sorry again). Non-voting is all too understandable and widespread given the terrible nature of the choices on offer and the broader, arch-authoritarian U.S. elections and party system. Of course more than half the population regularly engages in a passive and private de facto boycott of the debasing, narrow-spectrum, populace-marginalizing electoral spectacles.
Still, I wholeheartedly share Chomsky’s call for people to participate in the deeper and more meaningful and substantive politics of popular movement-building and direct action beneath the masters’ mass marketed-big money-major party-major media-candidate-centered election carnivals. For all my intense dislike of the Democratic Party and its parade of loathsome, power-serving, and fake-progressive politicos, and (I admit) of U.S. electoral politics, I’ll still take (A) a progressive who practices LEV once every four years but who understands that voting in elections is a relatively minor matter compared to the far more urgent politics of day-to-day grassroots movement-building over (B) a third party politico who privileges electoral politics over grassroots movement-building and direct action…who thinks that politics is all about voting. Give me A over B for every day other than election days.
Agreement Greater Than Disagreement
So, okay, I disagree with some of my fellow leftists on LEV, on the duty of voting, and even (for reasons I’ve discussed at length and won’t repeat here) on Sanders But just how big a sticking point do these differences of opinion really have to be? I agree with most LEV leftists on things that matter more: on the need for new and powerful social movements first and foremost; on the need for major electoral and party system reforms (overhauls really); on the need for single-payer health insurance; on the needs for for the re-legalization of union organizing, for a militant new labor movement, for major green jobs programs and a rapid and comprehensive transformation to clean energy (a transition from fossil fuels to water, wind and solar); on the need to tear down the massive Pentagon System and implement a vast social and environment peace dividend; and on numerous other shared issues and programs; on the evil, injustice, and unsustainability of capitalism, I also understand all too well that the Republican Party and Donald Trump are horrific and evil and that leftists have good reasons to fear the prospect of a Trump presidency (and to have feared a McCain presidency in 2008, a Romney presidency in 2012, a Bush II presidency in 2000 and 2004 and so on). To repeat, I think fellow leftists should be able to advance the LEV argument without being absurdly shamed by other lefties as sell-outs or dupes (or whatever needless term of abuse is hurled at them by others on the Left).
Different Reasons to Passively Prefer Hillary
Barring some kind of wildly unlikely scenario (perhaps the combination of a hard-to-imagine Hillary email indictment and a terrible homeland terror attack made to Nativist, white nationalist order), Mrs. Clinton will be installed as the nation’s 45th president next January, with no help from me in the more presidentially blue than red (but technically contested) state of Iowa this fall. Hillary’s likely ascendancy to the office she has so long and perversely craved is (despite my likely vote for Jill Stein or some other Left candidate) “okay” with me for three basic reasons. First, the presence of a Democrat in the nominal top U.S. job is always usefully instructive for young workers and citizens. It helps re-demonstrate to young folks the bipartisan nature of the American plutocracy and Empire. Those people and others need to see and experience how the intolerable misery, oppression, and ecocide imposed by capitalism and its evil twin imperialism live on when Democrats hold the White House. It helps put some real-life and real- time meat on the bones of the Left’s timeworn but persistently accurate observation that the two reigning U.S. parties are “two wings of the same [corporate, financial, and imperial] bird of prey” (Upton Sinclair, 1904) – and on the notion that the Democrats too are evil (something that LEV leftists acknowledge with their very word choices).
Second, the presence of a Republican in the White House tends to fuel the toxic illusion among progressives and others that the main problem in the country is that the wrong party holds executive power and that popular activist energy must be directed primarily at fixing that by electing a Democrat. (In other words, if McCain had won in 2008, we wouldn’t have gotten the briefly remarkable Occupy Movement but rather a big Get the Vote out for Barack or Hillary movement in 2011. It’s the same perhaps for Fight for $15 and Black Lives Matter if Mitt Romney had won in 2012.) That tends to work against the popular movement-building that Chomsky identifies (correctly in my opinion) as the most relevant politics. Look what happened to the antiwar movement during the second George W. Bush administration: the fade out began well before Obama’s election and as the build-up to the 2008 elections took hold. A Trump presidency (highly unlikely) would no doubt spark an upsurge of street protests in the U.S. but it would also provide a perfect lightning rod for the fake-progressive Democratic Party’s capture of popular militancy and the channeling of that energy into the hopelessly compromised corporate and imperial confines of that party. It needs to sink in once and for all with progressives and liberals that everything still stinks in America when the Democrats hold the White House. And it’s kind of hard for that to sink in when noxious Republicans like Dubya and the Donald hold the White House.
There is, yes, I know, the nauseating problem of Democrats in the White House functioning to stifle social movements and especially peace activism (the antiwar movement may never recover from the Orwellian Obama experience). But here’s more good news about a Hillary presidency and my third reason for not too loudly bemoaning the coming coronation of the sickening corporatist and arch-imperial Queen of Chaos (an event that is very likely to happen no matter what I or any other ZNet reader or writer says or does). Not all Democratic presidents are equally good at shutting progressive activism down. Given her long record as a deceitful ruling class operative and her remarkable lack of charisma and charm, Hillary Clinton will have considerably less capacity to deceive and bamboozle progressive and young workers and citizens than the novel Brand Obama enjoyed in 2007-08 and then Bill Clinton did in 1991 and 1992.
If the race tightens up and Trump seems to have a real chance and my contested state vote becomes potentially more relevant, is there a chance that I would think about voting “for” Mrs. Clinton next November? Yes, perhaps… a very small chance. But if I do end up being forced into that ugly ballot box corner, which seems incredibly unlikely, it will be about the three points I just made, not about LEV.
All that aside, given the war that capital is waging on livable ecology and the common good, it really doesn’t matter all that much which side of the quadrennial LEV debate you back if we don’t get our act together to form “ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don’t pay attention to the election cycle.” It’s (eco-)”socialism or barbarism if we’re lucky” at the current stage of capitalist and state-sponsored ecocide. “The uncomfortable truth,” Istvan Meszaros rightly argued 15 years ago, “is that if there is no future for a radical mass movement in our time, there can be no future for humanity itself.” Do what you want in or out of a ballot box in a contested (or “safe”) state next November 8th. It’s a secret ballot, after all. It’s you own business. But however you choose, and however strong your nose-pins are. if you agree with me and Meszaros, then we are comrades.
Paul Street’s latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014)
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12 Comments
The Next System Project is about generating a mass movement or at least creating and increasing awareness around alternative system building, yet I don’t see much promotion of this by writers, including Paul Street. The P4SP site is about, well building shared program, so the “left”, whatever that is, can actually become something, something united, large, working together, yet I do not see Paul advertising its existence even though he signed the original document, nor participating on the site trying to rectify its bureaucratic stylings, which he pointed out, nor adding or subtracting to it. I don’t see any other writers promoting it either, nor, suggesting that maybe TNSP and P4SP could get together say, particularly given the TNSP site does not have an interactive capacity for readers to discuss shit.
When Albert, and ZNet started up what became IOPS, I rarely saw Paul, or any others, promoting it or suggesting it was a good idea, even though many were, as was Paul, an ipso facto member because he belonged to what was called the ICC (Interim Something {I forget} Committee). Perhaps once, I read somewhere, he mentioned it.
Albert on the other hand was an instigator in the P4SP and IOPS and contributor to TNSP. Both attempts to build unified “left” movement. He promoted both extensively and regularly with not much help from others. Albert, for all it faults that others may levy at it, promoted the idea of unified left action behind Sanders to gain from the momentum and organising that was already there and the media attention his campaign would garner, all to the effect of trying to build a larger movement and momentum. Not many other writers, including Paul, regularly supported such efforts.
Albert starts a left radical school, among much criticism on all sorts of levels. It proceeds and I see many left writers, radicals, intellectuals on the list of teachers, ready to display their knowledge and know how to help us regular hacks get more involved, including Paul, yet, I never really saw them promote the school regularly at all.
Yet, so often I see so many of these writers, intellectuals, anarchists, radicals, socialists, write about the need for a mass movement. It usually appears right down the bottom of an essay critiquing the current system. Usually just a short paragraph or even just one sentence among many more that are devoted to critique and analysis.
Fairly recently George Lakey wrote an essay about the need for visionaries to get together. I haven’t seen much follow up, nor an attempt by many on the radical left to help achieve such a thing by pointing to where these visionaries are (Albert is one) are and maybe even suggesting the same thing. This would be a perfect way to introduce discussion about the US centric Next System Project and its pros and cons. It could also be a good way of trying to connect the P4SP with TNSP perhaps, to enlarge and unify the movement. The pros and cons of P4SP could be regularly discussed as well.
So, from my perspective, and it seems Tyler’s as well, writers, such as Paul, and others, who constantly point out the need for a mass movement, would do well to constantly point out efforts that are already underway, that already exist and possibly others that exist, regularly and repetitively. As regularly and repetitively they critique and analyse the current system. Get behind them, putting all personal misgivings or doubts aside and support them. Otherwise, it merely always looks like the “Left”, whatever it is, is starting from scratch, has to think something up. This same sort of thing applies to vision.
We need vision or alternative models, eco-socialism they say, or Paul does, but rarely do “they” and Paul, mention already existing attempts to come up with models that could help with building strategy. Parecon for instance. Not just once in a blue moon, but regularly. Look to others, like Inclusive Democracy, P2P efforts, the Simpler Way folk. Show links to sites. State how these visions/models link to or are part of The Next System Project and the P4SP initiative. Write essays regarding the pros and cons. Discuss the similarities and differences. Put their money where their mouths are and state which ones they prefer and why.
Maybe even now, someone like Paul, could promote IOPS, even now, right now, or tomorrow, to see if it can be lifted from the disfunktionsal rubble in which it finds itself.
But f course, I’m just talking shit, no doubt.
Interim Consultative Committee. That’s what it was. Paul was one of the consultants.
I totally agree James, a little focus on these fledgling projects would be helpful- these things get started and then hung out to dry, along with us scattered proles who are trying to find a way through the morass.
Apparently the Peoples Summit was supposed to build off the Bernie energy and develop some priorities or focus. Just like NSP and P4SP. Where did it go? Instead we get angst ridden essays about Hillary and Jill Stein and fuck all. By the way, I saw Jill speak at the Break Free action in Washington. Nice lady but James has a better chance of being President.
So let’s do a little prioritizing. Let’s argue persuasively and often (as James suggests) for ecosocialism. What it looks like and how we get there. The left has been stuck on this whole “movement of movements” idea ( now intersectionality), which basically translates into: with our limited resources, let’s scatter off in all different directions! Take a look at one day’s worth of articles on ZNet. We travel the globe looking for brush fires to put out, a labor issue here, a human right violation there, a corrupt bureaucracy, an ethnic conflict, each with its own tiny mobilization and non-profit raising funds to pay their executive director.
Nope. That ain’t happening. Climate justice is the deal, it’s the wheel, it’s the Lacanian Real! So let’s seal the deal and enjoy our next meal. It can be all things for all people; reparations, anti-imperialism, re-distribution, and words that start with Capitals: like Justice, Equality, Democracy.
Thanks MC Troutsky!. Nice to get support from a friend, especially someone from the land of dental floss. Someone who put me onto TNSP via IOPS. Someone who helps me to stay hooked into all this stuff and who is actively hooked in himself.
Peace!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_bKdRqkuQ
Paul,
I think that you misrepresented the”LEV” strategy (a very poor term – lets just call it “strategic voting”). If, in fact, the polls show that Trump has little prospect of winning as you seem to be so certain about, then nobody has to engage in the strategic voting option – they can vote for the Green Candidate or not vote as they wish.. The strategic voting option is only for situations like Bush/Gore in 2000 – where, in fact, the protest votes for Nader (disclosure – I voted for Nader in a safe state) did lead to the electoral votes of a closely-contested state (Florida) going to Bush.
Here in Pennsylvania I have already seen my first Trump TV ad. It is full of OWS – sounding rhetoric. Trump will stand for the working man – end the trade deals, and go after the big bankers on Wall Street.
The ad was brilliant and, if Trump is such a unlikely prospect, why do the opinion polls show the race to be a dead heat? And there is certainly a strong inverse-Bradley effect surrounding Trumps support.
But yes, we all agree that the absolute ley is organizing outside of electoral politics. The only question is the terrain on which we engage in the fight. Generally the terrain will be the most unfavorable under Trump as it was under Bush and Reagan before him.
So let’s say it’s a dead (which is NOT what polls have been showing) and Trump is brilliantly exploiting fake-populism and wins. If we must continue the intra-leftist bloodletting after the election, who then is most at fault: the lefties who couldn’t/wouldn’t vote for a right wing fanatic like Hillary Clinton in a contested state or the lefties who can be counted once every four years to back the Democratic candidate in the name of LEV? It’s kind of hard to expect the Dismal Dollar Dems (DDD) to be less corporate-neoliberal and imperial when the DDDs know very well that leading progressive and left luminaries will have the DDDs’ electoral back (in the name of LEV) once every 4 years. The ever more nauseating rightward drift of the DDDs (aided and abetted by LEV in the absence of serious movement building on the left) is of course basic context for how Republicans can absurdly and dangerously suck up angry populist and working class anger. Lectures from sharp college-educated and multicultural coordinator class leftists on the duty to vote for hideous ruling class monsters like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama probably only deepen the Republicanism of declining white middle and working class folk, sadly. As I said, I have to contemplate the possibility of tactical major party voting if it really is a dead heat (that could in fact be the case of course and God knows Nate Silver has been underestimating Trump from day one) on November 8. In the meantime, the most serious political action is about movement building beneath and beyond the debasing quadrennial carnivals and a core demand of a new popular movement must include an elections and party system overhaul that would make U.S. elections worthy of passionate citizen engagement. It is by the way quite difficult, perhaps impossible, to spark passionate engagement around voting for one noxious candidate to block another noxious candidate. “Rot your teeth with Pepsi, you’ll get a few less cavities than with Coke” is always a tough and uninspiring sell.
“In the meantime, the most serious political action is about movement building …”
We already have a movement. Bernie has millions of supporters, and many of them are also fans of Jill Stein. So, the movement has been built. What next?
It comes down to interpretations of a movement, Tyler. I would say that “movement” is too vague a term. Perhaps we are talking about a socially progressive movement.
I would say the Bernie Sanders support in the US is greatly encouraging, with reservations, say, on his foreign policy, but is it a progressive movement as yet? It could fade away once Bernie is finally, officially defeated, in an admittedly stacked game. And Hillary could well renege on the few promises she has been forced to concede to in her bid to drag voters away from Bernie. But if the organised support for Bernie outlives and developes beyond the presidential election moment then it is a movement. I. e. a progressive movement has to demonstrate some independence of the established role of groups of people in the political process, otherwise the impact of these groups of people can easily be co-opted and/or covertly shrugged off by the established political bureaucracy and its ways and means.
The latter could happen anyway, but independence of the established political process, I would suggest, is a major starting point to defining a politically progressive movement.
I would say that the Corbyn support in the UK is a progressive movement in that Corbyn has established himself as the leader of the official opposition but has embraced, himself, ways of relating to and engaging with his support that are beyond the established channels, and beyond the established manner. He clearly wants and needs a unique kind of support to overcome the dirty tricks of not only the far-right government but the Blairite section of his own party, and to overcome the dominance of our rabid press. He is talking over parliament and over the press, and over many established channels and simultaneously encouraging grass-roots activism and support at the local level. The disenfranchised youth of the UK has responded to great extent.
It’s a unique situation, where the leader of the labour party has more enemies in the parliamentary labour party (PLP) than friends. Fuck em. But the grassroots party membership and labour’s victories in by-elections and mayoral elections and his nuanced campaign in the EU referendum, even though he was on the losing side, have given him a lot of grassroots support.
I hoped this wouldn’t turn into a debate over whether or not a movement exists. The fact is that Bernie Sanders has tens of millions of passionate supporters whose politics may not be perfect, but they can be perfected. Should we not engage with their movement until it has perfect politics? Of course not. Climate catastrophe is imminent.
I have avoided reacting to your writing on the election due to not wanting to exacerbate growing widespread inclinations to polarize rather than seek some serious effective unity regarding tasks at hand. But, in a comment, that hopefully won’t arouse more nastiness from others, elsewhere, I would like to raise some questions that you can address, or not, as you choose.
Why do you, and quite a few others, write as if you think that who progressives and leftists cast a ballot for will override all else they may have done, or may do, and cause them to lose touch with their full prior, often long held attitudes toward clinton, or the democratic party, or capitalism, or whatever, and become shills, unless, of course, they vote in a way you are okay with?
And why do you do it, even as you now also note, that, well, wait, if it is a dead heat, I, Paul, may have to consider strategic voting – which is to say, you agree you would have to do precisely what you have been endlessly railing against…in precisely the manner that others say makes sense?
Indeed, what is the point of your essays on the topic when, in fact, I believe you agree with me, Noam, and others – though you toss around rhetoric that disparages people for the same?
And I would have to ask the same question regarding the writing you were going earlier, when I feel quite confident – and by all means, correct me if I am wrong – that you would have been elated to see Sanders win the nomination, yet, you constantly disparaged people for working for him, supporting him, etc. as if in doing so they were bucking up the establishment, revealing their system supporting true beliefs, being tricked into attention to an extravaganza they should utterly avoid, and so on?
The idea that engaging in strategic voting makes one a Clinton supporter, or a phoney radical, tricked by a circus, is literally a nonsensical claim, a point which ought to be utterly transparent to anyone who bothers to be concerned with even a little accuracy in the matter. If you think I am wrong, by all means, say so. But if not, then why do you give weight to such claims?
If Trump were to win a very close election with left votes, or because those votes did not go to Clinton, I would certainly say that the people who voted that way, whether it was to be true to their emotions, or more admirably it was in hopes of building the Green Party, or for whatever other understandable reason, would, in fact, by their choice, have had a huge impact on history opposite to their intentions. That is just a simple fact. Do you really disagree? If so, let me know, please. But if not, consider the implications.
Similarly, the idea that someone saying we ought to vote clinton although she is despicable and who is also active in various ways in trying to build an opposition is responsible for the Democratic Party being horrible because the Party powers knew they could rely on the person’s lesser evil vote, may make for a good turn of phrase, but I assume you know it is utter hogwash. Am I wrong in that assumption? And if I am write, why would you say it?
If you are concerned with moving the Party – not something I find very smart as a focus but also not something I would for a second disparage – then aren’t the people doing that precisely the people you have been criticizing and even ridiculing for months, Sanders and his supporters?
Your fear about efforts to develop long term effective opposition washing away due to strategic voting would have weight only if precisely what you rail against is the case – that is, that the only thing that matters to who a person is and what a person can be expected to ever do is who the person votes for.
In other words, Paul, I think you, and others taking similar positions, have been taking as a given, and reinforcing – despite all your words to the contrary – precisely the confusion you say we should all reject. That is, I think you and people taking similar positions are helping to cause many to believe that what is most important, and what will most define them as political actors, is literally who they vote for for ten minutes – and not even why they vote as they do, much less what else they do other than vote. Vote green or don’t vote, or whatever, and you are radical and ethical and so on…but do otherwise, and you are not. Can’t we agree that that is just utterly false? And once we do agree on that, can’t we agree that disparaging people over strategic voting is destructive?
The kinds of things you have routinely been saying about Sanders and Sanders supporters, and now about people advocating, among many other thins they do, strategic voting, seem blind to the views and history of most of the people you routinely quote and otherwise know well. I am one such person who you know. I say vote lesser evil in a contested state. Chomsky is another who says that. If you want to say that that means I am or will become a supporter of Clinton, or the Democratic Party, or that I am not really opposed to capitalism, or whatever, fine, say it. Take on someone serious, and do it seriously, if you really believe this kind of claim. But if you don’t believe this type of claim, stop saying it, rebut it.
I don’t say anything nice about Clinton, and I do not remotely feel the slightest pressure in my brain to in any degree at all alter the views I have always had about her. I feel zero pressure to organize and write based on support for Hilary, or any such thing. Is that why you don’t list me as your target? But Paul, in that regard, I am typical, not an exception, among those saying vote strategic.
If you compare my writings, for example, during the campaign – to yours, you will find at a very minimum that I am at the very least as focused on actually saying something useful bearing on organizing, bearing on having a sustainable and radical opposition, as are you. You will see not even a thousandth of a percent diminution of my commitments…and likewise for Noam, and for so many others. So why do you and others act as though this is some kind of dividing line between true radicalism and sham liberalism, or something?
By your words, and many other people’s, I ought to be morphing into what I oppose as a result of my saying to vote Clinton in contested states. Yet it isn’t happening, and it won’t happen. Telling folks that if they decide along with everything else they prioritize, that they should vote against Trump anywhere it will be needed, then they are pro clinton, pro democrat, and at any rate part of the problem, is saying to people precisely what you rail against – that what defines them is their vote in the election, not their views, and not their broader actions.
All this stuff about opposing the duopoly and the rest of it, or about being radical or not, or about being a shill or not, or about caring about the Greens or not, as if these are what distinguishes someone who says vote green everywhere, or don’t vote, but don’t vote clinton in any event – and someone else who says we should vote clinton in contested states, and green, or whatever you may prefer, elsewhere – is not just wrong, as ought to be self evident from looking at who you are talking about… it is also destructive of what is needed, a path that allows people to hear each other and to become as effective as possible, to the extent they wish to participate, in trying to build a lasting opposition that builds on what has emerged so far not least by respecting people’s efforts, especially new people first becoming involved.
I have written essay after essay on the Sanders campaign, and then on the issues that now arise, and not one person who is flinging barbs, and you may not know it, but you are very much such a person, has even acknowledged that those essays exist. There could be a sensible debate going on, leading to worthwhile stances, with mutual respect, about what might be good choices for Sanders, for Sanders supporters, and for long time progressives and leftists, but, for reasons I admit fly right over my head, folks would rather poke and prod…or flail and fight, creating false polarizations, and then castigating others for being at a pole that doesn’t even exist.
I agree with most of what Paul Street said. But, I’m speaking for myself when I say that LEV (lesser-evil voting) and SV (strategic voting) are of virtually no significance. The metaphor that most comes to mind is “pissing in the wind.” Why are so many otherwise talented, good writers devoting so much valuable internet space and time to this political theater of the absurd? In a country of over 300 million people, where a good turnout is barely 60% of eligible voters –itself a fraction of those who are subject to the so-called, representative government – one vote is virtually meaningless. This LEV and strategic voting discussion is a tempest in teapot. If voting was some rational activity it would be one thing, but the vast majority of votes casted will be based on fear and misinformation, i.e. propaganda, provided by a corporate mass-media that has already determined the next president – can you say “Madame President” ? Why is everyone making such a fuss over what can only be described as sham elections? A “sham” according to Merriam-Webster is “something that is not what it appears to be and that is meant to trick or deceive people; someone who deceives people by pretending to be a particular kind of person, to have a particular skill, etc.; words or actions that are not sincere or honest.” Get over it, the elections are part of an electoral charade, where the individual act of voting is virtually meaningless designed to disempower people into believing that they are somehow meaningfully participating in their own governance.
Hillary Cheated http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/04/hillary-cheated/