Dark Bilious Vapors

I know many Greens and Naderites regard this as just a sophisticated version of corporate prostitution--DLC extra lite. Some ultra-left purists apparently prefer an impotent anger to the inevitable compromises and disappointments of working through, and sometimes in, the Democratic Party. Others wrap their third-party hopes in dreams of proportional representation, or instant runoff voting, or some other procedural deus ex machina that will deliver them from political irrelevancy. To the former group, I've nothing left to say. I've walked your path and I've seen where it leads--to the graveyard of lost causes. I'm too old now to strike poses, and too angry to wallow in my own helplessness. I don't just want to fight, I want to win -- not simply for the sake of winning (this isn't a soccer game) but to turn the tide, to start pushing the conservatives back, after all these long years of being on the defensive. And the only way I know how to do that is to create a political coalition broad enough, and strong enough, to beat the Republican machine. If you won't help, then you are irrelevant to me. I don't give a damn what you do or who you vote for. To the latter--to those who still cling to electoral reform as the road to a third party promised land--I would submit that the Popular Front is your only hope of reaching Zion. As it is, you're caught in a logical trap: Without a viable third party to provide the political muscle, the existing Republicrat duopoly will never allow electoral reform. But without electoral reform, a third party will never be viable in this country. The duopoly owns both the chicken and the egg.
--Billmon

Len on 07.09.04 @ 06:23 AM CST