Why Elections Are Not a Waste of Progressives’ Time, Common Dreams.org, September 16, 2010, by Norman Solomon, quoted verbatim:
A pithy idea — now going around in some progressive circles — is that elections are a waste of time.
The idea can be catchy. It all depends on some tacit assumptions.
For instance: elections are a waste of time if you figure the U.S. government is so far gone that it can’t get much worse.
Elections are a waste of time if you’ve given up on grassroots organizing to sway voters before they cast ballots.
Elections are a waste of time if you think there’s not much difference on the Supreme Court between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, or Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito.
Elections are a waste of time if you’re so disgusted with Speaker Pelosi that you wouldn’t lift a finger to prevent Speaker Boehner.
Elections are a waste of time if you don’t see much value in reducing — even slightly — the extent of injustice and deprivation imposed on vulnerable people.
Or, if you see the organizing of protests, community groups, unions and the like as “either/or” in relation to working for the election of better candidates.
Or, if you think the goal of those who struggled and suffered for the right to vote — seeing the ballot as an essential component of democracy — is outdated and rendered moot by present-day frustrations and outrages.
Elections are a waste of time if you think corporate power has grown so immense that state power has become irrelevant.
Or, if you still believe it was smart when some of us progressives figured we had no stake in efforts to defeat Ronald Reagan in 1980 or George W. Bush in 2000.
Or, if you think it doesn’t much matter whether Californians elect to make possible Senator Carly Fiorina and Governor Meg Whitman, or whether Wisconsin voters remove Russ Feingold from the Senate.
Or, if you’d just as soon bypass any plausible path for electing more genuine progressives like Dennis Kucinich or Barbara Lee to government positions.
Or, if you see the raising of political awareness as an alternative to — rather than intertwined with — the building of progressive electoral power to challenge corporate power.
Elections are a waste of time if you don’t realize or care that the powerful forces behind Wall Street and the warfare state are thrilled if progressives retreat from electoral battles.
Elections are a waste of time if you conclude — due to chronic suppression of electoral democracy — that the ideal of electoral democracy should be discarded rather than pursued.
Elections are a waste of time if you think progressives should opt out of electoral struggles for government power, leaving it to uncontested dominance by the heartless and the spineless.
Tea Party, Not Progressives Make a Statement:
"Tea Party, Not Progressives, Make Statement:" Real News Network audio to the effect that it is the right wing conservatives and not progressives who have made a statement with their enthusiasm and voter turnout. — 10:57
Watch the Real News Network video here.
Norman Solomon is a journalist, historian, and progressive activist. His book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” has been adapted into a documentary film of the same name. His most recent book is “Made Love, Got War.” He is a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign. In California, he is co-chair of the Commission on a Green New Deal for the North Bay; www.GreenNewDeal.info.
More on the Tea Party and elections: The misguided reaction to Tea Party candidates, Salon, September 16, 2010, by Glenn Greewald, a scathing indictment of Tea Party values, excerpt quoted verbatim:
The “tea party” movement is, in my view, a mirror image of the Republican Party generally. There are some diverse, heterodox factions which compose a small, inconsequential minority of it (various libertarian, independent, and Reagan Democrat types), but it is dominated — in terms of leadership, ideology, and the vast majority of adherents — by the same set of beliefs which have long shaped the American Right: Reagan-era domestic policies, blinding American exceptionalism and nativism, fetishizing American wars, total disregard for civil liberties, social and religious conservatism, hatred of the minority-Enemy du Jour (currently: Muslims), allegiance to self-interested demagogic leaders, hidden exploitation by corporatist masters, and divisive cultural tribalism. Other than the fact that (1) it is driven (at least in part) by genuine citizen passion and engagement, and (2) represents a justifiable rebellion against the Washington and GOP establishments, I see little good in it and much potential for bad. To me, it’s little more than the same extremely discredited faction which drove the country into the ground for the last decade, merely re-branded under a new name.
Concerned about the Tea Party’s strength? Read Women of the Tea Party: Who Are You, and What Do You Want?, The Huffington Post, September 16, 2010, by Peggy Drexler.
Recommended: Enthusiasm Gap Haunts Democrats as November Nears, Open Salon, September 13, 2010, by Kevin Gosztola.
See The Enthusiasm Gap: How Dispassionate Dems And Fired-Up GOPers Are Defining 2010, Talking Points Memo DC, September 13, 2010, by Evan McMorris-Santoro.
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