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No Policy Change: In CNN Interview, Harris Refuses to Condition U.S. Military Support for Israel
(www.democracynow.org)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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politics
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How does that saying go? “If ballot access were candy and nuts we’d all be eating steak!”
There are absolutely ultras in America but it’s not a position necessary to recognize that the Green Party isn’t leftist. I’d say at the very least the greens can’t be called leftist for the same reason the dubious moniker “progressive” isn’t any marker of the same: their platform is explicitly not left.
They are the leftist party available.
There are other parties that are both more left, more explicitly align with my politics and do not have a dubious history of triangulation.
The greens are not the best available option any more than the democrats are.
That's dumb. If you think the greens are just as bad as the Dems, then your brain is broken. PSL has ballot access in 17 states and they're the only other leftists running a candidate. Green party has more ballot access in 37 states and holds a significantly higher chance of meaning anything. But maybe in another 3 or 4 election cycles the PSL will have the ballot access that the greens do now.
I didn’t say the greens are as bad as the dems, I said they’re not the best available option any more than dems are.
Im not gonna rake you over the coals too much for it, but maybe the language around ballot access and chances isn’t the best way to pull people to your particular electoral construction given it’s the same set of ideas that supporters of the democrats are using against both of us.
They use that argument because it's valid and holds weight. The only other option besides bringing in a third party with ballot access is violent revolution and that was a lot cooler of an idea before drones existed.
If it’s so valid then why aren’t you voting democrat?
My problem with the idea that we all ought to vote for some party whose policies and politics are far from our own in order to win isn’t that it denies the blossoming of everyone’s special flower ideas, but that it collapses all the effects of a third party into winning and losing.
Getting a third party to win is the first step into breaking the US political duopoly and fixing the broken electoral system. The first changes a third party will make is regulations that allow third party wins in the future. It's about making progress towards the left. Democrats do not represent progress, but an upholding of the same tired political duopoly that gives capitalists power. The green party, regardless of whatever ideals you still hate about them, are very intent on changing the electoral system and ending the duopoly.
So that’s a real specific problem I have with the greens: they have no theory of power.
Green politics of all stripes are predicated on, at best, recognizing that there is a system in place and that if it were different, things could be different. I tend to take issue with the specific causes and effects involved in the things greens want to change up, but even if I didn’t, the party has no idea of where the political power it purports to desire to wield comes from.
Democrats and republicans have clear understandings of that. The different weird communist parties have understanding of where they think political power comes from.
Green conceptions of power are inscrutable.
What you just wrote is a great example of that. Where does the power to enact any of the changes you claim greens want to make on the electoral system flow from? From being elected into positions in government by the same system that keeps people from exercising their political will?
Part of why even looney lefties like myself dismiss the greens is because at the most serious level they’re still just trafficking in “well, if i was in charge” rhetoric.
I mean, yeah. The only way to reform the system is from within the system. Here in lies the ultimate issue with the left: all I ever hear is criticisms and no solutions. We have two options, reform or revolution. Revolution is nearly impossible. So if it's reform, people need to be elected into the system to make the changes. There is no reform without elections. Even if we were to organize something big like a general strike, it would only make the bourgeoisie afraid. Real changes are legislative and that means elections. Unless you've got a better idea, in which case, please share with the class.
I’m not against taking part in elections.
When I brought up theory of power it wasn’t to handwave away the strategic value of participating in elections, but to specifically critique the lack thereof on the part of the greens.
Winning an election isn’t enough. Simply participating in an election as a voter, party member or organizer or official is also not enough.
Under a theory of worker power like what we see from looney lefties of yore and today, election participation in all these roles is useful because it builds worker power and unity.