Saturday, March 29, 2008

Do It!

After all, most Democratic activists, whether or not they like Hillary Clinton, don't want to see the party burned down for her sake.

-Yglesias
I don't doubt that this is true, but from where I sit, a Clinton-led destruction of the Democratic party, whatever its motives, would be a kind of penance rarely, if ever, made in public life in this country.

Posted by IOZ at 11:25 AM | email »
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21 comments:

Agi said...

That's something I'd love to see.

11:53 AM
Anonymous said...

that's as may be, IOZ, but mccain is a first-rate nutcase.

12:53 PM
TGGP said...

A while back I was more focused on the Republican nominations and hoping they would destroy themselves, but I'll take the destruction of the Dems if I can get it.

1:10 PM
Charles Davis said...

As the second commenter makes so clear, the argument for the Democratic Party -- you know, the people in Congress that continue to fund a war they claim to so vehemently oppose -- is, "what're you gonna do, vote Republican?"

And John McCain is a certifiable nutcase, so expect a good deal of people to feel justified in voting for the lesser of the warmongering evils.

Oh, and George Bush is all Ralph Nader's fault, of course.

1:16 PM
Anonymous said...

Whenever people tell you that you must give them something or quit for the Party, the children, or the country, what they're usually saying is that you have something they want and that you should give it to them. The rest is window dressing and a cover for special pleading. Yglesias is a full-on Obama fanbot at this point, and he wants his guy to win. Nothing wrong with that, but the pearl-clutching about the Party is just him rooting for Saint Barack, that's all.

2:59 PM
bdr said...

But what % of Democrats who don't want to see the party burned down for Clinton's sake wouldn't mind seeing it burned down for Obama's?

.000001, if you count me.

6:42 PM
Hattie said...

I don't mind Obama, but he sure has attracted a lot of unpleasant fans.
I don't see how I could work with such bullies. It's back to the Greens for me. Sigh.
I am so sick of lost causes.

12:00 AM
Anonymous said...

lol, oh hattie, please be real.

12:27 AM
Jonathan Versen said...

I don't know if it's only detectable by microscope, but there is a degree by which it is in fact prefereble to have HRC select the next supreme court justice rather than McCain.

I have to believe this is so, even if both HRC and Obama strike me as unfortunate choices, and HRC somewhat more so than Obama.

2:14 AM
Anonymous said...

Msr. IOZ:

But, think of the Children!

They are, afterall, Our Future.

TT

8:10 AM
Anonymous said...

Yeah, as an old-fart anarchist I'd have to agree with the Just Do It!sentiment.

Anyone who precipitates the inevitable decline of the two-party system into the one, great statist ruling elite is doing the country a favor.

As JHK - at clusterfuck nation - and others have predicted, the fat is in the fire. The sooner the masses get it into their thick heads that both Parties have sold their futures to secure their own private fortunes - for themselves and a few select friends and friends of friends - they'll have to adjust to the new paradigm.

It's going to be long, slow and ugly, unless the masses begin to WakeTFup. Sooner the better I guess.

How's dat for Hope on a Sunday morn chillun?

Uncle Buck

8:32 AM
Anonymous said...

p.s. Note to self: next time check out "the defeatists" site before posting a comment here.
Might just be that a black hole gets us before the Donkle do.
("If the thunder don't get you than the lightning will".")

Uncle Buck

9:00 AM
Christopher said...

As the second commenter makes so clear, the argument for the Democratic Party -- you know, the people in Congress that continue to fund a war they claim to so vehemently oppose -- is, "what're you gonna do, vote Republican?"

It seems to me that the Republican strategy also has some pretty huge doses of "what are you gonna do, vote for the other guys?"

The explicit platform of both parties seems to be "Be glad we give you anything at all."

It doesn't bother me particularly when people go, "eh, something is better then nothing" and vote accordingly, but it does bother me that so many of these people become enraged at anybody who wants to hold out for more.

I'm glad I found this blog. The whole anti-Nader thing is riddled with a bunch of profoundly demeaning assumptions, and it's been very cathartic to finally find someone who agrees with me about it.

9:53 AM
Christopher M. said...

I've nothing against the Naderites. I don't blame Nader for George Bush; Gore wasn't entitled to those Nader votes in any way, and it takes a special kind of blind arrogance to assert otherwise.

But I also can't manage to get up the burning, stomach-churning fury this blog demonstrates so frequently towards the lesser-evil voters. If someone isn't a fan of Obama, but has reason to believe he's considerably less likely than McCain to drop a nuke on Iran - a suspicion I'd credit as being perfectly reasonable - then I see no problem with someone voting for Obama as a means of preventing a McCain presidency. And I can think of a dozen other issues where this exact calculation might play out, from abortion to court appointments to the environment to labor standards. I'm not going to stand there and sniff at someone because they figure their right to have an abortion is worth more than some austere sense of electoral purity.

10:20 AM
Anonymous said...

"But I also can't manage to get up the burning, stomach-churning fury this blog demonstrates so frequently towards the lesser-evil voters."
christopher m.

Methinks you have placed the shoe on the wrong foot my friend. It is the Netrootsia - the Donkle, if you prefer - who get their nickers in the proverbial twist over these matters.
Witness the "coverage" of the Phil. convention of Liberal Pwoggies.
If they can't change the world, at least they can change the dialog.
Mike

10:57 AM
Arkady said...

Christopher M, stripping out your characterizations leaves a real question.

The lesser evilists are a consistent 7% less pro-torture. They can be proud of that. They're less likely to drop three nukes when one will do, which is not to be sneered at. They support fewer secret prisons and are dedicated to more thoughtful "extraordinary renditions". They are adamant about better occupations. They tend to read more books than other people who support expanding the prison system. They believe there should be consequences for no-knock raids that get the wrong address. They are opposed to wars that are not started by Democrats, which means they support half the number of wars that indiscriminate jingoes do. That's a full 50% less evil! Etc...

11:16 AM
Anonymous said...

i think what we've discovered in this thread is two diametrically opposed moral conclusions drawn from the same reality. commenters here either A) believe it's a moral imperative to support the lesser evil ("it's LESS EVIL!!"); or B) believe that one cannot in clear conscience support a system that is irredeemably evil ("it's ALL EVIL!!"). (there are, of course, those who truly believe that the democrats are good; they tend not to congregate here.)

interestingly, in order to argue these oposing moral beliefs, people continue to cite reaity, without realizing that both sides of the argument recognize and draw from the same world. perhaps y'all should argue moral principles instead of contingencies.

11:59 AM
Arkady said...

Perhaps the truth, then, lies somewhere in between?

12:05 PM
Christopher said...

I've only been reading this blog for a couple of months, but as a person who happily votes in the "eh, something is better then nothing" category, I don't feel that much anger coming my way.

I feel like the ire is directed more at Democratic blogs, which often get really, really pissed off at those who don't want to support an evil party, no
matter how lesser it is.

That's the philosophy that drives all the Nader bitterness; this idea that it's your duty to settle for a little and you should be damn grateful you're getting anything at all.

It's especially aggravating because Democratic blogs tend to be very happy to curse the Democratic party for its spinelessness and endless capitulation.

And then in the next post they curse out people who have abandoned the party because of that spinelessness.

Somehow, despite voting for Democrats quite reliably, I hardly ever find myself disagreeing with IOZ on much of anything. It's kind of weird.

5:21 PM
Aaron said...

Great post. What I would actually like to see though is a sort of Old Testament revival theater in which Hillary and Obama are brought to the edge of the Sinai, where a note is pinned to each of them reading, "to Azazel." With two representative voters from Middle America holding them by the hand, they are led out into the middle of the desert and abandoned. The voters return, wash themselves, and are inspected thoroughly by Homeland Security.

If the scapegoats were then bombed "accidentally" by Israeli air force Apaches that would be perfect symmetry across the millenia, but you can't ask for too much.

6:16 PM
Thomas Daulton said...

Jonathan Versen and Christopher M.: What the so-called "lesser evil-ism" philosophy completely fails to take into account is that the situation keeps getting worse under Democratic leadership as well as Republican leadership. Perhaps it gets worse more slowly under the Dems than the Republicans, but this is immaterial. The country is headed towards a cliff at speed in either case, and the only way to change course seems to be if a large number of voters support a truly radical candidate. The objection of Naderites and our ilk, is that faux-Left Democratic candidates pacify those same voters, let them think there's still plenty of time, let them think they're making progress and doing something useful by voting for the DLC, rather than turning the country around. One doesn't necessarily have to believe that both parties are identical, but it seems crystal clear to us that the difference in trajectory between the two is not enough to avoid the looming cliff. "Baby steps" ain't gonna save us at this rate.

I think it was the guy from the former Brickburner Blog who put it this way: "Saying that this or that Democrat is better than his or her opponent is true, but not useful. It's like saying that there is a brick five feet above your head, without taking note of the fact that the brick is falling."

Everyone else: The two different comments I made on a slightly later IOZ post, are also applicable here -- perhaps even moreso.

1:22 PM

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