Maybe Nader was right after all

[ButterflyBlood]

as I said yesterday, a Brit I know theorized that the conservative party over there is dying out because everyone knows how bad the right wing fucked up the country while Thatcher was in power. People are starting to realize this about Bush. They aren't happy with a totally GOP-ran country. The pendulum is really far to the right now, so when their hold breaks, it'll be going far to the left. maybe this will teach people that it is important to vote. Bush has already fragmented the GOP and even has the unChristian Right turning on him over issues like not going against gays as much as they want him to and his "roadmap to peace". If someone like Dean gets elected then the DLC could become irrevelent. Still maybes right now, but perhaps the country did need 4 years of Bush to wake up. We'll see...

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Yes and Hendrix could have never made great music without all that

smack!

Actually, I am just ribbing you! (really)

He may or may not have been right. I have no issue with the fact that he ran but I shudder to give him credit for any good just yet. If anything, he allowed a greater concentration of the wealth of America to get transferred to the military industrial complex than would have ended up there otherwise. We have deficits forecast for decades so I really don't have anything to thank him for at the moment.

Only distant history will tell so I suspect it is an unanswerable question for the time being.

That said, I'd still rather have Gore in the White House right now.

[bluestateguy]

2. That's why we need mandatory voting

I'm fed up with people not voting who would otherwise be solid Democratic voters. You see those homeless people over there? You see those people bagging groceries at Wal-Mart? You see those people flipping burgers at McDonalds? If it were up to me, they would all be FORCED to vote by law.

[ButterflyBlood]

3. but there are still some people who shouldn't vote

for example my old roommate said if he voted, he would've voted for Coleman because he had a hot wife.

[alphafemale]

4. Find a group registering people to vote. Join them.

There are going to be highly mobile voter registration drives in many areas. Try to join one of them.

Or get a stack of registration forms and register people on your own.

It's a fairly straight-forward process.

[Skittles]

5. Nader

don't even get me f***ing started.

[Lexingtonian]

6. Nader's wrong

You and I and everyone else knows that Bill Clinton would have been elected again, against anybody, in 2000 if he hadn't been barred from doing so.

The story is not 4-year swings of a pendulum. Nader's fundamental idiocy is not seeing the greater cycle that is at work.

We are seeing the greater cycle as it passes through its middle, from conservative-leaning majority to liberal-leaning majority. The conservative side fights this change by becoming ever more extreme and more efficient with its smaller numbers and advantages. Conservatives lost their majority in 'the culture'- the overall population- around 1998. They stemmed off losing their majorities in government last November but they know perfectly well that it's only a matter of a competent Democratic leadership that realizes the historical situation of the times before they're gone. The conservatives' hold on the majority of economic power is likely to last another decade or so, that one's safely theirs at the moment.

For proof of the model, watch the Bush Administration at work- they only give lip service to the 'cultural' conservative agenda, they do everything possible to keep majorities in public office and ram things through as if there were no political tomorrow, and every bit of what they do is to bolster the economic power of their side's elite (such as it is). The conservative judges they want appointed are not really about the conservative social agenda- the point is about preserving the hoarded wealth and economic privileges of the Republican upper class folk.

For proof of that larger cycle, compare successive Republican administrations- they became increasingly moderate until 1964, and then become ever more extreme.

My one, only, and decisively serious problem with Dean is that, like Nader, he doesn't appear to see that greater cycle at work either. Nary an indication of a clue from him at this point. The only Democrat running who seems to have a serious clue about this thing and the driving role that Hispanics play in its politics (going from 6% to 14% of the population in under 25 years) is one whose name I won't mention. But he has a serious amount of Hispanic endorsements now, is working hard to get them, and seems to be the only Democratic candidate to be putting in the effort there.