So here's the conundrum that continues to plague you guys. Is it better to vote for them given that the remainder of their party largely supports you (and thus by voting for them you give yourself a procedural advantage)? Or is the better to support someone on your side of the issue from the other party (even though you lose the "procedural" advantage)?

there is no advantage to supporting candidates who are against reproductive rights. once those pols get into office, they will vote with the conservatives consistently when it comes to reproductive rights. this allows the opposition to claim bipartisan support for their view, which shifts the perception of where the center is further to the right. this in turn gives the rethugs ammunition to further cast progressives as outside the mainstream come election season.

progressives compromised with conservatives in the forming of the us constitution. the result? black people counted as 3/5 of a person.

Would you have had a constitution if that compromise hadn't happened?

but in essence african americans didn't have a constitution because of the compromise. i don't know that the majority of african americans would have consented to 100 additional years of slavery just so that rich white men had rights.

That's true only if you believe that without a constitution, rights for African-Americans would have arrived faster. Rights are achieved largely incrementally while oppression is closer to exponential if unchecked, maybe.

I guess the question here is, was it necessary to sign a constitution that didn't give blacks rights in order to get rights for blacks in the future? Given that slavery was abolished eventually, maybe this particular constitutional process was the correct path?

And bringing this back to women's rights, in a political situation in which women have a choice between losing rights and losing more rights, is it better to vote for the "enemies among your friends" rather than the "friends among your enemies"? The counterargument to your opinion is that the "friends among your enemies" have very little power and simply enable your enemies.

I'm really very sympathetic to the view that the reason why the Democratic party doesn't win is that it doesn't stand firm. However, women's groups stuck with them even when labour was being decimated. (Or am I wrong?) So is it any surprise that when the gremlins have come for women's rights, labour isn't there to stand with them?

was it necessary to sign a constitution that didn't give blacks rights in order to get rights for blacks in the future?

i doubt it. certainly many abolitionist states, if left to their own devices, would have given rights to african americans long before the 1860s. and who knows what affect that would have had on slave states. don't forget the compromise didn't really resolve anything in the end. all the compromise did was delay the civil war for 100 years.

by your reasoning, the bush administration is right in their take on the iraqi constitution. it's ok to put women back into slavery in iraq if it gets a constitution created. and who knows, maybe in 100 years, women will be able to leave the house without an escort again.

"by your reasoning, the bush administration is right in their take on the iraqi constitution. it's ok to put women back into slavery in iraq if it gets a constitution created. and who knows, maybe in 100 years, women will be able to leave the house without an escort again."

The problem: the Bush administration control comparatively little anymore, and is instead backpedalling to a situation that already exists, rather than somehow capitulating. I mean, the problem was the invasion of Iraq and subsequent destruction of any organized systems BUT the ones that don't respect women's civil rights, which were private, dissenting systems from Saddam Hussein's state.

Even if John Kerry HAD won, you'd still have a suboptimal situation regarding women's rights. Because the battle was lost already a couple of years ago. Suppressed groups in Iraq during Hussein's rule tend to have a lot of Iran-style revolutionaries. You can't *make* a society respect women's rights from the outside very easily.

This doesn't really apply very well to African American rights. The problem is that the revolutionaries were looking to their own liberty first. It was totally hypothetical whether the African Americans would have gotten rights faster without the Constitution (and I think even unlikely). But it wasn't hypothetical whether the Rich White Men of the time would have gotten their freedom without the constitution and the revolution---it was very real. So between a bird in hand and two in the, ahem, bush, what should progressives at the time have chosen?

This is a big drift, eh? Far from the original topic. But I don't think your constitutional example really serves to answer the question of whether or not "enemies among friends" and better than "friends among enemies."

Sadly, in PA, the democratic party has decided to sell women out by ignoring the candidacy of Chuck Pennachio to push Bob Casey, Jr against Santorum (frankly, the fact that the 2 bedroom house he uses to claim residency in PA didn't have an occupancy permit when he ran the last time should have excluded him from representing PA but. ..). The lack of comments by the Casey camp as to where he stands on most issues is because neither he nor the Dems want to draw attention to the fact that he is, for all intents and purposes, santorum-lite (he's not driving us back to the 19th century, but I see him making nice with the reps as much if not more than adding to democrats power). I'm sorry to say I haven't seen Pro-choice groups coming to Pennachio's aid.

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We need to make a world in which fewer children are born, and in which we take better care of them - George Wald

No, the only way to put a stop to this is to put them out of office. No support for men, or women, who vote this way at all. Women's equality supercedes political party. Our reproductive rights encompass and surround both parties.

The ticket is simply this. No support for these legislators. If they are on your ballot you simply skip the vote, or vote against them if the opponent supports women's reproductive rights.

If one is against slavery one doesnt vote for a slave-holder. Thats the issue here, it isn't democrat or republican. It's liberty or oppression.

Here's the challenge: the Republican party has succeeded by uniting groups that are entirely at odds with each other on very fundamental points, like Randroids and Christian conservatives by offering them small slices of each of their agendas but never enough to alienate one group or another. The Republican party clearly treats party politics as primary, as it is the only way to obtain enough power to implement any ideals at all.

A lot of the male (and some female) Democratic bloggers and commenters, particularly those on Kos and the like, feel that they unable to get any agenda implemented AT ALL because groups that normally fit under the umbrella of the Democratic party view things the way you view them: that ideology is prior to party politics. Because women's rights are such a hot-button issue, it seems to them even more frustrating that women's groups don't see the strategy issues the way they do. Of course, they say, you can follow your ideals off a cliff, but then the Republicans will take away those rights faster than you can get pro-choice Republicans elected, way faster.

I have days when I feel one way or the other or both. The Democratic party is weak because its leadership never stuck to an ideal: Clinton destroyed the party in many ways by being too successful with triangulating! But now that the eggs were broken, how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again? Maybe, party solidarity?

the situation with the rethug party was different. they deceived people into voting against their self interest. they somehow convinced working class white men that gays were more of a threat than job loss and lack of health care.

for me, the answer is simple. i will not vote for, or support in anyway, anyone who would enslave my uterus.

The situation with working class white men was a little different: it's the fault of the Democratic Party who essentially abandoned labour. So they became the party of not-labour plus feminism. A double-whammy (leaving out affirmative action)! Easy to demonize by the Republicans, without offering anything to counterbalance it. Death of the rust belt and all that.

What I was referring to was the (conscious) alliance between libertarian-capitalist activists and Christian fundamentalists, among other odd pushme-pullyous. Libertarianish folk do not envision nearly the level of state intrusion that Christian fundamentalists do, but to dismantle the New Deal and its many fruits they made an alliance. And the unity of that alliance, despite the fact that they are fundamentally incompatible in their end goals, has made the Republicans triumphant.

The Democratic party allegedly lacks this unity. Whether it should have it is another matter: however, by rejecting the strategic argument in favour of the ideal, you've clearly made your choice.

...that electing the Democratic Party, no matter what, is somehow a good thing. Is that true?

If political decisions don't come from values, then the party stands for nothing. That's the Democrats' problem. They don't stand for anything anymore.

"Oh, we're for that, too," is the Democratic mantra these days.

40 years ago, the Republican Party was a very different party. Since then they've moved way way right and gained support. Why do you think that is?

Maybe it's because they're standing up and saying, "This is the right thing!" And people appreciate that, even at the expense of their own self-interest.

Selling out equal rights in the name of The Great Democrat Victory is not only a horrific strategy, it's stupid. Embracing people who would enslave women as state-owned breeders is a moral compromise I cannot vote for.

Why should I? Either the candidate believes what he says, in which case he's dangerous, or he doesn't, in which case he can't be trusted. Where's the win? A "D" next to his name? What the fuck does that mean, aside from whose political donations funded his trip to Avenue K?

I think you're right about the lost vision of the Democratic Party, and as I said above, I think the Bill Clinton's Pyrrhic victories can be blamed somewhat for that.

But I think you're giving the Republican Party too much credit: part of the reason why they can project such a forceful message, leaving aside the fortuitous and massive gift of 9/11, is because active subgroups of the Republican Party agree to Shut Up about some things, or at least wait until some hypothetical future buy-off. This seems to be impossible in the Democratic Party. It's only ever been achieved by the actively destructive policy of jettisoning certain subgroups, because they didn't Shut Up like Republicans and became a liability.

So we're back to square one. In order for the Democrats to win, they have to convince non-Republican subgroups to act cohesively and Shut Up even when critical matters of principle are stake.

You ask, quite logically, what's the point of a Democratic win, then? The point, in the case of these pro-life candidates, is a mathematical one. You may elect a few pro-life Democrats, but you have the massive procedural advantage of being a powerful group in a majority party. Or so it *seems*.

And why do Democrats keep selling out women's and other groups? Because as long as they're not helping Democrats to achieve a majority, they're obviously a liability. The Republicans would behave this way too if their troops weren't so well-disciplined. They may yet.

BTW, I blogged this discussion :)

http://politblogo.typepad.com/politblogo/2005/08/the_democrats_a.html

mandos,

would you mind running that url through tinyurl? it's so long it's blowing the margins.

thanks,
artemisia

For some reason I don't have an edit button on that post.