'It doesn't matter who you vote for. You could vote a 100 socialists into office and we couldn't

[white_wolf]

change anything as long as the rich control all the wealth in this country. This is a paraphrase (because I can't remember the exact figures he gave at the end of the quote) of an answer given by a Socialist Action candidate, Chris Huchtison, in a debate for the 1st congressional district of Connecticut, it was given in response to "how do you think things would change with a Republican House?" I just saw the debate last night on the party's website and thought I would share it and ask if you all agreed with it or not. It was interesting to see the ideas from him and the Green party candidate since they were both different from the Democrat and Republican. I'm assuming either Larson or the Republican, whose name I can't remember won the race though, didn't they?

[mmonk]

1. Well, certainly not if they go into office thinking Republicans

operate on a bipartisanship basis and continually concede process while looking for corporate campaign dollars.

[white_wolf]

6. Well, I'm pretty they would tell the Republicans to go to hell

he was very critical of both parties. Him and the Green seemed to get along good, though.

[MineralMan]

2. I don't agree. This is a sour grapes statement from a losing

candidate. If we actually could elect 100 socialists to the House, the change would be dramatic. The reality is that we cannot elect 100 socialists to anything in the USA. We can, however, elect 100 Democrats. In fact, we can retake the House in 2012.

If what this losing candidate says is true, then we might as well just give up, curl up wherever we live, and wait for the end. I'm not willing to do that. How about you?

[white_wolf]

3. I'll try and give his response to this based on what he said

in the debate. During the debate he often called for mass action, strikes, marches, protests, that sort of thing. He said we have to make the wealthy give up some of their power, and fight against these austerity measures like they are doing in Europe.

[MineralMan]

10. To what "mass" is he referring, do you think?

Aside from the Wisconsin demonstrations, I haven't seen much mass action since Obama's inauguration. Who's going to participate in these mass actions?

[white_wolf]

14. That is the point, there hasn't been much mass action at all.

As for who he was referring to, I think he meant anyone who is affected by the system. He called on workers and students mostly. He often refereed the protests in France in his examples.

[MineralMan]

17. Yah, well, they aren't listening then. And no wonder.

This guy got less than half a percent of the votes, in a race won handily by the Democrat.

So, I ask again: What's your point. An unelectable candidate nobody ever heard of is making pronouncements. To what end? And why are you listening?

[white_wolf]

19. I'm listening because I thought it was an interesting debate since where I'm from

all you hear are mostly right-wingers, and also he and the Green candidate were the only ones who really seemed to have any real solutions to the problems presented to them.

[MineralMan]

23. Larson is a solid Democrat, and has voted with the party

on virtually every issue. He's a good Congress member. Look him up. If you enjoy being a part of a minority of less than 1%, then by all means, do as you please. If you want to actually move things leftward, support those who will help and who can be elected. This clown you're quoting couldn't win anything, and there's already a good person holding that office.

For pete's sake!

[cali]

31. Europe- including the Scandanavian countries is moving to the right

[FredStembottom]

5. Thanks, MM. I was groping for a quick response.....

.... and "sour grapes" will do fine.

All America needs Is a reformed Democratic Party. Nothing more radical than that - and believe me, as hard as that will be to accomplish, it's easier than getting a 3rd party into power.

[KittyWampus]

4. If we elected 100 socialists, it would mean the voting public had changed views dramatically.

[leftstreet]

8. Not necessarily. It might just mean that 100 socialists were on the ballots

Hard to say

[MineralMan]

11. Really? How did the person being quoted do in the election?

As much as 1% of the vote? That would be remarkable.

[leftstreet]

20. Dems & Repubs combined only get about 1/2 the eligible votes in the US

Approx and depending

[white_wolf]

25. Sometimes I wonder if part of the reason the other half don't vote is

simply because they don't see any polices benefiting them. Of course, they could just be totally apathetic, but that is just depressing.

[MineralMan]

28. No, that is not it. They don't vote unless someone asks them

to, in person, and explains why it's important. In that district, the incumbent Democrat won handily. Some didn't bother because he had it in the bag.

[MineralMan]

26. You are correct. But only those who vote count in this country.

How about we help bring out more of them, focusing primarily on those who will vote for Democrats, at least?

This Socialist Action Part clown is not going to win a damn thing. If people wanted him, they'd have come out and voted for him. They do not want him.

Most who don't show up and vote are simply apathetic. From my own experience, asking them to vote in person and providing good reasons for them to do so works very nicely. My precinct, where I did just that in 2010, turned out 60% and voted 60% for excellent Democratic candidates. Can you not see that the answer is not in the ramblings of marginal candidates. It is in elected solid, progressive Democrats to office. That happened in that First District in Connecticut. Look up Representative Larson, who won with 57% of the vote.

I'm tire of the whining.

[white_wolf]

29. Larson is a member of the "New Democrat Coalition"

which describes itself as moderate.

[MineralMan]

32. Check his voting record.

In case you haven't checked, we live in a moderate society. Politically, the US is almost equally divided. What do you expect? Of course moderates win. I can't imagine that changing anytime soon.

[patrice]

7. Doesn't that assume a kind of limited concept of what Socialism is or could do?

If we begin with the premise that Socialism recognizes the debt that the society/group owes to its members for the Real Value that they bring to the group, why would it depend upon what "the rich" do with their False Value(s)? This is not to say that Socialism would be affected in no way by what "the rich" do, but rather that, because the basis of the wealth of Socialists, the Real Value of Labor, is fundamentally different, the arbitrary values generated by "the rich" are not its life-blood.

[white_wolf]

9. I think what he is saying is that as long as the wealthy

control so much of the resources in this country they hold an undue amount of power.

[MineralMan]

12. They hold that power as long as the voters let them have it.

In any two-year period, the voters can completely reverse direction and elect a bunch of people who won't stand for it. Of course, that's extremely unlikely - almost as unlikely as the pipe dream of 100 socialists being elected to the House. We really, really must deal with reality. If we do not, we will be marginalized completely and have no power at all.

[patrice]

21. Yes they do. Undue power is not all power, especially if we redefine what power is for ourselves and

the fact that that re-definition will refer to something that others will de-value with the label "small" (relative to False Values), does not mean that whatever it is is necessarily insignificant. Like the seed of darkness in light, or vice versa, that the Taoist yin:yang symbol represents, sometimes the smallest thing can be at least potentially the most powerful thing, IF it is essence -tially DIFFERENT.

[patrice]

24. The fact that it is "undue" also makes it vulnerable. It's an up-side-down pyramid on the backs

of the "least" "powerful".

[flamingdem]

13. UNREC It decidedly does matter who you vote for unless u want TEABAGGER NATION nt

[Capitalocracy]

15. It's basically not true.

100 socialists (or otherwise alternative candidates, let's say) being elected at the same time would send a very loud message. The intentions of the politicians who are bought and paid for would be the same, but they would be afraid of the consequences of acting on them.

Maybe it wouldn't change that much if we elected 100. But if we elected 300 or 400 of them, everything would change.

[MineralMan]

18. Sure, but it's not going to happen. Not in the next 50 years.

So, what do we do now? The Connecticut district in which this guy ran was won by a large margin by a Democrat. Seems to me that we should be looking at why the Democrat won and how we can make that work elsewhere. Not why a guy who got 0.46% of the boat is whining about this.

A waste of time.

[MineralMan]

16. OK, I checked. This Hutchinson got 0.46% of the vote in that district.

That's 955 votes out of about 226,000 votes. Thats 0.46%. The Democratic candidate, Larson, won handily.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut's_1st_congressional_district

So, tell me again about why we're paying any attention to what he's saying. I guess I'm not getting it.

[Davis_X_Machina]

22. That was because of the scary label...

...otherwise he would have won 60-40%.

What other possible explanation could there be?

[MineralMan]

27. The explanation is that John Larson, the candidate who won

with 57% of the vote is a solid Democrat who votes consistently for progressive measures. How's that?

[JackRiddler]

30. Obviously only winners of votes could ever have anything worthy to say. Or worth discussing here.

Popularity makes truth! Hell, election results should determine whether topics are even allowed on DU, I say!

Once again, I get to ask someone: Why do you go to the trouble of announcing your lack of interest on this thread, as opposed to dozens of others? Does something bother you about it? It would be reasonable to state a relevant argument, or else leave it be, instead of using ridicule to shut down discussion.

[MineralMan]

34. I am discussing it. Sorry that you disagree with my point.

How am I shutting down a discussion where I'm very active? I'm helping keep the discussion alive. My opinion is what it is. Yours may differ.

I didn't say I wasn't interested in the discussion. I am, or I wouldn't be in it. What have you contributed to this discussion? I don't see your posts.

[JackRiddler]

40. What have I contributed to this discussion?

If "this discussion" is limited to this thread, then I pointed out a particularly egregious use of the popularity fallacy by one of discussants.

And now you've made an interesting variant: Apparently you have something more important to say because you've landed more comments in this thread so far.

This causes me to riff on one of the conformity studies following on the Asch experiment. The one where they found that the same statement repeated many times served to engender conformity to that statement as a "popular" one, regardless of whether the statement was repeated by many people or just a few.

[MineralMan]

43. Not the point. You claimed that I was trying to "shut down the

discussion." My point is that I most certainly did not. I prolonged the discussion by participating actively in it. You don't agree with my position. Bring it, and we can discuss that. You were incorrect in your statement about my trying to shut down the discussion. I'm not doing that. Now, did you have anything you wanted to discuss with me?

[JackRiddler]

44. * yawn *

Sometimes argument by ridicule just makes sense. Sorry.

[cali]

33. Ridiculous. There's a big fat difference between voting for

Bernie or voting for Rich Tarrant or voting for Peter Welch and whatever idiot the pukes put up against him.

[patrice]

35. Right. Not all actions are zero-sum actions. In fact, most of them aren't. nt

[white_wolf]

36. I should have said this in the OP and now its too late.

I don't completely agree with the quote in my OP, I was asking for people's thoughts. I do think it is important to vote, but I will only vote for and support those who have a progressive agenda and will fight for progressive ideas. I will support people like Kuinich, Sanders, Weiner, Grayson, or others like them anyday, but I don't support moderates or blue dogs.

[MineralMan]

37. Then, sir, you will participate in electing people as far as possible

from your positions. How does that help your goals? I'm confused. You could be one of the 955 voters for that candidate. They had no effect on this particular election, but in a very close election, they might have made the difference. Elections are about determining the will of the electorate. They work rather poorly in that, but that's the system. If you refuse to vote for a moderate Democrat, you'll help a Republican win. How does that help? Can you explain?

[white_wolf]

38. Let's take Bill Clinton for example.

He was a democrat and he did do some good things, but he also gave us NAFTA which has destroyed a lot of American jobs and gave us other deregulation.

[MineralMan]

39. OK, let's do that. I agree with you that Bill Clinton did not do

all the things I wanted, and that he did some things I didn't want. He had my vote in both elections. I long ago stopped expecting anyone other than myself to do what I think should be done and not to do things I think should not be done. There is no such person, especially no politician. That is not what elections are about. There is no person in national politics who believes as I do about how society should operate. Not one.

So, it's always a compromise when I vote. In each election, I analyze the potential of winning for each candidate who is closer to my positions than not. I vote for the one who has a reasonable chance of winning the election, even if there are candidates who agree with me more, but who cannot possibly win.

Why do I compromise? Because I am not king, and cannot expect that the country will operate the way I think it should. My voice in who becomes a legislator or executive lies only in my vote. So, I weigh all the factors, and cast my vote for the best candidate who can win. The ones who are simply out of the running don't get my vote, ever. What would be the point? A candidate who can only muster less than 1% of the vote is entirely irrelevant to me. Larson is a follower, not a leader. He will vote with the Democrats reliably. He has held that office for several terms. He will win the election, and did. The Socialist Action Party candidate is a nice fellow, perhaps, and I encourage him to speak out whenever and wherever he can. He's a lot closer to my views than Larson. But, he cannot possibly win that election. The Republican, on the other hand, had just a slim chance of winning. I can't take that risk.

I am not the majority. I am a minority of one. I can vote. I can walk my precinct and try to encourage others to vote, and I do that in every election. I cannot elect an unelectable candidate, no matter how much I may agree with his or her positions. That's impossible. And that candidate was eminently unelectable. So, he is irrelevant to the outcome.

Do I compromise? Sure. I do it all the time. I'd like to be paid twice what I am paid for the work that I do. The marketplace will not support that rate. So, I work for what the marketplace will support. Compromise. I like to watch fishing shows on television. My wife detests them. I also like to watch the news, and my wife shares that with me. So we watch the news, even though I'd prefer to watch a fishing show. I compromise. Life is compromise. Politics is nothing but compromise.

[DCKit]

41. I respectfully disagree.

Under that premise, I may as well emigrate to another country, now.

I'd rather stay and fight.

[MineralMan]

42. +100

[reformist2]

45. Yes. This is why Campaign Finance Reform is the sine qua non of reforms.