Here's a great quote from an LA Times Calendar article I read this morning, dealing with the left's approach to the upcoming DNC in Boston. (To protest and 'not compromise,' or refrain and 'sell out'):

"At its 2000 convention, the Republican Party managed to defuse pontential protests from the Christian right and more extreme right-wing groups who refrained from publicly pressuring Bush on issues such as abortion in exchange for assurances that he would push their agenda once he was elected.

"But many left-of center activists seem to have the opposite strategy, eager to subject even liberal Democrats to the kind of grilling that brings to mind the French saying that 'when the left forms a firing squad, it's always in a circle.'"

GRRRR!!!

so true.

Here's the thing. Here's what gets me: The US President is not the Prime Minister - he's NOT the leader of the largest party in a multi-party Parliament at the time (aka Tony Blair). He's an entirely separate branch, and he's elected with a majority (aka more than 50%) of federal electoral votes on a *nation-wide* scale, folks. He is not the result of a plurality vote.
That means he has to try to connect and find something in common with the beliefs of about 140 million different US citizens, at least, right?

So, given that any sitting President has to receive over 50% of the electoral votes, it's only natural that we evolve into a two-party system, where all the elements on the left and all the elements on the right consolidate as much as possible, and then lean as close to the center as possible to garner as many votes as possible for the much-coveted majority...as possible.

In other words, 49% does NOT gain you ANY representation in the Executive Branch. None. Zip. Nil. It's not like other democracies, many of them direct, where you can, say, vote Green and know that your vote will directly translate into seats in Parliament, proportional to the amount of votes the party received.

In other words, you can vote as close to your conscience as possible and know you're not actually sinking a moderate, closer to the center.

That just doesn't happen here. It's majority winner-take-all. Hey, I didn't make the rules, folks. I'm not saying it's perfect. But as long as we play politics and policy here in the good ol' USA, it's a reality: Majorities, Consolidations, Centrism - all because of our particular electoral process.

The Right seems to get that.

Even those nutty bible-thumpin Moral Majority Christian Right folks out in Kentucky & Tenessee. Even those extreme anti-abortionists you see outside the clinic, who somehow put this agenda above all other priorities in their lives, i.e family & normal relationships, obeying the law. You know, even the anti-abortionists willing to commit post-birth 'abortions' for the sake of stopping pre-birth ones.

They all get it. Bush may not be as far right as Ralph Reed or Bill Bennett or Pat Robertson would hope, but they acknowledge the reality of the situation. If he didn't - if he was more like them, he probably wouldn't be president.


I'm not saying our electoral process is ideal, but it is what it is - you have to acknowledge that and make the most of what you've got, right?
So why all this talk of "sell-out" and "compromise" from the left? Why this critique of the "anyone but Bush" mentality? It's not "anyone but Bush" - it's "the one other guy" - just like in any other Presidental election!

I say if you're a liberal, you vote for Kerry, ensure he's safely in the White House, and once he's there then aggressively push your agenda, wherever it may lie on the spectrum. Let's be realists, first and foremost.

Feel free to vote for Nader, even if you're gonna give me an aneurisym and a heart attack in the process. But if you do, acknowledge that you're living in stubborn denial of reality, and in the process only helping to make things a lot worse than your ideal, than if you simply voted Kerry....