Reply #2: I know there are a lot of activists here, but it sure seems like there are also

[MGKrebs]

a lot of people who just cast their vote and call it a day. Then they get to come here and complain about how "our leaders" haven't turned the country into a nationalized Deadhead commune yet.

Issues are issues and politics is politics. We can push for and advocate our issues, but not everybody else in the country shares our progressive views yet. We may be right, our vision may be inevitable, but politicians react to the way things are now. They have to or they don't get to vote on anything. If they don't feel they can sell single payer healthcare yet, most of them will avoid it. By most normal standards of political discourse, MoveOn was out of line. It's the same type of thing we all condemn the RW media hacks for. How many thousands of posts have there been trashing Ann Coulter for calling someone a nasty name?

Of course there are votes that we disagree with and don't even understand. But it doesn't stop anyone from continuing to support their issues and help a good alternative candidate step up if we can. At election time, we only have a few choices. It's not "perfect" vs. everything else. Jesus ain't runnin' And democracy is all about debate, and compromise, and negotiation, and even polls. As progressives, above all, we do not want the alternative.


If we want a revolution, the Democratic Party isn't the place to start.
If we continue to ignore the fact that there are people who do not believe the same things that we do, we will continue to drive them away.
If we continue to feel that primarily writing bitter, caustic messages to each other is a legitimate activist role, we will continue to marginalize ourselves.