Progs, Greens, Socialists(?): For your consideration...

[chiburb]

I've heard you say that Kerry doesn't float your boat, he isn't THAT much different from Bush, he's just another corporatist, and that no real progress or change will take place. While I disagree with the "there's no difference" camp, I respect the opinions expressed by the majority of your minority. I'm closer to your way of thinking than the DLC's (at the least). To you, I ask that you read this column by one of your own. Not just the snip I'm providing, but the whole thing... it isn't that long. Then, please explain to me why the author is wrong. Thanks (in advance)!

Snip:

As I explained in a comment on a previous thread, the concept of the Popular Front isn’t intended to be an argument for a Borg-like melding of the small-d democratic left and the large-d DLC Democrats. To the contrary, I see it as a way for progressives to help defeat Bush and the Republican reaction, while still asserting their own political identity and building their own political institutions – institutions that can support and strengthen the “Democratic Party wing” of the Democratic Party.

I know many Greens and Naderites regard this as just a sophisticated version of corporate prostitution – DLC extra lite. Some ultra-left purists apparently prefer an impotent anger to the inevitable compromises and disappointments of working through, and sometimes in, the Democratic Party. Others wrap their third-party hopes in dreams of proportional representation, or instant runoff voting, or some other procedural deus ex machina that will deliver them from political irrelevancy.

To the former group, I've nothing left to say. I’ve walked your path and I’ve seen where it leads – to the graveyard of lost causes. I’m too old now to strike poses, and too angry to wallow in my own helplessness. I don’t just want to fight, I want to win -- not simply for the sake of winning (this isn’t a soccer game) but to turn the tide, to start pushing the conservatives back, after all these long years of being on the defensive. And the only way I know how to do that is to create a political coalition broad enough, and strong enough, to beat the Republican machine. If you won’t help, then you are irrelevant to me. I don’t give a damn what you do or who you vote for.

To the latter – to those who still cling to electoral reform as the road to a third party promised land – I would submit that the Popular Front is your only hope of reaching Zion. As it is, you’re caught in a logical trap: Without a viable third party to provide the political muscle, the existing Republicrat duopoly will never allow electoral reform. But without electoral reform, a third party will never be viable in this country. The duopoly owns both the chicken and the egg.

PLEASE read the rest here:
http://billmon.org/archives/001169.html