For all of those reasons, I am voting for Obama. Sure, he’s in the pocket of the nuclear industry and has said some very worrisome things about using American military power. The effect of electing Hillary would be worse, and the effect of electing McCain would be far worse.

We at the grassroots are going to have to do all of the real work anyway, no matter who is in what political office. Obama’s campaign is pulling more people into political participation. Instead of trying to tell the Paul supporters and the Clinton supporters and the Obama supporters that they are all dupes and idiots, I think it would be much more productive to talk about the causes we have in common and enlist their help in getting real action on them, whatever leaders get elected.

Deligitimizing the system is a good goal. I certainly want to deligitimize the Bush League’s “10 Year Plan to Extend Homelessness,” for instance — I am not going to do anything in the process that will cause the deaths of even more homeless people. Any action that contributes to getting John McCain elected is going to get more people killed.

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CB: And by a white race riot in the 1994 Congressional elections electing the Gingrich gang.

1) Kerry didn’t lose the 2004 election. He was cheated out of victory by widespread electoral fraud; he refused to contest this fraud, because (in fact) so little was at stake in 2004. Thus I’d call Smith’s version of history into question. I think we have far less control over the results of Presidential elections than we think we do. At any rate, it certainly wasn’t Kerry’s fault that Ken Blackwell was a Republican or that Diebold controlled Ohio’s voting machinery.

2) The point of voting for Paul is not “based solely on his opposition to the Iraq war.” Paul doesn’t have the slightest chance of winning the 2008 election; were he to gain the Republican nomination, the corporations would line up against him and the fundamentalists would desert his political party. The point of voting for Paul in the primaries, as I understand it, is to embarrass the Democrats by forcing Clinton/ Obama to defend the war in public, something they certainly won’t do in running against McCain/ Huckabee/ Romney.

3) The monstrosity of Clinton was not made possible by “single-issue voters.” The monstrosity of Clinton was made possible by “lesser of two evils” voters, an issue having to do with final elections. We’re not there yet; this is a discussion about primary voting.

4) Smith can “rebuild the Left” any way she wants; a meaningful Left would be about a global, ecologically sustainable, society centered around what Joan Martinez-Alier calls “the environmentalism of the poor’; people who “support the environment” because they live together with it rather than merely regarding it as the source of their favorite consumer appliances. I don’t see candidates doing that yet; perhaps they never will, though that doesn’t mean we should give up.

Voting for a candidate is, among other things, endorsing their views.

Uh… no, it’s not. It’s voting. This statement is ridiculous on its face.

In 1991, the Governor’s race in Louisiana matched Edwin Edwards — openly and proudly corrupt and under indictment iirc at the time of the campaign — against Klansman David Duke (the Republican nominee).

Louisianans were sporting bumper-stickers that said, “Vote for the crook. It’s important.”

When we have public financing of campaigns, open ballot access, proportional representation, the abolition of the Senate, and the end of the electoral college… then, maybe, voting will be tantamount to endorsing the views of candidates.

My Paul rant was a provocation… but I believe it began by saying I have become a single-issue voter. I do endorse one view of Ron Paul’s. The United States military — all of it — needs to be brought back inside the borders of the United States… now. There is one more view of his I endorse… ending ALL forms of public subsidies to corporations.

In the general election, I will not cast a vote for any candidate who is not calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. I hope millions will join me in that. I will hold a sign outside the polls saying exactly that.

And not solely because I have two sons in the Army. This war is unspeakably cruel, unspeakably bloody, and on vast scale of bloodletting and cruelty. We are paying daily, just by showing up at work and letting the government tax us, to have out co-signature forged on this horror show, this cataclysm, that has become Iraq.

Soldiers wearing the US uniform are being exonerated for mass murder, rape, and a host of lesser offenses. Tons and tons of bombs are being dropped on people… do we get this. Human beings.

If I thought eating shit on the White House lawn would stop this war, then I’d be headed north right now with a bowl and a spoon.

Nearly 30 million people have had their lives transformed into a living Hell… and that is seen in our political culture as something that is an open “subject” for debate. It is not. This is Sin; it is an unmitigated evil.

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Walter E. Williams is what Black people call an Uncle Tom or Sambo, i.e. a traitor to his people. He’s like Clarence Thomas.

If you read that wikipedia article you posted you will see he is a racist rightwinger.

John Henry

Voting for a candidate is, among other things, endorsing their views.

Not exactly. Voting for a candidate is giving that candidate one vote’s worth of support. What that candidate does with that support (e.g. wins the Republican nomination) is another thing to be decided.

Paul is not a passive racist; he is, among other things, an active racist. His newsletters for two decades promoted racism. His current response, that he didn’t know it, or didn’t edit it, is utter bullshit. His weak defense now that he admired King or Rosa Parks is insulting without an apology for supporting everything they were fighting. Which he doesn’t make.

Property is not a thing. Property is a relationship between people with respect to a thing.