Parry's response to the previous exchange:

John, not to drag this out, but when O'Donnell talks about withholding votes from politicians because they have deviated from a desired position as the only way to exercise power that is very much what I was referring to. That he didn't use the precise words is not the point. In recent conversations and in e-mails (as well as articles sent to my Web site), this punishment theme has been dominant. I'm sure you are aware of this sentiment and are simply engaged in making debating points. (This concept of punishing the Dems -- or withholding votes because of moral objections or some other reason -- has been around, to my personal knowledge, since the days of Sam Brown and the Eugene McCarthy movement and was stressed to me in 2000 when I was approached by friends who were part of Nader's campaign.)

What I tried to do in the article was simply ask the question, how has this approach worked out. I agree with you that other aspects of this same phenomenon involved a broader retreat from serious political engagement on the national level. I had a discussion several months ago with one progressive who was part of the exodus from Washington and she still maintains that it was the right decision, to avoid becoming corrupted by the DC power game.

My overall concern is that the current strategies of the Left are so impractical, indeed fanciful, that they fail to take into account the deadline for meaningful action on global warming and other worsening security problems, such as the dangerous mix of right-wing economic policies and the spread of nuclear weapons.

For instance, I was asked to take part in a panel of the Left Forum earlier this year. I told the woman who called me that I don't go to such conferences because I find them to be a waste of time and money, with nothing practical ever emerging. She assured me that this would be different, that there would be a practical discussion about building media infrastructure. So I agreed.

When the panel started, I made my usual argument for a renewed commitment to getting reliable information to the American people. I was followed, however, by two philosopher-types. One said the first thing that needed to be done was to replace the U.S. Constitution. The second went on about the need to first understand the relationship between the self and government. By the end of the hour, they got kind of pissy about my insistence that this sort of impractical dreaming was a luxury the world could no longer afford.

You also note that no serious effort has been made on building a third party, suggesting apparently that that is still the way to go. But there are also structural reasons why third parties have failed in the American winner-take-all presidential system. So even if more resources were invested, the likely result would only be the election of more right-wing candidates. That is why the left-of-center publications you cited objected to the Nader campaign in 2000. They recognized that all Nader would accomplish would be to help put George W. Bush in the White House, which is what Nader did.

The real tragedy is that at a moment when the human species is facing a real existential threat, significant elements of the American Left continue to withdraw into a dreamscape of unrealistic strategies that may sound good in a college classroom but have no relevance to the real world.

Bob Parry

My response to Parry:

Dear Mr. Parry,

I myself don't at all mind extending this discussion. That's because, with almost no exceptions, the position you are taking is regarded as unchallengeable dogma around which discussion is unnecessary and so it is a rare pleasure-and possibly useful-to have an opportunity to examine its foundations which collapse when subjected to minimal scrutiny.

That such a dogma exists was one of the main points of my previous message, after all, and I'll note that you provide no factual basis for disputing it. You do mention that Nader's campaign (which could potentially have but which did not lead to the development of a serious independent political formation) was rejected by left of center publications on the grounds that they recognized that "all Nader would accomplish would be to help put George W. Bush in the White House." This completely ignores my final paragraph where I observed that these same publications also failed to support third party campaigns in localities where there was no Republican presence and therefore no danger of right wing governance materializing. Why, if the left establishment supported developing independent politics, did they fail to do so?

The answer is precisely the one I gave: that there is, among the left establishment, effectively zero support for independent-third party organizing and an effective fatwa against discussing it seriously.

Furthermore, the fatwa does not rest on pragmatic grounds as you claim either, as the point just made with respect to the alleged "spoiler effect" demonstrates. With respect to your additional "pragmatic" argument that what you call "structural reasons" (which I'll take to be statutory obstacles) present an insurmountable barrier, I will grant that they are significant in some areas, but these tends to be routinely exaggerated by de facto Democratic apologists. In particular, there are some large cities (e.g. Hartford CT) which actively encourage third parties through "minority party set asides." Moreover, as I have stated, and argued elsewhere, most major cities are dominated by single party machines with the consequence that the nominal third party is effectively the second party in these cases. Many voters in major cities would never consider voting for a Republican and these offer an ideal environment for a third party developing a platform for higher office (as did, for example, Bernie Sanders who began his rise to the U.S. Senate on the city council of Burlington, VT) A primary reason for this strategy not having been pursued has been the blackout on discussion and complete failure to support these efforts by the institutional left.

All this begs the question of the underlying explanation for this pattern of suppression and neglect. Here the story is well known, though rarely spoken aloud. And that is that critical though ultimately unconditional support for Democratic candidates is the price to be paid for political and journalistic "access"-to "insider" sources, more or less lucrative speaking engagements, think tank positions etc. A dalliance with third party politics is a one way ticket to the margins of politics, as Nader, Chris Hedges, Cindy Sheehan and a few others have demonstrated. No doubt you are on some level aware of this though only on rare occasions is this reality-namely, that there are significant perks to be gained from orthodoxy and substantial life altering penalties for deviance from it- allowed to surface. Usually this truth is kept well under wraps.

Two final points. With respect to your claim that some of your corresponds register their anger and contempt for the Democratic Party in emotional terms and explicitly endorse "punishment". Frankly, this is irrelevant. Intellectual honesty requires that you address serious arguments which differ with your position, not absurd caricatures of them. These will be articulated by more or less unbalanced and uniformed individuals who are quite rightly appalled by the policies of this administration but might not have yet hit on a productive strategy for combatting them. Moreover, are you not appalled by them? if you are not, I would respectfully note that I am appalled by your failure to be.

Finally, I will close by once more registering strong agreement with two of your comments.

My overall concern is that the current strategies of the Left are so impractical, indeed fanciful, that they fail to take into account the deadline for meaningful action on global warming and other worsening security problems, such as the dangerous mix of right-wing economic policies and the spread of nuclear weapons

and

The real tragedy is that at a moment when the human species is facing a real existential threat, significant elements of the American Left continue to withdraw into a dreamscape of unrealistic strategies that may sound good in a college classroom but have no relevance to the real world.

I heartily endorse both of these observations. The survival of our species is very tangibly put at risk by placing the control of the world's largest nuclear arsenal in the hands of a leader who endorses torture, flouts international law, and is as we correspond, engaging in massive war crimes in the form of predator drone strikes in Pakistan.

Nor can the planetary environment continue to withstand the failure of this administration to move on the kinds of massive reductions in greenhouse gasses which are, according to all reputable scientists, urgently necessary, while continuing to provide subsidies for the fossil fuel industries, lifting the ban on offshore drilling, and (most recently) deciding to continue channelling billions of federal dollars to the environmentally catastrophic production of ethanol.

I'm glad you recognize the seriousness of all of the reality which is confronting us.

It is a shame that the non-solution you are proposing (unconditional support for Democratic candidates, continued hostility directed towards independent third party organizing)-is in fact the essence of the problem, as was argued in the previous posting.

Best Regards,

John Halle