2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: 'Bernie or Bust' is not a tantrum [View all]dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)Vote how you like, no problem, but you lost me there, great post till that, really excellent.
I've posted this before, but I see the fight as one against corporatism, and my working metaphor is swimming in a rip-tide. A rip-tide carries you out to sea, where you drown on your own far from help. You can swim towards shore as hard as you like, the problem is, you get tired and the rip-tide doesn't. Eventually you end up sleeping with the fishes. Is that pragmatic? Some say it keeps us moving more slowly in that direction. I don't see any real benefit to that, it's the direction that matters more than the velocity.
The way to beat a rip-tide is to swim side-ways. Rips are unforgiving but they are often narrow. By swimming to the side, rather than just going with the flow or fighting in its opposite direction (in my mind the Republicans represent going with the corporatism flow, and voting for Democrats supposedly slows that a little so represents swimming against the rip), you get a paradigm shift. No more tractor beam to heartless corporate profiteering. Without that, you can manage to swim ashore and start a better reality.
What do we find when we swim sideways? If we swim one way, we support only candidates who refuse corporate money and the fealty it brings. I consider this a viable path. If we swim the other way, we start a new party that states as a founding principle that it won't accept corporate money and that its candidates can't either. I also consider that a viable path. Anything else, I see as political suicide.
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