Read it again. My point about left unity was about the Socialist Party joining with the Greens to support Hawkins. I have vote Green before and have supported other candidates and am likely to do so again but, as a realist dependent on Social Security who understands that we will not vote in socialism this year and who also understands the daily damage Trump is wreaking on the biosphere as well as the reality of unleashed violence, I am voting to vote against him in the only way that matters. I have no illusions about Biden and the Dims either.

Voting against Trump is not necessarily voting for Biden. It's the "lesser of evil" trap we are put in every four years. Though I don't always do it, sometimes voting Green instead, defeating the over-the-top brutal authoritarianism of Trump is the right thing to do tactically even as progressives organize to push and oppose him on issues vital to us.  At the same time, I found it interesting that the Socialist Party has united with the Greens in support of Howie Hawkins. Though, in my opinion, the timing is bad given the threat posed by the extreme-right, I am encouraged by this rare example of left unity.

Left unity is worthless if it means uniting around a party as reactionary as the Democrats.The Democratic Party has never been either a party of the left,or a party of the poor and working class.To say you can transform an innately capitalist,imperialist party into a party of the left,is delusional.Liberals will always betray leftists in the end.This was why I could never support Bernie,or get involved with the DSA.Other than a thin veneer of identity politics,from the Democrats,there is no difference between either party.Both want the same goals.The only difference is the Democrats want to take us to a kinder,gentler form of fascism,at a slower pace than the Republicans do.You need not look any further than the actions last two Democratic administrations to prove this.Indeed,in terms of policy,both Obama and Clinton were to the right of Trump.A Biden Administration would be worse than either.I believe when Lenin wrote we should participate in bourgeois elections,he did not mean we should support bourgeois parties,but get involved in the electorial process in our own parties.Yes,the system is rigged against third parties,but I believe part of our job on the left should be to encourage as many potential voters as possibe to abandon the capitalist duopoly.Whether that be to build the Greens,or any one the several socialist parties that exist,or to build an entirely new party,based on populism,economic equality,saving the planet,ending imperialist wars,dismantling the police state,and instituting fair and open elections.It may be niave to say this,but there is strength in numbers.A mass exodus of voters away from the Democrats,or even a massive boycott of one,or more, election cycles would send a clear message. 

I do not take politics in a cavalier manner. These are dangerous times. Most dangerous since the 50's-60's. I grew up in segregated Alabama where our voting choice, when we were allowed to vote, was literally between one who called us "Negras" and the other who called us "Niggers". Lesser of two evils. Janus-faced heads and tails of a wooden nickel.

 

I agree that Trump, in addition to being a clown only missing a round red nose, is the most dangerous individual in modern memory. With that I most definitely understand voters’ revulsion. But I think that he is powerful only because he is saying things that were in the back of his followers' 'minds' the whole time. And now that they have spouted their hatred aloud it is now quite possible to consciously expose it and unabashedly oppose it. In that his presence has been good.

 

But, if all we continue to do is to vote for the lesser that is what we will end up with, evil. Lincoln was a Republican. Trump the same. The Democratic Party of the 60's was the party of George Wallace and other Southern racists and refused admission to its convention the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and Fannie Lou Hamer. The Democrats Southern wing was stolen by the Republican's Southern Strategy.) The parties change with opportunities. But their apples (positions) fall not far from their tree (capitalism). Thus the capitalists have two parties. We must have a party of our own to put forward what it is that we must have.

 

I voted and donated to Green Party candidate and open real socialist, Howie Hawkins.

 

JAI

 

Voting against Trump is not necessarily voting for Biden. It's the "lesser of evil" trap we are put in every four years. Though I don't always do it, sometimes voting Green instead, defeating the over-the-top brutal authoritarianism of Trump is the right thing to do tactically even as progressives organize to push and oppose him on issues vital to us.  At the same time, I found it interesting that the Socialist Party has united with the Greens in support of Howie Hawkins. Though, in my opinion, the timing is bad given the threat posed by the extreme-right, I am encouraged by this rare example of left unity.