Amen, Denn. The guy who insulted the millions with the fucking retarded is now Chicago’s mayor, and he’s one-upping all of Daley’s neoliberal policies and selling it to all the Oprah-liberals. He’s giving away public money to the corporations, he’s attacking the teacher’s union and giving away the schools, and he’s going to take all the public unions down a notch (except maybe the cops and firefighters, who he wants to maintain order while everyone else is pissed off and reeling).

Another 2 years if the economy is not improving well even the GOP knows they can’t create disaster forever not with out risking rebellions like the Arab states have.

I think you’re correct, TCU, up to a point. I agree with some of the commenters here who suggest that a) Obama and the Dems are doing a fine job of taking credit for inflicting on us the Republicans’ biggest policy wet dreams; b) that only helps to enforce the Lee Atwater Principle, which states that racist right-wing voters will swallow anything as long as it puts more pain on the n******s (and all their other objects of loathing); and c) as long as Obama and the Dems continue carrying right wing heavy water, the GOP need not measure its behavior.

Unless the majority of the ostensible Democratic base suddenly grows a collective spine and votes Green, we can count on the self-immolation to continue. The longer it goes and the worse things get, the closer we will get to an uprising. What will likely happen is not a revolt against the GOP, though. The GOP base will take their violent anger out on the same targets their representatives have been whipping for decades.

*edited in moderation*

Thank you, Julia Williams. I’ve volunteered for a Green candidate in my U.S. congressional district. The excuse is always a variation of the same theme: they’re not viable. It’s throwing away my vote. They don’t have a chance.

This whole thread displays the flip side of the teabagger fever swamp. The denial of reality– that the Democratic Party as a whole is an enthusiastic servant of corporate/imperial interests– isn’t any more noble or productive here than it is from the right wing. Chris Hedges is absolutely correct: liberalism is a festering, pathetic failure, and you can see it here in the pusillanimous refusal to abandon the Democratic Party. We’ll see it again in 2012.

Greens = lose quick instead of slow.
You need to organize and get candidates at the local level, so people know who you are.

So…. how’s that workin’ out for ya?
It’s not complicated: if there’s a Green on the ballot, that Green has done the work of getting the necessary signatures to get on the ballot. Vote for the Green. If enough Greens get elected, you can get something resembling actual change.

Making excuses based on the way things have been done or ought to be done, remaining mired in the comfort of your ever-shrinking, corporate-approved and triangulated bipartisan electoral zone, is what got us to where we are today.

Listen, if you want to stay locked in with the Democrats, just say so. Don’t make excuses.

Vote Green if you have one on the ballot. Greens don’t accept corporate donations, so they can’t afford to send someone to your home to hold your hand. Though if you’re serious enough about real change, maybe you could be the one to go knocking on doors and making phone calls on behalf of a Green candidate.

Of course you could all just crawl back into your safe, sensible, ‘pragmatic’ liberal holes and keep voting Democratic. I’m sure it will be at least one more election cycle before the dregs of those diminishing returns really start to taste sour.

I should add that the polls demonstrate theoretical youth support for labor unions make BeachPopulist’s suggestions all the more urgent. As the 2010 midterms clearly demonstrated, nothing can be more deadly to a group’s political fortunes than the perception that it has betrayed its supporters.

Excellent points, I think, JG. Another huge problem regarding organized labor and GOTV efforts is one that has been touched on well here in other comments. Unions tend to support Democrats, full stop. That’s a huge problem when almost the entire Democratic Party is owned by the investor class and reflexively demonstrates fealty to the corporate world. Unions barter their votes to these hacks for diminishing returns of crumbs for their own members. Why should a young person who’s willing and able to fight through the barriers JG describes come out to vote for one of those hacks? Because self-serving union leadership says so? To illustrate: I’m a union firefighter, and I find it darkly amusing that cops and firefighters are now threatening the GOP with the loss of their ‘support.’ I want to tell them all: ‘hey, a**holes! While the GOP and corporatist Dems have been crucifying the rest of the working people, how many pieces of silver were they promising you?’ Until labor unions put aside the Original American Sins and start doing as BeachPopulist suggests (which would eventually involve, in the shorter term at least, some ballot box insurgencies like putting a few Greens into national office), the returns will continue to diminish and young people will remain disconnected.