Just a few points in reply to Sabri. The American Left is an amorphous entity vastly bigger than the traditional Left organizations. Most of the time, it's never more than half engaged in electoral struggle, but Ralph Nader's 2000 Green campaign provided a significant measure of how many Americans were up for a left-wing alternative. Although the traditional Left groups like the Socialist Party or the Communist Party actually opposed the campaign in favor of their own agendas, it got the largest proportion of progressive insurgent voters since 1948.
It should have given us heart to build upon those impressive results. Instead, the Democrats themselves charged that the insurgent Left had elected Bush, and the pervasive American disease of deference imploded the 2004 third party vote. Yet, it's important to remember that, when we act together, we probably can influence the outcome of elections. And we'll never get to that point regularly--and few better ways to take our ideas before the public--than challenging the system at the polls. One more issue worth posing is that our persistent presence invariably exposes the fundamentally undemocratic and entirely commercial nature of American politics. ML
