Why "Lesser Evilism" Is A Loser

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4752
Date Written:  2016-09-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21474

Interview with Jill Stein, the 2016 presidential candidate of the Green Party.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Lesser evil is a losing strategy. It paves the way for greater evils.

When the lesser evil Democrats had the White House under Carter, Clinton, and Obama - with Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress for at least one session under each of these presidents - it was conservative Republican priorities that the Democrats implemented: increased military spending and foreign interventions; private instead of public health insurance; deregulation of trucking, airlines, media, telecommunications, energy, finance, and other industries; abandonment of promised labor law reforms; repeal of the federal welfare guarantee; deep cuts to federal spending to public housing and other safety net programs; "law-and-order" legislation that spawned mass incarceration; trade bills that strengthened corporate power and pitted workers against each other across national borders.

Then came a de facto moratorium on the enforcement of anti-discrimination and desegregation in housing, schools, and employment; the high-stakes testing to justify charter school privatization of public education, inaction on the climate crisis...the list could go on.

The point is that for the last 40 years the Democrats have been more successful in getting Republican platform planks through Congress than the Republicans themselves.