Thank you for acknowledging my 'rant.'
In point of fact, in New York, the Conservative party elected Senator James
Buckley (brother of William F. Buckley, Jr.), who defeated the incumbent
Senator, Charles Goodell (Republican) and a Democrat, in 1970 (I think it was
Liz Holtzman). As for the Liberals, John Lindsey was elected on the Liberal
and Fusion lines to his second term as Mayor of NYC, defeating both a
Republican and Democrat. Both of these parties have also elected on their
own, state legislators and NYC City Council members from the 60's until
today. You could look it up.
As to the cockamamie system we have in Mpls., please do not blame the DFL for
this. We were doing just fine until Tony Scallen did this on his own. It was
adopted by the citizens of Minneapolis as well, as I recall, back in 1985.
Since then, the DFL in Mpls. has had lots of internal trouble as, instead of
Republicans, we face ourselves in the general election. It has led to the
cult of personality now insidiously ruling the Council and city politics
generally. By the way, the Green Party would be better off, too, if we had
the old system, where at least each party was guaranteed a candidate in the
general election.
I am not paranoid about the Green Party. I simply believe that you cannot be
both Green Party and DFL at the same time. We are competitors, not
colleagues.
As to the city government in Mpls in the last eight years, if that is the
standard by which you are going to judge the 200-year history of the
Democratic Party, that's not a very broad or random sample, is it? In the
totality of the Democratic Party it HAS been the voice of workers, such as
there has been one in this country; the voice of liberals (at least in the
20th century) and the party that believes in collective action. Certainly the
Republicans don't and they brag about that.
If we are going to judge only upon recent events, let me say that I find the
arguments used by Mr. Nader and the Green Party in the past election
reminiscent of the Trotskyites. I sensed a "let's make it worse before we
make it better" mentality, a recklessness, a willing to play with history and
a divisive attitude. Mr. Nader said (paraphrasing here) "If Al Gore can't
beat this incompetent Texan, what good is he?" The point, however was that
due to Mr. Nader and his Florida voters (and elsewhere), we are stuck with a
government that looks like it will cruise full steam ahead to do some
terrible things. While VP Gore is certainly responsible for his own campaign,
I am sure that there would have been 1,000 Nader voters who would have
otherwise voted for Gore.
Anyway, I'll be looking forward to Mr. Kushner's next response.
Bert Black
King Field
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