Is "GUEST,Disgusted in Catville" the same as the GUEST who has been posting so enthusiastically about Nader and very so dismissively about the idea of Kerry, and "anyone-but-Bush"?

If so, thanks for taking on a handle, however temporary, because you aren't the only (nameless) GUEST on this thread, I think, and it gets confusing.

Anyway, two points - one is that you seem hung up on the notion that the people who are advocating voting for Kerry all think that this is going to make everything all right. Pretty clearly that would be a nonsensical view. If elected, Kerry is going to do all kinds of things that Bush would do. But even if the difference between Bush and Kerry is marginal, that's an important margin. It's a margin which you can stand and fight, and you won't have that if Bush gets in.

And the other point is that elections indeed are not that important - or rather, they are not in themselves the levers by which the world is changed for the better. Treating them as an occasion to get into bitter and irreconcilable fights with the kind of people you would need alongside in the kind of movement you might hope to build is just bad thinking. It's playing games.

As I said earlier, I think in this thread, if Gore had got in last time, "progressives" would be a lot stronger now, and they'd be reinforced by a lot of people who had hoped for more from him than they would actually have got; and if Bush gets in again, then four years down the line, "progressives" will be far less effective than you are even now. (Incidentally, I stick "progressive" in commas there, because it's a label that's very likely to get adopted by our own Conservative Party at some point. All kinds of people can call themselves "progressives". It's like "libertarian", which used to be a way of calling yourself an anarchist, but a bit less likely to frighten the horses.)