I HOPE this guy's right

Seeing the Forest addresses pissed-off Dems(and there are lots of those out there--including yours truly):

Lots of people are really upset that the House and Senate voted to censure MoveOn. Me, too. There is a LOT of talk about "quitting the party" to "send a message."

There is a problem with that thinking. Ralph Nader ran in 2000 to "send a message" to "the Democrats." It didn't send a message and got maybe half a million Iraqis killed. Maybe more.

The reason it did not "send a message" was that the Democratic Party is not a top-down organization. It is a bottom-up organization. IT IS US. You don't "send a message" to yourself, you ACT. The way to act on this is to show up at party meetings, vote, run for office and take over the party. It is also to fund outside organizations like Commonweal Institute so they can reach the public, create popular understanding and appreciation of, and demand for, progressive values and ideas, and turn them around from this nightmare we're living under.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but the righties didn't desert the GOP fold after Goldwater got trounced. They dug in for the long haul. So I have to roll my eyes at the folks floating the Greens as a viable third party. Especially when their candidates, like Nader, receive checks from Republicans.

Anyone have better ideas? I don't.

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