John Walsh on the “progressives” backing Democrats hits many issues the Left needs to discuss (but won’t). To this, I’d only add that the “anti-war” movement has a lot to answer for: No justification of voting pro-war (particularly for the majority who didn’t need to—I’ve expounded on this many times before), no marches of any national significance in many months, no criticism of same allowed in discussions (what Walsh describes with MoveOn.org is rampant amongst self-identified anti-war proponents). Sometimes you have to draw the line between those that support the agenda they claim and those that are just Democratic party partisan hacks.

Norman Solomon has a good point in showing how the anti-war message needs to be clearly championed among those that want to truly oppose this president. But Solomon has not consistently supported that message even in recent months. He too was one of the signatories of the Vote2StopBush.org campaign which meant supporting a pro-war candidate, not challenging his take on any issue, and not acknowledging that some people simply cannot vote to “stop Bush” due to the way votes are counted in the US electoral vote system. Given this, I’m not convinced that if Kerry had become US President that we’d see a much different war stance than we’re seeing right now. As you read Solomon’s article, and I hope you will, keep in mind what he put his name to when it counted.