Congress and the presidency have everything to do with each other, of course. A progressive agenda can only be enacted when you have a president who won't veto it. Bush, like Hoover, would be likely to veto mprogressive legislation. That's why it's so important to prevent Bush from being president. Todd On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Bill Mandel wrote: > What does voting for Gore have to do with whether there will be a > Democratic Congress? Nader voters will overwhelmingly vote for the > lesser evil candidate for Congress, in the great majority cases a > Democrat, and in some cases not evil at all. > Social Security and the right of labor to organize and > unemployment insurance and the Home Owners' Loan Act and the rest of > the New Deal were won precisely by direct action. Some of them were > literally drafted by organizations practicing direct action, and > introduced by sympathetic senators and members of congress. Of course > we who were Communists did none of those things on our own. Perhaps > our greatest merit was that we understood the need for coalitions (in > those days called United Front and, when even broader, People's > Front). The battle for unemployment insurance was won in the A.F.of L. > by a rank-and-file organization headed by a Communist house painter, > Louis Weinstock, against the A.F. of L. leadership. Once the A.F. of > L. officially accepted it, the Democratic politicians fell in line. > I was a very active teen-ager at the time, as knowledgeable about > the issues of my day as the marvelous 15-to-19-year-olds of Seattle. > Roosevelt's genius lay in the fact that he, a Hudson River Valley > aristocrat, understood the need for major concessions to what the > people wanted in order to save the entire system, at a time when the > most devastating of all depressions put its existence in doubt. > Bill Mandel >
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