California Dreamin'. posted by Richard Seymour

They say a socialist could never win in California for one reason: too much sun, fun and gun. Sure, the heterogeneity of community and lifestyle tend to favour some kind of liberalism, but socialism in a place where it hardly ever rains? Forget it!

Okay, so the above is a desperate caricature, but it makes about as much sense as the arguments made by the liberal-left for voting Democrat or keeping Gray Davis in power. Yes, obviously Arnie was a stooge for the Republican Party. Yes, they like celebrities to cover their staleness and distance from the people. Yes, indeed, the only possible winner of a recall was the political Right.

Here's the rub. Those who said "I'd rather support the Democrats than let the party of unalloyed bigotry, imperialism and class rule get another seat" now no longer have to choose. They got both. Indeed, one reason Arnold (apparently) got such a high vote is that his opponent was someone absolutely despised (and justifiably so) by most of the electorate. The Democrats naturally sullied themselves by supporting Davis, and a vote for Bustamante was inevitably going to be seen as a vote for Davis.

It is becoming a depressing characteristic of the timid liberal-left that they automatically consolidate themselves with the centre-liberal bloc if there's the faintest threat from a rightist. In this case, it wasn't even a terrifying rightist like Le Pen or Jorg Haider - it was a socially liberal, effette Hollywood actor! Even the old canards about abortion and lifestyle could not have been issues, because Arnold was both pro-choice and pro-gay. And the result, as Slavoj Zizek put it, is that the "populist Right moves to occupy the terrain evacuated by the Left, as the only ‘serious’ political force that still employs an anti-capitalist rhetoric—if thickly coated with a nationalist/racist/religious veneer (international corporations are ‘betraying’ the decent working people of our nation)."

Another aspect of this dismal dialectic is the attitude to corruption. Graccius' reputed claim that he would prefer a bit of Republican corruption to autocratic purity has become the watchword of the liberal Left. One US election campaign urged people to "VOTE FOR A CROOK - IT'S IMPORTANT" because the alternative was a far Right ranting racist. This may just as well have been the slogan of the Chirac supporters in France.

Aside from the failure to make the obvious point that rightists who come to power on the basis of anti-corruption tickets tend to preside over an escalation of corruption, if you are left with a choice between a racist and a crook, then I suggest that something is more deeply wrong than the threat of politicisation from the right. Or rather, the very fact that the Right is in such a position is because you have failed to problematise the whole choice that you're faced with.

The centrist elite love to use the rightist threat to solidify their hegemony. This emotional blackmail has the effect of emasculating the Left. Had the anti-war campaigns been fought on the same model, Charles Kennedy MP would have chaired the Stop the War Coalition , and not so much as half of the people who crowded Hyde Park on February 15th would have ever attended a demonstration. The hegemony of the antiwar camp would not have survived the pressure of the media, particularly with such a vacillating leadership.

Yet the sincere recommendation of liberals is that we stick with the Democrats even though we know they have done the dirty work of the Republicans time after time, even though we know they will race-bait, fag-bait, wage war, cut social security, engage in every opportunistic and mercenary sleaze. We should vote for them just because they aren't the Republicans!

Lesser-evilism is neither a moral conception, nor a sound strategy. It preserves nothing that its supposed to and gives up even more than it admits to.

The alternative strategy, the socialist strategy, the one that liberals and Democrat activists are incapable of delivering, is as follows: Repoliticise to the Left; Support a credible leftwing candidate and campaign vigorously on their behalf (the Greens?); Attack both the Democrats and Republicans as mercenaries of the same New World Order; Don't compromise your morality or waste time and energy by being involved with grey-faced centrists, or by defending patently unappealing and rightly despised candidates.
Had the left made a sustained and vigorous effort on behalf of the Greens, for instance, the electoral result might have been much the same - a large Republican vote in a high-turnout election - but the effect would be very different. A substantial Green vote (aside from eliciting the hysterical accusations of a few purblind Democrat loyalists) would have forced the centre of gravity of the Democrats to the left, just as the antiwar movement has succeeded in doing to some extent. The right could not either be so confident of having a supine population if there had been a manifestly sizeable polarisation to the left.

As it is, the greatest alibi of the Bush Whitehouse are those glibly denouncing the new ' Nazi' in the Senate.