Rothschild is wrong.

Since my book Changing the Powers That Be: How the Left Can Stop Losing and Win argues that Ralph Nader should have run in the Democratic Party primaries in 2000 on the same fine platform he put forth as a Green, Matthew Rothschild is far off base when he claims that it says that activists should make peace with the Democratic Party ("An Unheroic Left," October issue). And what Clinton, Gore, and other mainstream Democrats did or did not do has absolutely nothing to do with the matter, which is the point I can't seem to get across to Rothschild and other like-minded critics.

In a nutshell, my strategy is to take over the Democratic Party, not accommodate to it, because: Third parties are divisive and hopeless under American electoral rules, and it could be done now that the old Southern Democrats are Republicans. The idea is to form a party within a party, called Egalitarian or Wellstone Democratic Clubs, and build out from there. Yes, this does require that egalitarians be the "loyal opposition," publicly backing the winner in primaries because the Democratic coalition is always better than the Republican one.

Rothschild is also wrong to contrast my views with grassroots activist movements. Contrary to what he implies, such movements always have depended importantly on their relationships with electoral politics, and once successful, have used the electoral arena to further their goals. One of my main points is to strengthen this movement-electoral relationship, which is rendered invisible by Rothschild's inaccurate analysis.

But I give Rothschild credit for confronting my book rather than simply ignoring it. I also thank him for putting his reasons for being a third partyist on record, which now everyone can judge for themselves. I hope my book and his review will spark the long and serious debate that this critical issue desperately deserves.

G. William Domhoff 

Santa Cruz, California 

I am bemused and bewildered at the book review by Matthew Rothschild. He found it necessary to take a cheap shot by suggesting it was reckless for Nader to tip the election to Bush. Maybe it was reckless of Bill Clinton to induce fifty Congressmen to pass NAFTA and deliver control of Congress to the Republicans for the first time in fifty years. Maybe it is reckless for The Progressive to be regurgitating lies about Ralph Nader and the Green Party.

Joe Thomas 

Brookings, Oregon 

Some thirty-odd years ago, a number of liberals and progressives couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hubert Humphrey, so they either sat out the election or voted for a third party candidate. And Nixon won. We have been paying for that exercise of "conscience" ever since: not just with the political climate created by Watergate but with the racial politics, the religious right, the deaths of tens of thousands in the Vietnam War, and the genocide in Cambodia.

Yet, election after election, Rothschild criticizes the Democrats for not being liberal enough, then spends the next four years condemning the actions of the Republican winners. In the October issue, he, quite rightly, condemns Bush's war on Iraq in the editorial, then defends support for third parties in his book review. He seems to be completely unaware of the illogic of his position.

Compromise is the essence of representative democracy. The left will never be a majority, but it can't prevent the right from governing unless it ditches its self-righteousness and plays politics.

D. Danielle

Berkeley, California