some thoughts on why the liberal- left is so ineffective:
There's a young woman named Colette who began a piece in her zine looks yellow, tastes red with this:

Last year I was taking a woman's studies class. I sat there for several hours a week with the same group of people, presumably reading the same essays and texts, hearing the same lectures and conversations, etc. And I remember one day near the very end of the semester where one girl raised her hand in our discussion section and prefaced what she was saying with a very loud and clear, "Well, I'm not a feminist or anything, but..." (on to prove, to her credit, a well-thought-out, enlightened point). What?

I could proudly say that I don’t tiptoe around the word feminist. I could say that I try to be quick to point out that assuming that "feminist" means "militant, man-hating feminist" is not unlike assuming "Christian" means "militant fundamentalist, abortion-doctor murdering Christian." But I know there is a lot I tiptoe around...

My initial wisecrack response to this was, "Well, militant feminists don't really hate men anyway; they're too busy hating other feminists." But a deeper thought was that feminists, despite all their diversity and all their conflicts with each other, are something of a social category – not that they all come from the same social class or social group, but that they are a social group – "feminist" – in the way that in a high school "preps" is a social group, and "jocks" and "dirtbags" and "skaters." And a woman who's a potential supporter of feminist social and political ideas might nonetheless say, "I'm not a feminist or anything" because emotionally and socially she simply doesn't feel like a feminist or identify with feminists. And she might not want to engage in political activity with feminists if she feels different and isolated around feminists, or frightened by them, or repelled by them. If she believes that she'll have to give up important parts of herself to become a feminist, then she's not going to become one.

Anyway, substitute the word "leftist" for "feminist" and you'll see what I'm driving at: "leftist" is something of a social category, and those not in the category don't want to make common cause with the left. (Yes, and of course I've greatly oversimplified, "left" is a ridiculously vague term for disparate sets of people, etc.) The left can't overcome being a kind of counterculture; it attracts people who want to be leftists, and so the attraction only reaches so far ....

This is Frank Kogans opinon , one i think all leftists should consider .