I usually leave political commentary to others, but an article from Time.com brought to my mind a discussion that my cousins Corey and Mike were having at a family gathering on Saturday. Save for a few people, that side of my family is all democrats. Mike and his family currently live in Holland and have for several years and the discussion was started out about how Europe is perceiving the US these days, then Mike asked about the upcoming presidentail election and was Bush going to win. Apparently, he wasn’t really believing some polls from usatoday.com. I don’t actually know which way he had seen the polls going, but the conversation then turned to Ralph Nader. Mike likes Nader and that quickly brought up the inevitable question: Is a vote for Nader really a vote for Bush?
Well, apparently the democratic party truly believes that it is. This time Nader is running as an independent and so he has to get on the ballot in each state and apparently, every state has a different requirement to get on the ballot. [Side note: I understand States' rights and how each state can do things differently, but since the Presidential election is the ONE truly national election that everyone in the country votes in, shouldn't there be a federal law/requirement for getting on the ballot for a national election?]
The state Democratic parties are doing what they can to make it even harder on Nader. In Texas, Democrats sent an e-mail reminding party members that by law they couldn’t sign a Nader petition if they had voted in the primary. In Arizona, where a poll shows Nader pulling what could be a decisive 7% of the vote, state Democratic chairman Jim Pederson says the party has assembled a team of lawyers to look at every one of the signatures Nader collects. “Our first objective is to keep him off the ballot,” Pederson says. “This vote is about George Bush and John Kerry, and we think it distorts the entire electoral process to have his name on the ballot.”
Distorts the electoral process? Excuse me, shouldn’t anyone who meets the Constitutional requirements and has the support of the required number of people be able to run for president? Where is it written that we can only have a two party system and only have two candidates? Shouldn’t we have a choice to have more than two choices?
Nader, who has always faulted Gore for losing his own base, says he would accept no blame for a Kerry failure. “If the Democrats cannot beat George Bush, that means they’re not Democrats; they’re crypto-Republicans. And people will always choose the real thing,” Nader says
I’m a republican, but one who has realized, thanks in part to Utech, that I have libertarian tendencies. I voted for Bush in the last election and he won (or he didn’t, whatever, he’s my President). But if he hadn’t, and Gore had won, I wouldn’t be saying that Nader cost us the election. I cast my vote. I also voted for Dole. I didn’t cry foul. I know he got trounced. Anyway, my point is not to rehash the 2000 election and Florida and all that, my point is, its a shame that the 2-party system has become so completely… what’s the word for it? I don’t even know what to call it. Corrupt isn’t right, but something like that. (There’s a reason I don’t write a lot about issues, my vocabulary doesn’t have enough words apparently.)
It just makes me sad that people who support Nader are nearly vilified by some. Its as much their right to vote for Nader as it is my right to vote for Bush. Maybe Nader voters are only active and involved because they really believe in their candidate’s platform and maybe if he wasn’t running they wouldn’t even vote at all. If there was a candidate, regardless of party, that I really felt strongly about (and the only time that has happened since I’ve been old enough to vote in elections was John McCain in 1996, remember the plaid?), I would vote for them, regardless of whether or not they would win because I would be casting my vote for who would best represent my ideals and beliefs.
Maybe that’s all a bit naive and idealistic, so I’ll just end it here and get back to posting about things I know about, like Harry and the entertainment world.
Posted in Current Events |
May 27th, 2004 at 1:43 pm
Word. Its definnitely a bastardization of the Democratic process to try to preclude someone from even running.