I generally vote against someone, because they hold a position I cannot support. In this election I will vote against Bush, because he opposes abortion rights and supports the death penalty, and against Gore because he supports the death penalty. In the last election, I regretted my vote for Clinton, not because of the blowjobs but because of his support for the death penalty. This year I will almost certainly vote for Nader.
The Green Party activists with which I have spoken predict a several percentage point increase (up to 5% in the most optimistic forecasts). The Greens are obviously hoping that their party will slowly increase until it becomes a viable third party. The Los Angeles Times has said that the Greens have the highest percentage of support amongst all the “other political parties”. I’m not sure if this statement is derived from LA Times opinion polls or another organization’s polls.
Phil Saoud writes:
> I think this is what the founding fathers had in mind.
> People with jobs and lives running the govenment instead
> of professional politicians.
My impression is that just as many of the founding fathers were professional politicians as are today’s politicians, and they were even more likely to belong to families that had long traditions of political service. In Explaining America: The Federalist, Garry Wills notes that in 1774, one of the legislators in the Virginia legislature was the fifth generation in his family to serve in the legislature. Besides, most politicians (then and now) who aren’t professional are just those who are rich enough that they can take a few years off to serve in a job that doesn’t pay very much. There’s no evidence that reducing the amount of time that people can spend in political careers has any effect except to make sure that no one except rich people can run for office.
Nader didn’t actively run in '96. He merely said if the Greens wanted to nominate him as their candidate for President and they wanted to vote for him, fine go ahead.
This time around he’s actually campaigning. And drawn more people to candidate-sponsored events (as opposed to party-sponsored events) than either Bush or Gore. 10,000 people in Minneapolis? Pretty impressive for a third-party candidate. Don’t know how Boston’s going to turn out but I hope it’s much the same.
So yes, Nader’s candidacy is a new thing.
Nader has zero chance of winning, but if enough people vote for him, one of the major parties (in this case, the Democrats, I’m sure) will be forced to adjust their platform to address some of the issues he raises. Whereas if people vote for Gore because they prefer him marginally to Bush, the party establishment will have no incentive to change. So, thinking long-term, maybe voting for Gore would more properly be considered “throwing your vote away” than casting your ballot for the Greens.
Nader was on a call-in show on the Seattle NPR station a couple of weeks ago, and was asked this very question. His response, summed up: He knows he can’t win. He also doesn’t particularly aspire to the office. Rather, he’s lending his name to the Green Party in the hopes that they’ll secure 5% of the vote and thus qualify for federal matching funds in the next election, and thereby begin building a viable, coherent alternative party. (The meltdown at the Reform convention disqualifies them from that description, methinks.)
That’s why he’s been focusing on the presidency instead of some other office; it’s a long-term strategy that focuses on the political health of the country, as opposed to a short-term goal to be elected in 2000. If you look at his campaign, it’s all about the nature of government and the state of our political machine: He wants small parties admitted to the debates, he decries the influence of big money, and so on. He isn’t using vote-pandering buzzwords like “jobs” or “integrity” – he’s working to overturn the entrenched hegemony. An admirable goal, no matter where on the political spectrum you are.