I disagree with this, in the specific instance of presidential elections in America.
The distinction I think you miss is that the presidential election is not the place for a gesture. The "first-past-the-post" nature of American elections means that if, say, the Democrats win, everyone else loses. There are no gains made for the Greens if they get 1% of the vote, and all the third party does is divide the vote up, making it more likely that their cause will lose. [1] I fail to see how that can possibly be a good thing.
If the Republicans get into office because the vote was split by, say, the Libertarian party and Nader, then there are real-world consequences of that that are borne by everyone. For four years. Consequences like, say, a draft. More people killed in useless wars. More jobs lost. Are you willing to pay that price for no outcome because of a gesture vote? Or are you just willing to let someone else pay it? [2]
I can't stress this enough: a third-party vote does nothing. Whatsoever. To help in a high-stakes all-or-nothing vote like the one for the presidency. Because a presidential election is the wrong venue for it.
The time is earlier in the process. Right now, people have been casting votes in the primaries for long-shot candidates such as Kucinich. They are sending a message to the candidate: a gesture. You don't like who eventually comes out of the decision process? Well, that's democracy, and the best you can do is to make your voice heard. Which, by the way, is the opposite of what voting for a third party will do.
As to a third party? Well, I'd like free ice cream and the ability to make hard cider come out of my nipples, too. Less sarcastically, I think that you need to build a third party from the ground up if you're going to do so, and that means not starting with the highest office in the country.
Party matters. Take a lesson from the last 20 years of American history: the far-right psychos that the Republican party is pandering to used to have no power, whatsoever. None. They were members of a small "third party" led by Pat Buchanan. It was a party defined by racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia, and it had no political strength at all. None whatsoever. These people were impotent. Why? Because they had marginalized themselves.
In the mid-90's, Buchanan ran for President and picked a black woman as his running mate. Gasp! The nuts in his party fled to the Republican Party. And started agitating. Now, be clear on this: they were a minority (heh) population-wise in the Republican Party. They still are. And yet, they were so loud, and so energetic, that they pushed their representatives to the forefront of the Repubs, and therefore to the forefront of power in America today.
So, if the angry, energetic progressives of America want to marginalize their voices, all they really have to do is to stay in a third party that has no chance of making any difference.
I don't mean to sound angry... well, okay, I do. It does make me angry that people seem to think that a presidential election is the time to make a gesture. Doing so is trivial, and it's selfish, and it's stupid. And it's most of all cruel to the people who will most likely really suffer under four more years of Bush.
Vote a third-party locally. That isn't throwing your vote away. It's slowly doing the very hard work of convincing people that you are right, and that you deserve representation. I wish you all the good karma and goodwill in the world in that, and if you do it in my town I promise to consider your candidate.
But you don't have the luxury of picking out a candidate that fits your personal fetishes and voting for him for president. Not at this price.
[1] And don't make noises about the 5% and funding, either. Not only did Nader fail to get that last time, he wasn't even properly affiliated with the Greens, and so all the funding he would have received would have gone straight into his own coffers and given nothing to his party. Also, if a third party gets 5% of the vote in this election, I promise to walk naked on my hands down Broadway at noon with a sparkler sticking out of my ass.
[2] Obviously, I'm not talking directly to lederhosen here.
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zvi
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-05 05:27 (UTC)The distinction I think you miss is that the presidential election is not the place for a gesture. The "first-past-the-post" nature of American elections means that if, say, the Democrats win, everyone else loses. There are no gains made for the Greens if they get 1% of the vote, and all the third party does is divide the vote up, making it more likely that their cause will lose. [1] I fail to see how that can possibly be a good thing.
If the Republicans get into office because the vote was split by, say, the Libertarian party and Nader, then there are real-world consequences of that that are borne by everyone. For four years. Consequences like, say, a draft. More people killed in useless wars. More jobs lost. Are you willing to pay that price for no outcome because of a gesture vote? Or are you just willing to let someone else pay it? [2]
I can't stress this enough: a third-party vote does nothing. Whatsoever. To help in a high-stakes all-or-nothing vote like the one for the presidency. Because a presidential election is the wrong venue for it.
The time is earlier in the process. Right now, people have been casting votes in the primaries for long-shot candidates such as Kucinich. They are sending a message to the candidate: a gesture. You don't like who eventually comes out of the decision process? Well, that's democracy, and the best you can do is to make your voice heard. Which, by the way, is the opposite of what voting for a third party will do.
As to a third party? Well, I'd like free ice cream and the ability to make hard cider come out of my nipples, too. Less sarcastically, I think that you need to build a third party from the ground up if you're going to do so, and that means not starting with the highest office in the country.
Party matters. Take a lesson from the last 20 years of American history: the far-right psychos that the Republican party is pandering to used to have no power, whatsoever. None. They were members of a small "third party" led by Pat Buchanan. It was a party defined by racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia, and it had no political strength at all. None whatsoever. These people were impotent. Why? Because they had marginalized themselves.
In the mid-90's, Buchanan ran for President and picked a black woman as his running mate. Gasp! The nuts in his party fled to the Republican Party. And started agitating. Now, be clear on this: they were a minority (heh) population-wise in the Republican Party. They still are. And yet, they were so loud, and so energetic, that they pushed their representatives to the forefront of the Repubs, and therefore to the forefront of power in America today.
So, if the angry, energetic progressives of America want to marginalize their voices, all they really have to do is to stay in a third party that has no chance of making any difference.
I don't mean to sound angry... well, okay, I do. It does make me angry that people seem to think that a presidential election is the time to make a gesture. Doing so is trivial, and it's selfish, and it's stupid. And it's most of all cruel to the people who will most likely really suffer under four more years of Bush.
Vote a third-party locally. That isn't throwing your vote away. It's slowly doing the very hard work of convincing people that you are right, and that you deserve representation. I wish you all the good karma and goodwill in the world in that, and if you do it in my town I promise to consider your candidate.
But you don't have the luxury of picking out a candidate that fits your personal fetishes and voting for him for president. Not at this price.
[1] And don't make noises about the 5% and funding, either. Not only did Nader fail to get that last time, he wasn't even properly affiliated with the Greens, and so all the funding he would have received would have gone straight into his own coffers and given nothing to his party. Also, if a third party gets 5% of the vote in this election, I promise to walk naked on my hands down Broadway at noon with a sparkler sticking out of my ass.
[2] Obviously, I'm not talking directly to