Looks Like Another Year For Nader
by Angry Mouse
Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 11:01:51 AM PDT
I start every political season with one basic assumption: I do not like any of the candidates.
- Angry Mouse's diary :: ::
Democrat, Republican, or other--they really have to win me over because I assume they are all unprincipled, unintelligent, weak, crooked, or just plain evil. The last candidate I was even moderately excited about supporting was Peter Camejo, the Green candidate for governor in California during the great recall that swept Arnold to power.
I wasn't always like this. I was raised in a very actively Democratic family, with the understanding that of course I must always vote, and of course, I must always vote Democrat.
So when I turned 18 in 1996, I was ecstatic about voting to re-elect Bill Clinton.
Then, in 2000, like a good daughter of the Democratic party, despite my lack of enthusiasm, I learned about voting for the lesser of evils, and I cast my vote for Gore.
Which was not as easy as you'd expect. I was a student at UC Santa Cruz, where the question was not whether to vote Bush or Gore, but whether to vote Gore or Nader. And believe me, I experienced my (un)fair share of attacks from my fellow students who delighted in repeating their mantra: Bush and Gore Make me Want to Ralph. (It was sort of like the "Yes We Can" of 2000.)
Still, I did my Democratic duty, held my nose, and voted for Gore, and all the other Democrats on the ticket.
But then something happened to me. I read Nader's book, Crashing the Party, about his 2000 campaign, and I started to understand that unconditional loyalty to a political party is not democracy. There is more to voting than looking for the "D" on the ballot. Do I really want a democracy based on choosing the lesser of two evils?
No. I decided that I did not. I decided that from now on, candidates have to do more to win me over than put a "D" next to their names.
In 2004, I voted for Nader. It was simple, really. Kerry voted for the war, and alienated me on a host of other issues, so despite my desire to see Bush thrown out of office, Kerry was not the answer for me.
I folded in 2006, though. Straight Democratic ticket. I suppose my Democratic upbringing got the better of me. Or maybe I believed the Democrats in Congress when they said, "Give us the majority, and we'll give you back your country."
Well.
That hasn't really worked out as planned. For two years, I've watched the Democrats in Congress capitulate to Bush and the Republicans, and somehow, they've had the audacity to blame the voters because we didn't give them a big enough majority. Like it's our fault. Like it's my fault. Like they'd stand up and fight if only there were more of them.
Sorry, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, but I'm not taking the fall for this one. Not after you've spent two years proving to me that maybe that the "D" doesn't make much of a difference after all.
Then, last October, a funny thing happened. I was listening to one of the Democratic debates. And despite my self-imposed voting rules of 2004, which precluded even considering voting for anyone who'd supported the war, I found myself being persuaded by...Hillary Clinton.
She was the smartest person on the stage. She knew more than anyone else. She was tough as nails. She's been to hell and back, and she's still standing. She seemed like just the kind of fighter I'd hoped the Democrats would be.
And no matter how polarizing people say she is, there is no doubt in my mind that her election would not invoke pity from people around the world, or cause the London Daily Mirror to ask, as it so succinctly did in 2004, "How Can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?"
I thought about her support of the war, and realized that it wasn't the issue for me that it had been in 2004. Every Democrat on the stage wanted to end the war.
Over the past five months, I've listened to her. I've paid attention. I've remembered what it was about her that I admired and respected back in 2000, why I thought one day she'd make an excellent president. Intelligent, knowledgeable, and yes, experienced, not only as First Lady, but as a dynamic and impressive woman all her own, going back to her days as a college girl, before she ever had a husband to overshadow her.
Debate after debate, against my will, I found myself being persuaded. And finally, she won me over.
I know her chances are increasingly slim. It looks like too many tactical miscalculations have cost her the nomination. So if her name is not on the ballot in November, what will I do?
Well, I'm certainly not going to sit at home and pout. I strongly believe that I would sacrifice my right to complain if I didn't participate, and I'll be damned if I have to bite my tongue for the next four years every time the president--whoever it is--pisses me off.
And I certainly don't feel any obligation to vote for the party, no matter how rudely and arrogantly Obama's supporters chastise me. After all, I survived the Gore/Nader war of 2000.
And I have yet to fall victim to the spell that Obama has cast on the country. He would have had a better chance with me in 2004, when I was looking for someone with political courage, before he disappeared into the Senate and voted just like all the other Democrats. Before his campaign started to so closely resemble the Bush campaign in 2000, when the media swooned because, well, he was the cool kind of guy you wanted to have a beer with, instead of the nerdy, wonky, stiff alternative.
So, once again, I find myself feeling relieved at the news that Nader's name will be on the ballot. Not because he will win, but because it means that I can go into that voting booth in November and make my voice heard, however lonely it is. You, Mr. R and Mr. D, do not represent me. And you don't get my vote that way. You don't get to take my vote for granted.
I learned my lesson in 2006. The "D" is not enough.