Third party candidates?

There are times politics all starts to make this Simpsons Halloween special appear a little too accurate.  And it’s times like those that the words and actions of Ralph Nader and Ron Paul start to sound like a refreshing splash of realism to wash the shit stains of cynicism and subsequent indifference off my A-Team pajamas.  And I imagine any person capable of thinking deeper than the frighteningly common instances of tribal good vs. evil, A vs. not-A, sports mentality politics so commonly nourished by the punditocracy of the major media has succumbed to this type of apathy…myself included.

A brief history, if I must:

I suppose I adopted an oppositional mindframe at an early age, an immediate predisposition to play devil’s advocate, a love of pushing back against the commonly accepted idea that that which is popular is therefore also the best.  I still accept that for the most part: the falsehood of popular = good.  The majority can not only be wrong, but it often seems to be the rule, not the exception.  Against this early worldview I reached the age of 18 just in time for the 1996 presidential election (in fact, just two months beforehand), and swore to always vote, but never for a major party candidate.  From my very first vote, I would vote protest.

Now, I will not pretend that I was politically savvy at 18, or even really informed at all in such matters, but I proudly cast my vote for Perot and went on about my adolescence.  Later, a president for whom I did not vote would be impeached for getting a blowjob.  To this day I still think: “Look, he’s ostensibly the most powerful man in the world, and such power is going to lead to corruption of some sort.  So, if he must abuse his authority, at least let it be for some awkward mouth sex, there truly are worse things he could do with such capabilities”.  Ah, the foreshadowing is outrageous.

Four more years passed, I reached college and drank myself into an embarrassing stupor, Chia Pet fads came and went, computer programmers everywhere tried to scare the pants off everyone in order to sell extra bomb shelters, porno magazines, and water purifiers…or perhaps they just dreamed to see mass crowds fearfully fleeing pantslessly (yeah, it’s now officially a word, Webster’s can suck it).  Then came another wonderful election, and as I listened to the two-party system wriggle its way forward in time, still secure to ignore the first president’s warning on such things, I heard the words of Ralph Nader as they cut through the bullshit like a warm chainsaw through a pile of fresh cow flop.

I purchased Nader/LaDuke ‘00 stickers, buttons, etc.  I bought the new album (at the time) by Pearl Jam signed by Eddie Vedder as a means to raise money for Nader’s campaign (I only recently sold it on ebay).  I debated the perceived infinitesimal differences between Bush and Gore, and pointed out the mirror-like similarities between their contributors.  And when the magical time came, I threw in the ultimate protest vote: as Nader/LaDuke were not actually on the ballot in South Dakota and there is no write-in option, I scribbled in my own oval and wrote in Nader/LaDuke Green Party next to it, thereby likely rendering my entire ballot invalid.

Later in the night, while watching the election returns with my right-leaning roommate and consuming Pabst Blue Ribbon at a rate only recommended by 1 out of 10 doctors, I couldn’t help but notice that Nader’s returns weren’t listed at any point until late in the evening when his 3% looked like it might make the crucial difference between Gore and Bush.  Then, suddenly, it was presented alongside the others as if to highlight that fact (for example: Bush 48%, Gore 46%, Nader 3%).  I immediately jumped up and began ranting that the media was playing up the “spoiler” role of Nader so as to further discourage third-party voters in the future.  Surprisingly, my roommate calmly agreed without any pretense, a rare non-facetious agreement achieved with one of my alcohol-spawned agitations (Two years later, while viewing the Super Bowl with a group of friends, a commercial came on the air trying to tie terrorist attacks with drug, not oil, use.  A similar unaided rant ensued in which the entire room reacted as if I was reading equations from a quantum physics book…further evidence for Schrodinger’s Beer: the theory that one cannot tell whether a beer is skunked or not before it is opened and tasted, and it is, therefore, stuck in an inbetween state of “possibly skunked”).

Later, while the election controversy carried on and before the election was officially stolen, I drunkenly mumbled to anyone willing to listen that “Gore would change nothing, but at least he would do no harm”, admitting, at least to myself, that it did matter who won.  Oh, how the last 7+ years have painfully proven that fact over and over again to me.  I think, in essence, it was a twin attack of youthful ignorance of the political process and an overly developed stubbornness that the only candidate I would vote for MUST agree with me at a higher percentage than is really realistically possible for anyone.  Once a candidate has to find a way to motivate 55 million+ people to vote for them in order to win, it’s virtually impossible that they’ll meet any one person’s opinions by more than 50 or 60 percent.  Maybe I just need to find a very liberal village of 300 people and I could find a candidate for county clerk that agrees with me 99% of the time, and could win…perhaps.

This also ties together with why candidates who actually speak with real substance and call bullshit as they see it can never garner more than 10 or 11% in the primary (I’m looking at you, Ron Paul), and usually end up sitting more in the vicinity of 0.2% (I’m looking at you, Flavor Flav).  In order to make 45% or more of the voting public actually drag themselves to the booth on a f’n Tuesday (and not even a holiday, how come places like Puerto Rico can figure this shit out? Well, except for Oregon–thank you mail-in ballot) it’s best to stay as general in all of your statements as possible.

Well, the next four years promptly ended my streak of voting for anyone but the major party candidates.  I now saw, in glaring detail, that there is a very big difference between a bought politician, and a bought politician who doesn’t even feel like pretending he gives a damn what the people think.  In the words of George Carlin, “even in a fake democracy, the people should get what they want once in a while”.

What is my point to all this?  My point is, I guess, that I understand why people would consider voting for a third party, particularly those candidates that speak with such truth and can step outside the usual paradigms of everyday political discourse (certainly Paul and Nader come to mind).  I understand that people feel that the political process and the major parties in this country are so infested with corruption as to be without any redeeming qualities.  But I have come to realize that our political body prior to Bush is like a human diagnosed with terminal cancer and a finite time to live, and when Bush was elected the “human politic” was in a terrible car crash and began bleeding profusely from the head.  The 2004 election was the time it took for the paramedics to arrive on the scene, and the 2008 election is their opportunity to act.  Which would you deal with first: the cancer or the excessive bleeding?  I don’t expect Barack Obama to fix everything.  I don’t expect him to cure our cancer.

I just want the bleeding the stop.  And that is what I believe Obama/Biden can attend to in 4-8 years.  If not, then, well, I hear Eastern European women are beautiful and willing to share their citizenships.

 

On a related note: This is what happened in 2006 with the power of Congress in both houses shifting to democratic control.  Obviously, they have not been satisfactory, but to a real extent they have slowed the bleeding.  And with an actual majority there is now an opportunity to not just elect Democrats in name, but those that actually operate as better than Republican-lite.  This is the effort now taking place at the Orange to Blue page maintained by the Dailykos community of kossacks, where they are not just trying to elect democrats, but better democrats.  I highly recommend the dailykos website, very left-leaning and successful enough to raise Bill O’Reilly’s ire (calling them “as bad as the KKK” in as factual a manner as Papa Bear ever states anything), but it’s also the most informative and accurate political website I have ever read.

Remember: “abortions for some, little American flags for others!” (you didn’t watch the simpsons video in its entirety, did you?)

P.S. A great book that touches somewhat on these things, and also ties in with the simpsons (convenient, eh?) is Leaving Springfield: the Simpsons and the possibility of an oppositional culture (thanks to my bro for that one).  It’s a great book about how something strictly and unapologetically oppositional is truer to it’s purpose, but only preaches to the choir; whereas something like the Simpsons can be more effective because it is subtle in its oppositional opinions, but reaches a far greater, and more resistant, audience by broadcasting on a major network and the home of right-wing groupthink known as FOX.  Certainly, I think both efforts are important in changing society, but it sort of sticks a nail in the adolescent angst against the idea of “selling out” in certain instances.  As someone greater than I once said, “you can do a lot more damage within the system than outside”.