"The Bad or the Terrible?"

I came across this article a few days ago which is the most interesting Pro-Nader article I've seen. So, of course, I've got to post some excerpts of it to share with my fictitious audience. Heh. Some emphasis added to certain statements.

Those who insist Nader supporters should vote Kerry are holding back US democratisation
George Monbiot
Tuesday August 17, 2004

This is the question which people ask themselves before almost every presidential election: why, when the United States is teeming with brilliant and inspiring people, are its voters so often faced with a choice between two deeply unimpressive men?

I would have thought the answer was pretty obvious: because deeply unimpressive men continue to be elected.

...

So Americans should vote for the Democrats in 2004, and worry about the wider failings of the US political system when the current president is safely out of the way.

And their argument has merit. Bush has already launched two unnecessary wars, threatened 40 or 50 nations with armed aggression, ripped up international treaties and domestic regulations, granted corporations a licence to cook the planet, waged a global war against civil liberties and sought to bury that old-fashioned notion that the state should tax the rich and help the poor. The world would certainly be a safer and a better place without him.

...

Under the US electoral system, which is constructed around patronage, corruption and fear of the media, there will always be exceptional circumstances, because it will always throw up dreadful candidates.

Only when the Americans choose a man or woman who is prepared to turn the system upside down and reintroduce democracy to the greatest democracy on earth will these exceptional circumstances come to an end. In choosing the bad rather than the terrible in 2004, in other words, Americans will be voting for a similar choice in 2008. Whereupon they will again be told that they'd better vote for the bad, in case the terrible gets in.

Any president who seeks to change this system requires tremendous political courage. He needs to take on the corporations which have bought the elections, and challenge the newspapers and television stations which set the limits of political debate. Kerry, who demonstrated plenty of courage in Vietnam, has shown none whatsoever on the presidential stump.

Last week, when the Republicans were questioning his commitment to defence, he announced that "even knowing what we now know" he would have voted to give President Bush the authority to attack Iraq.

Ten days ago his national security adviser James Rubin told the Washington Post that if Kerry was president he would "in all probability" have launched a military attack against Iraq by now.
Kerry's ability to raise almost as much money as the Republicans is seen as a triumph for American democracy; but his corporate backers are funding him not because they believe in democracy, but because they believe that he will do what they want. And they are unlikely to be wrong. When Kerry gets his orders, he reports for duty.

...

I'm not an unhesitating fan of Ralph Nader's - I believe that some of his positions on trade, for example, are wrong - but no one could deny that he possesses courage.

His decision to stand in November, when even his former supporters are telling him not to, is as brave as it is foolhardy. He has spent his working life fighting the corporations and being attacked in the media.

This month he did something no other US politician has dared to do, and took on the Anti-Defamation League, the organisation which smears opponents of Israeli policy as anti-semites.

He won't be elected in November, of course, but that's not the point. The point is that if you want to change a system, you have to start now, rather than in some endlessly deferred future. And the better Nader does, the faster the campaign for change will grow.

The Nation claims that Nader would have "a far more productive impact" as "a public citizen fighting for open debates and rallying voters to support progressive Democrats".

But what possible incentive would the Democrats have to listen to him? He has influence over these cowering creatures only while they are afraid that he might take their votes.

...

The question is whether this difference is sufficient to justify the abandonment of the only current electoral attempt to democratise the US political system.

I don't believe it is. Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic are asking American voters to sacrifice liberty for security, and democracy for expediency. The voters should ignore them.
- The Guardian >> Full Article

The article rallies for the backing of Nader to reform the system we've got, which is a difficult task, and one that is unlikely to ever succeed regardless of who's proposing it. It's very good, but the idea of reforming the government, which has rooted itself in this debacle between the two parties for control of the nation with corporate sponsorship, is very unrealistic.

How can we focus on something 4 - 8 years down the road when events may not even end up leading us in that direction to where we then have the choice. Why plan to save a tree 8 years later when maybe in 2 years a truck uproots and kills it? Doesn't it defeat the purpose then? Maybe these third parties should make themselves prominent enough to compete (but, that means they'd have to gain support from voters, which in this election is not benefitial for the challenger).

Yes, the current lack of prominence of the third parties makes their vague bid for the White House a very unrealistic likelihood. Maybe if they start pumping the air waves with ads and join in on the presidential debates they'll have some success -- but whoever said many Americans are open minded enough to even consider someone else after their mind is made up about someone else?