votenader.org
Ralph Nader is pictured with running mate Matt Gonzalez, who on the Green Party ticket nearly beat Democrat Gavin Newsom in the 2003 race for mayor of San Francisco. (Despite the facts that Democrats Bill Clinton, Al Gore, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi all campaigned for Newsom; that Gonzalez spent less than a fourth of what Newsom spent on the race; and that only 3 percent of San Franciscans were registered Green Party members, the final vote was Newsom, 133,546 and Gonzalez, 119,329.)
I might vote for Ralph again
I meant to blog on it at the time, but I didn't, but I will now: The Sacramento Bee, my hometown newspaper, reported this past week that former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader -- bane of the anti-democratic "Democrats" (who pretty much assert that he doesn't have the right to run for president because they don't want him to -- even though the U.S. Constitution begs to differ on who may run for president) -- will appear on California's November ballot as the presidential candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party.
Nader's presidential campaign website notes that so far his name will appear on 28 states' ballots.
Fact is, Nader's truly anti-corporate, populist platform is much more in line with my values and beliefs than is Democrat Barack Obama's. Information on how way-too-much alike the Democratic and the Repugnican parties are, especially where it comes to licking corporate ass, is out there, such as this article by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi (who is, I'll add, fairly hot and, from his photo on the jacket of his latest book, pretty same-sex-loving-looking).
Taibbi writes in his article:
...The truth is that the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain are being inundated with cash from more or less exactly the same gorgons of the corporate scene. From Wall Street to the Big Oil powerhouses to the military-industrial complex, America's fat-cat business leaders know that the "Animal House"-style party of the last eight years that made almost all of them rich with bonuses, government contracts and bubble profits is about to come to an end, and someone is going to have to pay to clean up the mess.
They want that someone to be you, not them, and they've spared no expense to make sure both presidential candidates will be there to bail them out next year.
They're succeeding. Both would-be presidents have already sold us out. They've taken the money and run -- completing the cyclical transformation of the American political narrative from one of monopolistic Republican iniquity to an even more depressing tale about the overweening power of corporate money and the essentially fictitious nature of our two-party system.
In layman's terms, we've gone from being screwed to being fucked. Who knows -- maybe Barack Obama will surprise us if he wins the election. But if you look at the money, it doesn't look good....
And the excellent documentary on Ralph Nader, "An Unreasonable Man," makes it clear how anti-democratic the Democratic Party has become, with Democratic Party operatives just as vigilant as are the Repugnicans in ensuring that the two-party duopoly continues so that Americans have the political equivalent of the choice between only Coke and Pepsi (between which many if not most people can't tell the fucking difference).
I find the anti-Nader "Democrats'" anti-democratic impulse to be even more nauseating than I do the Repugnicans'. I expect nothing but evil to come from the Repugnicans, but to see evil come from those who call themselves "Democrats" -- it disturbs me beyond the ability of words (even four-letter words) to capture.
So, since it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama will win California anyway -- the last poll that I saw had Obama leading the McCainosaur by double digits in California, if memory serves -- there's a very good chance that although I've given the Obama campaign some money (mostly to prevent the nomination of DINO [Democrat in name only] Billary Cunton), come November 4 I'll actually cast my vote for Nader.
Those "Democrats" who would jump all over me for that fact clearly don't know basic fucking civics: The fact that it's my fucking right to vote for whomfuckingever I wish completely aside, under the Electoral College it's winner-takes-all, and as California is a solidly blue state, Obama's win of California is pretty fucking assured, so it doesn't really matter whether I vote for Nader or even for the McCainosaur; effectively, because it's winner-takes-all, those Californians who vote for a presidential candidate other than Obama won't even have their votes counted. Go, democracy!
So I'll see how California is polling right up to Election Day. If it's safe to vote for Nader -- as it was safe for me to vote for him in November 2000, because there was no question then that Al Gore would win California -- I'll probably do it again.
1:05:58 PM 
|
