Now, how are you going to vote in the RECALL ELECTION? In the PRIMARIES next March? In the General Election in 2004?
[Posting to the “demogreens” Yahoo Group. -Thomas]
> Now, how are you going to vote in the RECALL ELECTION? In the PRIMARIES next March? In the General Election in 2004? –Joe S.
I’m going to vote to DUMP Davis (along with 66% of the rest of the voters of this state, many of which on the progressive side of things are fed up with having a “Democrat” Governor who is more of a right-winger in some respects than your average Republican, and is undoubtedly more conservative than just about any possible replacement from his own party or otherwise, recent pandering aside).
I’m going to vote FOR Peter Camejo, or Arianna Huffington, based on whether Peter stays in the race, because both of them are strong, progressive candidates whose philosophies and documented public statements I agree with in large part, and who, if elected, would radically shift the terms of debate in Sacramento and our government’s expressed priorities.
I’m going to vote for Ralph Nader (or another Green Party candidate) next spring, and next fall, because the values expressed by Ralph Nader and the Green Party are largely in line with my own, because when I hear Ralph Nader speak, it doesn’t sound like any Democrat I’ve heard in recent memory, and he addresses topics and puts forth perspectives that are simply otherwise absent from America’s political dialogue, whether in the newsmedia or (god forbid) in the mouths of politicians. Every time I hear him speak, it is a revealation as to how utterly constrained and narrow America’s political dialogue has become.
I cast these votes because my vote MATTERS. Because the future of the planet MATTERS. and because I have literally decades worth of evidence to support the contention that electing a Democrat to office makes no FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE as to whether the vast bulk of my issues make progress, and even more fundamentally, whether the total annahilation of life on this planet as we know it is reversed.
I saw this headline the other day: “Coral reefs doomed within decades without action.” 25% of the world’s known ocean species depend on coral reefs for their existence. These are the tropical rainforests of the ocean, the lungs of the planet. That such headlines can be seen nearly every day is condemnation enough of our political system’s inadequacy, but that such headlines can pass without substantive comment from our nation’s leaders in either party, almost without notice,
We had eight years of Clinton/Gore - I dare any Democrat with a conscience to tell me that the clock ticking towards Doomsday did anything but grind on relentlessly during those years… the rainforests destroyed, the oceans overfished, the Sahara relentlessly advancing, the carbon-dioxide building up in the atmosphere… and the silence and complicity of the Democratic Party and it’s leadership in the face of Bush’s arrogation of power does far more to condemn them than I ever could. Even now, the majority of the frontrunners for the nomination in the Democratic Party, and its leadership, support the war in Iraq, and Dean’s opposition is less moral than pragmatic, suggesting that he, like Clinton, would have little difficulty deploying our troops overseas should doing so not pose political risk. The military that Bush is using to create a American imperium was inherited from the Clinton-Gore administration.
This is NOT Germany in 1933, and Bush and the Republicans are not Nazis, however terrible he and his cohorts are… to suggest this, is to fundamentally insult the good will and common sense of the American people. Should things deteriorate to that point, it will not be the Greens that history points to as the weak-kneed collaborators and excoriates for failing to live up to their principles and operate as an effective “loyal opposition” - it will be the Democrats, and justly so.
I make no apologies for having cast a vote for Nader in 1996, and in 2000, and for Greens and progressives in every election in between, at every opportunity, and I make no apologies and have no guilt over my intention to do so in the future. I cast my vote FOR the candidates and principles I profess.
In politics, as in everything else, you get exactly what you ask for. I have asked for more than a choice between the lesser of two evils, and as a result, have gotten stronger, more effective and more successful Green Party candidates at each election, progress such that I can see the potential for fundamental change happening within the next twenty years, when my young daughters are likely to be at the point of considering whether or not to have children. I cast my vote FOR a better world, FOR hope, FOR a politics that means something and gives more than lip service to putting the people and the planet first.
Regards,
Thomas Leavitt
