WEDNESDAY, 10 a.m. government class, the morning after Election Day. We're talking about the still-undetermined presidential election. The professor asks the class what we think about Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and his effects on the election.
"Nader sucks!" someone yells. Everyone laughs and seems to agree, because they know that Nader took key votes away from Gore in swing states and could help Bush get elected. If Bush ends up winning, Nader will be the Democrats' version of the anti-Christ. People will say he's selfish and self-aggrandizing. They'll say he should have conceded the race to Gore so that the splintering of the Democratic vote wouldn't have helped Bush win. They're wrong.
A vote for Nader was more than a vote for Bush. It was not even just a vote for Nader. It was a vote to build a viable third party, and, therefore, a vote for truer democracy. There's more at stake here than the outcome of one election.
At his campaign-ending rally in Washington D.C., Nader spoke at length about his positions on individual issues, but there was an underlying point behind his speech that was more important than any of his stances on the issues. His point was that a viable third party is something this country needs to come closer to being a true democracy, and the Green Party is attempting to move toward that goal.
In a country as big as the United States, we obviously can't all participate in government ourselves, so we elect representatives to convey our interests and concerns to the government. But what happens when the representatives don't truly represent their constituents?
This is a problem we're facing now, and an undercurrent in Nader's speech. When the parties move to the middle of the road in attempts to garner enough votes to beat the opposition, they become too alike. Then, people may have to settle for a representative who they only partially agree with. Or they may feel very strongly about one issue and feel obliged to vote for the candidate sharing their view even if they don't agree with the rest of their platform.
For example, people who strongly support reproductive rights may have felt it necessary to vote for pro-choice Gore, without agreeing with any of his other stances, simply because Bush, the only alternative, is adamantly pro-life.
The end result of such a lack of alternatives is that the government isn't truly representing the population it's exercising authority over.
In a democracy, you must have choice. At another rally in Oakland a few weeks ago, Nader said that a choice between two major party candidates beholden to corporations and special interest donors is not much of a choice at all. "I think we need a better choice," he told the crowd. While many Americans might not agree with the way he views the two dominant parties, the sentiment behind his estimation of them rings true. What kind of a choice do we have, really?
To give people more alternatives in choosing their representatives, the solution simply is to construct viable third parties.
With all the dissatisfaction and disillusionment people express towards the present two-party system, you'd think they'd be all for trying to change it. When groups like the Green Party try to change things, however, they get spit on and shunned because their success could threaten the success of the dominant Democratic party.
The thing that liberals who said that a "vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" have to understand is that there is never going to be a time when they'll be okay with the Republican party winning, so they'll never want to risk supporting a third party that could contribute to that. They'll always want leftist third parties to concede to the Democrats because the Republican nominee will always be scary or inept or, as was the case this year, scarily inept.
Phil Donahue, who spoke at the D.C. Green Party rally, addressed this issue when he asked, "If not now, when?" When is running as a third party going to be acceptable? When are they going to be allowed to run without being accused of "stealing" votes from the dominant party? If the general lambasting of the Green Party during this election year is any indication, the answer to both those questions is "never."
One of the Nader campaign slogans is "vote your conscience." Another possible slogan could be "vote for courage" - the courage to support a party that could be problematic in the short run but further democracy in the long run.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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