Why am I voting for Ralph Nader?
Ending the death penalty
Ralph Nader is not “in this race,” and no celebrity endorsement or kick-ass position on drug legalization is going to put him in. While it may not be much fun having to choose between the lesser of two evils, that’s the choice adult voters are faced with this year. Ralph Nader is a vanity candidate running a vanity campaign for a Potemkin party, the Greens. And while Al Gore may not be perfect, he’s better than Bush. If Nader voters manage to put Bush in the White House, next year some of your fellow citizens (women, queers, the poor) are going to pay a high price for your refusal to grow up and make the real choice you’re faced with, which, again, is a choice between Bush and Gore. You may have to grit your teeth when you vote Gore, but that’s a small price to pay to keep the environment, the poor, and the English language from the harm George W. Bush will surely do all three.
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The point of voting for Nader is that if he gets at least 5 percent of the vote, the Green Party will receive federal funding that will put it on more equal footing with the Democrats and Republicans. Ralph, bless his heart, doesn’t have a chance of getting elected, but I’m not voting for Ralph. I’m casting my vote in hopes of creating a viable third party.
Let’s talk about Jesse Ventura. Ventura made a long-shot bid for governor of Minnesota as a Reform Party candidate and won. According to the logic of Nader supporters, Ventura’s victory should have transformed the Reform Party into a viable third party, at least in Minnesota. But the Reform Party in Minnesota imploded, just like the Reform Party did everywhere else, and Jesse Ventura isn’t a member anymore. While Ventura’s victory demonstrated that voters will elect people who aren’t Ds and Rs, it also proved that electing one person to a big job will not turn a bunch of kooks and losers into a viable third party. And I should also point out that Nader-the-moaning-prig is a far cry from Ventura-the-upbeat-populist.
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