October
2000
Gore
and Bush Make me Wanna Ralph
By Anne Sullivan
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It’s nearing election time and we all have
some important decisions to make. Well, not all of us, of course, but
the 45 percent of Americans who do vote (according to 1996 voter turnout).
The remaining 55 percent may not participate in the democratic process,
but that doesn’t mean they aren’t faced with their own decisions.
Take, for instance, the choice between Pepsi and Coke. You’d think,
with the expensive advertising campaigns of the dueling soft-drink companies,
that cola drinkers were making one of the most important decisions of
their lives. Maybe I’m committing blasphemy, but they pretty much
taste the same to me. If I had to choose, I’d opt for something
different, like ginger ale.
Which leads me to our impending presidential election. According to
a large portion of media coverage, voters have two options when pulling
the lever on November 7th: Republican or Democrat. This tunnel vision,
however, fails to include Green Party candidate Ralph Nader’s bid
for the presidency. Because of Nader’s climb in the polls to between
six and eight percent in late July (according to the Village Voice),
however, Nader is working his way into America’s consciousness.
His incessant knocking on the Oval Office door is growing louder and
one person within hearing range is Al Gore. Nader presents an alternative
for disaffected Democrats or progressives tired of choosing the lesser
of two evils—and Gore knows this. He’s already adopted some
of Nader’s key issues into his platform, but Gore would have to
shift his rightward drift significantly to seriously address the concerns
of Green Party members.
In his acceptance speech at the Green Party convention, Nader noted
that his campaign would highlight universal health care, environmental
and consumer protections, campaign finance reform, and strengthened
labor rights as key policy issues. He vowed to place heavy emphasis
on the impacts of corporate globalization, child poverty and runaway
corporate welfare, among other issues. Other topics Nader has spotlighted
are of importance to environmentally aware Greens: logging, trade and
the environment, genetically engineered foods, environmental legislation,
and global warming. Specifically, Nader advocates the immediate halt
of commercial logging on U.S. public lands, the end of U.S. membership
in the World Trade Organization, mandatory labeling of all GM foods,
and the elimination by Congress of subsidies for the fossil fuels industry.
For more on Nader’s platform, visit www.votenader.org.
Gore has been hailed for his environmental awareness: the Sierra Club
endorses him as a candidate as does Friends of the Earth. Considering
the Green Party’s stance on environmental issues, however, it seems
that these organizations are playing it safe. According to Nader, however,
"sometimes the safe thing to do is take a chance." In August,
100 leaders from grassroots environmental groups formed the ad-hoc
Environmentalists
Against Gore and released the following statement:
"If a candidate wins the Presidency by pretending to care deeply
about an issue, when he and the whole world know that he doesn’t
really care, then the issue stops being important in American politics.
For Americans who care about the quality of our environment, the one
thing we cannot afford to do in this election is give our votes to
Al
Gore, a man who has betrayed his own vision and our only Earth."
Indeed, the continued support of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and the WTO does bring into question Gore’s commitment
to the environment. For environmentalists who have chosen a vegetarian/vegan
lifestyle as a means to lessen their negative impact on the earth, finding
an ally in the upcoming election has proven difficult. Nader is not
a vegetarian, neither is Gore. Bush’s dietary choices can be summed
up in a recent article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer which reported
that Bush planned to take a break from the campaign trail to shoot
doves
on his land for dinner.
For those voters concerned about animal advocacy, Nader and Gore’s
choices of running mates have their dilemmas. While Senator Joseph Lieberman
has a remarkably animal-friendly voting track record, substantial donors
to his bid for the vice presidency include major pharmaceutical companies.
Nader’s running mate, Winona LaDuke, is a feminist indigenous activist
[see Knowlden] who advocates the Makah tribe’s whale hunt. Some
animal rights groups have addressed this conflict of interest and, in
some cases, withdrawn their support of the Nader/LaDuke ticket. On the
other hand, Lieberman has been a proponent for the protection of whales,
though primarily in international scope. Recently, the Clinton administration
announced that the U.S. will deny the Japanese fishing rights in U.S.
waters in an effort to put pressure on Japan to stop hunting endangered
whales. What’s an animal-friendly voter to do?
Business as Usual?
Voters seeking real change can look closely at Green Party values
to find that the Party does offer an alternative to business as usual,
including animal issues. The Party platform, which can be viewed in
its entirety at www.gp.org/platform, addresses factory farming: "Corporate
industrial farming practices are inhumane and cause unnecessary suffering
to animals...The story of industrial farming needs to be told. The Green
Party strongly opposes the rampant and damaging policies of corporate
industrial farming and calls for a national shift away from these practices."
The Party’s philosophy on land use includes the following: "We
support banning indiscriminate wildlife ‘damage control practices’
and abolishing the Animal Damage Control agency that has been renamed
‘Wildlife Services.’"
As a third party, the Green Party and its candidates (let’s not
forget the importance of electing Green Senators and Representatives)
offer an alternative to the current corporate-minded two-party system.
Third parties helped incorporate the abolition of slavery, women’s
right to vote, the establishment of a minimum wage, and regulation of
child labor into major party platforms. The Greens intend to move beyond
this role and seek to directly challenge the major parties. Their goal
may not be fulfilled this election, but Nader poses a serious challenge
to the Democrats, a party that has left behind its more progressive
members. For this reason, Nader has caught the attention of George W.
Bush and the Republican Party. Less a thorn in their side, Nader represents
a balancing factor that Republicans may need—based on recent polls.
Addressing the "spoiler" debate surrounding his campaign,
Nader has stated: "You can’t spoil a system that’s rotten
to the core."
There is valid fear of another Bush in the White House. There is also
concern about the intolerable number of executions carried out by the
state of Texas during Bush’s governance and anxiety related to
Supreme Court appointments during his term (though it is interesting
to note that Bush has chosen moderate judges in Texas).
A Vote for Hope
There is a school of thought among some Nader supporters that Republican
leadership would set the stage for a strong third party, while driving
the Democrats back toward their more progressive roots. As Nader has
stated: "Vote for your hopes, not your fears."
Sharing this sentiment, I changed my party affiliation recently. Though
I was still a registered Democrat at the time, I cast my vote for Nader
in the ‘96 election in which he received one percent of the vote.
His bid for the presidency this time around, however, is much better
organized and, in voting for Nader, Green Party voters have a legitimate
chance to make a statement. Support for Nader exhibits firm support
for crucial issues such as universal health care, a guaranteed minimum
income, the increase of federal civil rights and anti-trust laws, and
a push for the complete dismantling of U.S. nuclear forces and the
reduction
of the military budget by a third; and at least partial agreement with
a moratorium on federal death penalty cases and the decriminalization
of marijuana and increase of drug treatment programs.
A platform this rich with liberal ideas should not be diminished by
the attitude that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." I
do not want to see George W. Bush in the White House, but that will
not stop me from voting for a candidate I strongly believe in. I have
spoken to many intelligent, concerned people while petitioning to get
Nader included in the presidential debates; there is general consensus
that voting for Gore, while distasteful, is the only option to save
the country from Bush. Though Nader has been speaking to record numbers
of audiences on his campaign trail (10,000 in Portland and 12,000 in
Minneapolis), recent poll numbers show him slipping. This has Democrats
feeling more confident, and if Gore takes a sizable lead, Nader believes
many liberals and independent voters will feel freer to vote for him.
His campaign goal is not to win any states but to take five percent
of the vote nationwide, thus entitling the Green Party to millions in
federal matching funds for the 2004 campaign. The stage is being set
for a viable alternative challenge to "politics as usual."
For those of us who do not feel fully represented by the system—by
neither Bush nor Gore—this election is indeed a call to action.
We have been losing our democratic control over our country, and it
is time to take it back.
Anne Sullivan wrote Satya’s "Media Watcher" column
for two years. She recently graduated from college and is pursuing
a career in journalism.
