Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
The Anti-Voter Ultimately Decides How sad that we vote not for who we want, but against what we don't want. This Presidential election will be no different.by DigitalBob
(Libertarian)
Saturday, March 29, 2008
This week (3/26/08) Mike Gravel announced he is still in the Presidential race as a candidate in the Libertarian Party. I wish him well. But who is going to vote for him?
Having been a supporter of Ross Perot's Reform Party, I saw the results when Pat Buchanan took the nomination of a third party that welcomed him. Some of the early founders said that Pat didn't embrace the party's ideals. Eventually, that split the party. Their ideals of more responsive, cost effective government and tactical protectionism died with them. The same may happen with the Libertarians, because Gravel may not close enough to some of their ideals.
It's a shame the Democratic Party did not take the former Senator from Alaska more seriously. In the 1970s, he had the right ideas on the Vietnam draft, and his position will be right again when the Iraq draft is debated. He may get more popular votes as a Libertarian, but may not get a single Electoral College vote.
Ross Perot ran as the anti-Bush candidate. Some credit him with putting Clinton in the Whitehouse, after Perot’s exit and reentrance into the race. Many Republicans were appalled by Bush’s recantation of his "no new taxes" pledge. With all the cash and organizational capability Perot had at his disposal, he was closer to winning than the final numbers show. At a minimum, he would have pushed the election into the Congress, where the popular vote would then have to be considered. Congressmen would then have to choose between the will of the people in their district or go with the candidate from their party. There would have been no Bush-Gore-style controversy. That’s if he didn’t consider his daughter’s safety and privacy more important than he did.
That was 1992. Looking back to 1988, George Bush benefitted from a popular Ronald Reagan administration. The Reagan-Bush administration is credited with correcting the inflation of the 1970s, putting an end to Communism in the Soviet Union, and promising smaller government. America was weary from long war-time commitments in Vietnam and liked the idea that conflicts should be fought hard and fast, and then bring the troops home to ticker-tape parades. Grenada seemed like the model of warfare in the future. George H.W. Bush benefitted by not getting hit by the anti-voter. Bush took serious the lessons of limited war when it was time to flex his muscles in Panama and Kuwait. But his "no new taxes" pledge caused fiscal conservative voters to go elsewhere. Bush #41 realized too late that the quickest way to lose an election is not to keep your campaign promises.
Bush #43 hasn’t learned that lesson, but he’s not running for reelection. Dick Cheney’s "so" shows that sort of arrogance that aptly represents this administration. Perhaps this is why the President's popularity rating is so low? No one would have imagined that we would still be engaged in Iraq, with over 145,000 troops there and half a trillion dollars spent, five years later. By not running for office, Cheney will say "so" to public opinion until the cows come home. Bush and Cheney don’t have to face the anti-voter. Ironically, they’re immune to public opinion, as much as Saddam Hussein was.
Right now, it looks like the next President will be one of three current members of the U.S. Senate. For at least the last four years, they have been part of the problem. They have voted to keep funding the war. They all support proposals will increase the reach of government into our lives, with more security measures and more nanny-state spending programs. McCain will need so show how he had better ideas than the current administration, so he doesn’t attract Bush’s anti-voter. McCain doesn’t want to look like the incumbent. Democrats are deluded that people like what they’re saying. Rather, they're getting the benefit of years of unpunished mistakes made by the government in general. As long as the Democrats can make McCain and the Republicans look like they are committed to the Bush doctrine, they can chant anti-Bush slogans and samba into the Whitehouse. As the general election in November nears, it will be interesting how much distance McCain puts between himself and George W. Bush.
In the de facto two-party party system in this country, commanded by Democrats and Republicans, most of the time you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. Parties exist to elect candidates to office and keep them there. A party's ideology may change over time, but its basic mission never does. For the independent voter, it’s really a choice between incumbent and challenger. A third-party or independent candidate has to run against the incumbent and the first obvious challenger—a Democrat or Republican.
I've looked at Mr. Gravel's most positive traits--promoting non-intervention and supporting more personal liberties, while still concerned for the least fortunate in our society. His politics mesh up well with my left-leaning star in the Nolan Chart’s libertarian quadrant.
When I tried to explain to my wife Gravel’s positions, I got a response that was very well-grounded. You see, she's voted for liberal Democrats most of her adult life. I've mostly voted for fiscally responsible Republicans. But she brought me back down to earth. George Bush's war is fiscally irresponsible and it erodes of our constitutionally guaranteed rights as Americans. It's got to stop before it gets worse. The danger, she reminded me, is that the war in Iraq will continue if McCain gets to be President. She will vote for anyone who will oppose the war.
We both voted for Ron Paul in the Michigan Republican Primary. The Democratic candidates didn’t campaign here (except for Dennis Kucinich at the end). Clinton, Dodd, Gravel, Kucinich and "uncommitted" were the only choices. Write-ins didn’t count. Since the Democratic Party said that they weren’t going to seat the delegation, most Edwards and Obama supporters didn’t bother to vote. I think that hurt Edwards the most, because he could have used his strong union support to bring attention to Michigan’s economic woes. It smells like the Michigan situation was engineered to squelch Clinton’s anti-voters in her own party.
Her recent efforts to get those Michigan delegates still stink. It didn’t cost her any money to not campaign here. She didn't earn them. She didn’t have to face the wrath of the anti-voter.
Here in Michigan's sixth district, where I live, Fred Upton, a Republican, keeps getting elected because he seems to be responsive to the needs of his district. He or his office has responded to each of my queries. Upton has come through for local issues, such as the new ethanol plant and stopping the dumping of toxins into Lake Michigan. He's promoted the local nuclear plant and had done a good job for communications legislation. His attention to liberal issues, such as the immigration status of Ibrahim Parlak, medical insurance for children, environmental protection and so on, have made him a likeable "moderate" Republican to many Democratic voters.
For someone to challenge Upton, he would have to find faults in the Congressman's character or service record. But there really isn't any. People like him. An independent or a third-party candidate wouldn’t stand much of a chance.
Realistically, in the Presidential general election, the deciding voters, the anti-voters, will have to determine which of the two big party candidates they like the least, and vote against him or her. The minor parties don't get the time of day, since they aren't likely to get a single Electoral College vote. All you have to do is look back at the successes of third-party and independent candidates over the last 30 years, such as John Anderson, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader and Ron Paul.
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2008 DigitalBob, all rights reserved.
Published: Saturday, March 29, 2008
Last modified: Saturday, March 29, 2008
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Good article. The real problem is with the voters. They vote in the general because by that time it is a two person race. The voters may not want to vote FOR either candidate , but they know who they want to vote against. They are left with this kind of choice in the general election because they think there are too many candidates in the primary and it is too much trouble to find which one they can comfortably support.
While independent and third-party candidates surely get my attention, Mike Gravel is clearly neither of the above. He's just a guy who wants to run for President and will stand at anybody's podium to do it. I, too, supported and worked for Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996. Ross warned us about the debt, the deficit, NAFTA and disappearing jobs, and the decline of our educational and health care systems. Today, my car bumper sports a sticker that says, "Ross was Right!". It's a constant parking lot conversation catalyst. Those of us who got involved in Perot's campaigns learned--usually the hard way--of the collusion and corruption that the two major parties will employ to keep a hold on power and the percs that go with it. You can read about it in a new book: "The Perot Legacy: A New Political Path" by Pat Benjamin (www.theperotlegacy.com). I'm still looking for a candidate I can vote for this year with a clear conscience. Thank God there's still time--despite the rush to the ballot box the media hype would have us believe. So, like many others, I'll keep my precious vote in my pocket for now...and stay tuned.
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2008 DigitalBob, all rights reserved.