New “Third” Party choices might elect Donald Trump
By Mitchell Zimmerman
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| By Mike Luckovich |
They join two other non-major-party
candidates, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and left-wing intellectual and
activist Cornell West.
These candidates appear
to offer voters a broad menu of political ideologies and beliefs from which to
choose – from Kennedy’s contention that Americans are enslaved
by vaccination record-keeping to Manchin’s claimed
centrism to West’s plans for abolishing poverty and Stein’s condemnation of
corporate-dominated politics.
One thing that is not
on the third-party menu is an opportunity to vote for someone who could actually
become president. There isn’t a ghost of a chance Jill Stein, Joe Manchin,
Robert F. Kennedy or Cornell West will be elected.
Nonetheless, their
campaigns could have a powerful impact: helping elect Donald Trump. The Green
Party achieved an equivalent disaster before.
In 2000, the Green Party fielded a candidate, Ralph Nader, against Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. In what turned out to be a remarkably close election, the result turned on Florida.
Nader received 97,488
votes in the state, votes that otherwise would have tilted strongly in favor of
Gore: In his book, Crashing the Party, Nader acknowledges that 13% more
of his voters would have gone for Gore than for Bush. These 12,700 votes would
have given Gore an indisputable victory.
Instead, the vote was close
enough for a right-wing Supreme Court to be in a position to halt the voting
when Bush was only 537 votes ahead, bestowing Florida – and the presidency – on
Bush.
How did voting for the
Green Party work out?
Foreign policy: The neocons around Bush had long targeted Iraq for
overthrow. Following 9/11, they lied us into an invasion that led to 4,500 dead American
soldiers, more than 165,000 dead Iraqi civilians, and a Middle East in the chaos that
spawned ISIS.
Climate
change: In Al Gore, we could have had a president in 2001 who really understood the climate threat. Instead, we had the pro-oil Bush presidency, initiating nearly two decades of political
stagnation on the emerging climate crisis.
Democracy
and constitutional rights: Bush got to appoint
two right-wing Supreme Court justices, who joined three other Republican
Justices to give us the 5-4 decision in the money-rules-all Citizens United
case. The two Bush justices were also part of 5-4 majorities in cases that (1)
invented a personal constitutional right to own firearms, and (2) eviscerated
the Voting Rights Act, precipitating an avalanche of laws disenfranchising large
numbers of minority, elderly, and youth voters.
Voting for Nader, the
candidate who appeared to have stronger liberal credentials, proved to have
far-reaching consequences – but the opposite of what most Green Party voters
would likely have desired.
Third party candidates
regularly tell us we’re entitled to express our own views in voting. But voting
for President is not an exercise in personal expression and it is not like seeking
your true love or dream candidate. Voting is what you do to effect the best
outcome for your country among the real possibilities.
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| Read the Progressive Charlestown review of this gripping political thriller HERE. |
It’s as simple as this: If you vote for supposed “progressives” Jill Stein or Cornell West, you’re reducing the votes needed to stop Trump.
Mitchell Zimmerman is an
attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller Mississippi Reckoning.
