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E-PrinceThough the impending election-day showdown between Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is currently occupying the central spot in the nation’s political consciousness, one group of University students is looking beyond the obvious choices and supporting ...(back to the article)
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A vote for Nader is a vote for McCain.
That's ridiculous. A majority of people live in states that are clearly going one way or another. Why vote for someone whose views significantly differ for yours then when other choices are available? There will never be a legitimate third party candidate in America if people continue to accept the false dichotomy set up by MSM and the two major parties. Sure there are some differences between McCain and Obama, but they're nowhere near as large as the differences between candidates in most other developed countries. In this election, Americans are being offered a choice between someone right of center and someone very right of center (sure deny it, but that's certainly not what the rest of the developed world thinks). Why wouldn't true liberals vote for Nader or someone who actually *is* liberal? A vote for Obama most certainly is *not* a vote for change...
The reason I say a vote for Nader is a vote for McCain is because Nader doesn't have a chance of getting elected because of the nature of our electoral system. Because whoever has the plurality of electoral votes wins, it will always be disadvantageous to have a split in the more liberal half of the electorate (Obama/Nader) or the conservative half (McCain/Barr).
The reason other countries have thriving third parties is because their electoral systems are different. Meaning third party candidates actually get elected, and get elected frequently. In parliamentary systems this can mean adopting proportional representation--members in congress are proportional to the popular vote.
In a national presidential election, instant run-off voting is a system that could effectively include third party candidates. Everyone ranks their preferences, and the candidates with the least #1 rank votes gets dropped, and those voter's #2 choices are used, and so on, until a candidate has over 50%.
But until we change our electoral system, a vote for Nader is a vote for McCain.
Obama, the most liberal member of the US Senate, is RIGHT of center???
Voteforchange, those who say voting for Nader helps McCain - or voting for Bob Barr helps Obama - should instead speak up about Instant Runoff Voting, which you mention. But by running for office now, without I.R.V., candidates such as Ralph Nader are raising awareness on issues the corporate Republican and Democratic candidates won't touch, such as universal health care. Obama’s and McCain's insurance industry-driven plans don’t provide adequate health care to every uninsured/underinsured American.
Someone recently said, "Barack Obama and John McCain are about as different as McDonald’s and Burger King. One may be better than the other, but neither is good for you."
And you're wrong, voteforchange. A vote for Nader is a vote for Nader, and he's getting my vote.
Go Nader/Gonzalez '08!
Check the polls. A vote for Nader is NOT a vote for McCain. Polls have shown that when Nader is included, McCain goes down, NOT Obama. It is rather strange considering Nader is a liberal politician, but the polls clearly indicate this.
Also, if my vote for Nader got McCain elected, it wouldn't bother me one bit. There are no "vast" differences between the two candidates. The two parties just do the same thing different for the good of the corporations.
If there was no alternative I would NOT be voting, nor would thousands, if not millions of other americans. Obama is not worth my vote. I'm not willing to bargain between Hitler and Stalin.
I'd rather vote for what I want and get none of it than vote for what I don't want and get plenty of it.
"The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."
Carrol Quigley, professor of history at the Foreign Service Schools of Georgetown University
Member of the CFR (Counsil on Forgien Relations)
It is absolutely ridiculous to vote for a candidate based on your perception of his ability to win. That's not how it's supposed to work. Instead of deciding what you want and then voting for it, you try to guess what you might be able to get, and then vote for that? That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Likewise, Obama, like most politicians, doesn't take up a political position that he believes in and then sees if people will support it; rather, he tries to take a position that he thinks people will support. So now it's not a contest between political ideas, it's just a contest between two individual humans with no real political principles behind them. So you're not supporting "change" when you vote for Obama, you're just supporting the man Obama, who changes himself in order to win rather than trying to change things for the greater good.
If people actually voted for the things they believed in, the election results would be much different. There is a large multitude of different political opinions amongst Americans, and if people would vote for what they wanted, rather than making a self-fulfilling prophecy by trying to guess who will win and then voting for that, all of the third party candidates would be getting a lot more votes than they do. Instead, all these people are consciously restricting their own choices, and preventing things from ever changing, because they only vote for things that have already won in the past, thinking this is the only thing that can win, and thus precluding the election from ever effecting any serious changes in the country.
@ Alum08: If you think there IS a major difference between McCain and Obama, you sir are the one with something wrong. Your inability to see beyond the issues and candidates spoon-fed to you suggest a lack of critical thinking ability. Congrats on graduating though; it must've been some achievement with your disability! Obama's ranking as the most liberal member of the center is meaningless. He's missed so many votes, I don't really know how you can conclude that. More importantly though, being the most X in a limited group doesn't make you absolutely X. He is by no means a true liberal in any sense except perhaps when compared to extreme reactionaries. I stand by my statement though that it makes no sense to vote for Obama or McCain in states they are bound to win unless nobody else represents your views better (which would be a sad state of affairs IMHO). A vote for another candidate has no reasonable chance of changing anything except in a handful of states, but even if it did...who the heck cares? It's the candidates job to represent you; changing your views or accepting something less than ideal because you want to vote for the winning candidate is ludicrous. Why vote at all then? I'm quite impressed though that so many people have echoed my sentiments so far and that this hasn't been overrun with members of the Obama cult.
A vote for Nader is a vote for NAder as well as a vote to change the just election two party election system to one that is fair-that is open to all viable candidates(If they have ballot access in the majority of sattes they are viable, and no it will not be a cicus with hundreds of people on the debates as it takes thousands of votes in each state to get ballot access fore just that state. That type of excuse is just propaganda for the powers to be to keep the system corrupt.
Write to Janet Brown at the Commission on Presidential DEbates and politely insist that Mr Nader be in the standard debate next week: jb@debates.org Also here is a petition to send to the board members of the Commission on Presidential Debates:
http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1488/t/689/ca...