~ so, the election is clearly a debacle. the childish bickering between the parties on how the tally and certification should continue (as though it the place of political machines to define constitutional policy!) has drawn attention away from the original fervor of pointing fingers at nader supporters as the cause for gore’s poor showing. certainly, after gore’s legal machinations fail to give him the election and george w. bush’s dad’s c.i.a. buddies finish rigging the ballots, the system will have to turn the blame upon someone with whom it can contend; the ralph nation will be a quick target. until then:
   is it ralph nader’s fault that, even with the votes that nader supposedly took from him, gore could not carry his own state?
   is it ralph nader’s fault that, even with nader’s votes supplementing him, gore could not convince half of the nation that he was the superior choice to bush? he should have torn bush a new one, but instead he botched his campaign and threw the 2-way debates out of the public memory.

   is it ralph nader’s fault that gore wished to court the ‘moderates’ and the republicans, taking for granted that the true left would support him in the face of no other choice? upon assuming my devotion was such that he could refuse to address my concerns, gore lost my vote. i’m not going to vote for gore because i’m afraid of bush; i’m not going to vote for gore, because i don’t want gore.
   the idea that there currently is a two-party system is a given; why people think that this will be changed by us not voting for third parties (except when they are not afraid to) is mind-boggling. why do those ‘liberals’ who claim to desire a three or multi-party system think that a new party will come about if, when things look rough, they falter and run back to the big two?
   in a less than insignificant way, the ‘nader factor’ has helped to bring about the current situation, where the nation’s focus is upon a system that is broken and corrupt. with just the two major party dipshits running, one of them would have slipped quietly into office; now, we are confronted with a system that uses 40-year old, failing technology to determine our ‘leaders’. we are confronted with the persistence of jim crow operations in the south, we are confronted with the inefficiencies and incompetence of the election officials, we are confronted with the absurdities of the electoral college, and we are confronted with the corruption of the bush(es) administration(s). these issues need redress, immediately. if it is true that not voting nader would let florida go to gore, then not voting nader would have kept these situations under the surface. luckily, two million turned out for nader, and the situations arose in front of the nation and in front of the world. i can not say that i am sorry for that.
   those who claim that they would have supported nader if the ‘stakes had not been so high’ or if they had/had not been in a particular ‘swing state’ deserve nothing but pity and sympathy. they choose to justify their shortcomings by claiming that their being rational and conscientious is incompatible with being moral and conscionable. there is name-calling against those of use who voted nader, as though ‘idealistic’ is somehow an insult. the situation is looking grim these days; the ‘politics of hope’ may not be feasible, but intend to reach for what i want, always, even against hope. it is a far more restful position than settling at every impasse and living a life of endless compromise. for if you start with compromise, it will never end.

   these are just a few reasons why the angry red planet chose to support ralph nader; of course the 2,000,000 other folks who did so had their own reasons, and i am sure that they don’t regret a bit of it.

~ so, let’s say there was to be a ‘revote’ in some minuscule corner of florida; let’s say that the vote would essentially determine the next president of the united states; let’s say that the angry red planet was based in this district, and could take part in this ‘revote’. if this were the case, you could be certain that 100% of the angry red planet would not hesitate to vote a full nader [w] ticket.

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