Much to my dismay, I need to go to the Humphrey Coliseum on Tuesday to cast my vote. It will be my first time to vote, but to me, this doesn’t mean anything. While I will perform my civic duty, I do not see any real reason for taking out the time to give my vote to a candidate with whom I disagree, but who expects me to vote for the lesser of two evils anyway.
On Oct. 24, a Friday night, I did take out the time to expand my political knowledge by watching “An Unreasonable Man,” a documentary about Ralph Nader’s activist career of taking absolutely no crap. In short, Nader, who launched his activist career by revealing the dangers of 1960s automobiles during the peak of an obsessed car culture, recruited a number of idealistic young people dubbed “Nader’s Raiders” and then criticized many of them when they grew older and differed with him on certain issues. That’s pretty cool.
In fact, many of the automobile and food regulations that exist today were inspired by Nader, who in the past has been threatened and framed by corporations. If anyone in this election cares about the issues, it’s Nader and perhaps a handful of other independent and third party candidates. It is certainly not John McCain or Barack Obama.
I have never endorsed a candidate in any of my opinion articles, and I never plan on doing it. In fact, I wouldn’t even be able to do so if I wanted, as I am still undecided. However, I will take the liberty to non-endorse both candidates in our two most popular parties.
The debates, which are controlled by Republicans and Democrats who habitually exclude independent and third party candidates, were little more than used campaign lines. The two often evaded answering the question in order to launch into preplanned speeches. While I have said in past articles that Obama “won” the first two debates, he disappointed me a little on the third debate, especially when he claimed Americans should be accustomed to his negative advertisements. McCain only responded to the same question by talking about Obama’s advertisements and blaming the whole negative tone of the campaign on the fact that Obama wouldn’t meet him in town halls.
Besides the debates, neither McCain nor Obama represents a true change in Washington. Obama says he will perform his job better than George W. Bush, but that is an easy proposal. Anyone is better than Bush. However, he has proven through the debates that he still stands behind American interventionist ideas, which is a big issue for me. Obama said in one of the debates that he was going to relieve troops in Iraq so he could concentrate on getting Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
Both candidates voted for the economic bailout. This move was especially hypocritical for McCain, who claims to be for deregulation. His vote for the bailout proves he is merely using the idea of deregulation as a talking point to drive voters.
Driving voters seems to be an obsession for both candidates to the point of viewing voters as things to own. In American politics, we use terms like “battleground states” as if voters comprise regions of property for the candidates to divide and conquer. That’s why so many Democrats were angry with Nader for running in the last two elections. If it hadn’t been for Nader, Bush wouldn’t have been able to spiral us into a needless war and a bad economy and then do it all over again after 2004, the naysayers claimed.
I agree with Michael Moore on what he said in 2000 about voting for your conscience and not throwing away a vote for the lesser of two evils. Moore has since denounced Nader for running in the past three elections, according to an open letter written by Nader campaign volunteer Carl J. Mayer.
Candidates don’t automatically deserve your vote. I encourage you to vote for the candidate you like.
Matt Watson is the opinion editor of The Reflector. He can be contacted at [email protected].