Iapos;m trying to decide between voting for Obama and the Green party candidate Cynthia McKinney president. I have my absentee ballot, and want to vote soon so that I can get it in the mail and not have it cluttering up the place and possibly forget about it until too late.
Wisconsin does tend to be a swing state. Right now, polls are indicating that weapos;re learning towards Obama over McCain by a good 10. Of course, anything can change and probably will. I need to vote as if weapos;re going to be a close call because I canapos;t predict how weapos;ll look by election time.
Iapos;ve been going back and forth on this for months. I do like and respect Obama. Most of his stances are along the lines of what I want to see, but are still way too moderate for my tastes. They are about as good as itapos;s gonna get for me with any candidate who is actually likely to win, though. And I can see where having things go the way Obama wants them to go would be a good foundation for things to change even more progressively in the future.
McCain and Palin scare the crap out of me. I absolutely do not want them to win. So of course thereapos;s a huge part of me tugging at me to vote for Obama for that reason. But I did that with Kerry, and I regretted it. It felt kinda dirty voting for someone just because he wasnapos;t the other guy. I really didnapos;t care much for Kerry.
OTOH, I do like Obama for more than just not being the other guy. If someone else had won the Democratic nomination, it would be different. But of those running who were likely to win, I liked Obama best. I voted for him in the primary and hoped heapos;d win and was glad he did. I still hope heapos;ll win. I want him to win.
Whatapos;s the problem, then?
The problem is that a vote for him is still not me voting my conscience. The Green party platform is basically an outline of all of my political beliefs. The Democratic party is better, imo, than the Republican party, but not by that large of a margin. There are a small handful of Democratic politicians that I truly respect and believe in, and a great many that I despise and have no use for. There are a lot in between, but the point is that I cannot trust the Democratic party to uphold my political values, and I do not wish to vote for many Democrats.
Furthermore, I believe strongly in third parties in general, and even more strongly in the Green party. I believe that the two party system is wrong and very flawed, and that the only way to change that is to vote for third party candidates that we believe in as often as possible.
Where I live, it is often possible to vote for third party candidates for local and state offices. I do it often for local ones. State ones are harder because I do actually happen to strongly believe in two of my three Democratic representatives and the other one is so powerful people donapos;t tend to run against him, so there just isnapos;t opportunity to vote Green for those slots.
Cynthia McKinney is a wonderful candidate for the Green party. She is a former Democratic U.S. Congresswoman with a lot of experience and a ton of moxie She stands up for what she believes in and I happen to agree with a lot of those things.
Obviously, Iapos;m not expecting her to win. Third parties canapos;t win in a presidential election, or very many other major elections yet. The point in voting third party is to help them gain momentum, to show the two parties that people are dissatisfied with the way things are going and want major change, to support and help give voice to the party so that more people are aware of it so that they can win smaller elections, to vote your conscience instead of for the lesser evil, and to give some power back to the people and away from the big government and corporate machines out there.
This all works a lot better when you donapos;t live in a swing state and know your state will go one way or the other, so you can be that 5-10 difference who didnapos;t vote that way instead of being part of the 5-10 difference between the Sorta Bad Guy and the Really Evil Guy and thus making it harder for the Sorta Bad Guy to win and thus ensuring that the Really Evil Guy continues to have all the power.
And donapos;t get me wrong - while Iapos;d always rather have a Good Guy running things, Iapos;ll still take the Sorta Bad Guy over the Really Evil Guy every time.
So, Iapos;m stuck. I donapos;t know what to do.
This is your chance to get into my noggin and tell me what to do I donapos;t offer this up very often, so take advantage of the opportunity now
Give me some good solid reasons, one way or the other, to vote for either McKinney or Obama. If your opinion is for me to vote for someone else or not to vote - I wonapos;t listen. But if you have some thoughts that might help me decide between these two? Go for it. Let me have it.
I know some people feel queasy at the idea of sharing their political views with the public, so Iapos;ll screen comments to this. If you want them to stay screened, say so. Otherwise, I will reply and leave them unscreened so that you all can debate back and forth with one another if you wish to do so, further causing me to ponder the issues and make a more careful decision.
Feel free to pass this post on to anyone you think might have some words of wisdom for me, as well.
Alrighty then, go to it
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