THE MAJORITY WON’T RULE, FOR A WHILE
No matter who wins the U.S. presidential election in a few days, the majority will not have ruled. The winner will be selected by perhaps one-quarter of the eligible electorate in a hugely expensive election largely financed by the wealthiest 5% of the population and manipulated by the corporate mass media. About 50% of the people are not going to vote at all. Most of these non-voters are from the working class and the poor.
It’s alleged that the majority of people don’t vote due to laziness, ignorance or indifference. The far bigger reason is alienation from a political process that they believe is rigged to benefit the wealthy and powerful at the expense of working and poor people. Bringing the majority back into the political process is going to take more than get-out-the-vote drives, appeals to an abstract sense of civic responsibility, campaign finance reform and changes in election rules.
The key to motivating non-voters is to broaden the realistic political options offered at the ballot box from a choice between two conservatives to a choice that includes the serious possibility of eliminating class, race and gender barriers to economic and social well-being. It will take many years of hard work to create that choice and the popular consciousness to act upon it.
The Nader campaign is a halting initial step in this direction--but far broader forces, especially including important sectors of the working class and the African-American and other minority communities, eventually will have to be galvanized into the broad left coalition necessary to mount a serious challenge to two-party domination. The politics of such a coalition, in our view, would have to go beyond Nader’s radical idealism and uncritical attachment to the capitalist system, to genuinely represent the far-reaching needs of such a constituency.
The intense pressure being applied by the liberal establishment to people who plan to vote for Ralph Nader this year has been quite extraordinary, and deplorable. They are being accused of everything from wasting their votes to paving the way for fascism if Gore loses. In the interests of democracy and political principle, we support these voters as they resist capitulating to guilt-tripping scare stories or attacks upon their ethics, credibility, and sanity.
The Democratic Party must accept responsibility for the fact that a portion of its traditional constituency is moving to greener pastures. The Clinton-Gore administration has shifted the party sharply to the center-right and has shown contempt for progressive political views--from its embrace of main elements of the Republican political platform to its abandonment of the working class and the poor and its penchant for foreign military adventures.
The Democrats have gotten away with this for years, relying on the “lesser evil” argument to keep their progressive wing in check. Now they may be in trouble, but the trouble is of their own making--and it’s a little late to be crying “foul.”
We have a critique of the Nader campaign and a different analysis of the of the problems confronting the working people of the United States and the world. If there were candidates to his left on the New York ballot we would consider voting for them. But it is clearly a positive development for a progressive, anti-corporate presidential campaign to be waged against the two-party conservative monopoly on power. Large numbers of people are being attracted to this campaign and are taking their first step to break with the dominant parties of big business.
The political system needs a good shaking up. Who knows, it might even contribute in time to the beginning of an interesting political journey for the U.S. left. Indeed, someday a majority of the American people, even a large majority, may find a reason to troop to the polls on election day.
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