If the so-called AnybodyButBush brigade actually meant *Anybody*ButBush, they would count all votes for candidates other than Bush -- on the left and right -- as AnybodyButBush votes in the popular vote. Add up all voters who do not vote for Bush: those who vote for John Kerry, Ralph Nader (on the ballots in 34 states and the District of Columbia), David Cobb (on the ballots in 27 states and the District of Columbia), Michael Badnarik (on the ballots in 48 states and the District of Columbia), Walt Brown (of the Socialist Party, on the ballots in Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Wisconsin), Roger Calero and his stand-in James Harris (of the Socialist Workers Party, on the ballots in 13 states and the District of Columbia), Michael Peroutka (of the Constitution Party, which is also anti-war, according to Bill Berkowitz ["Cranky Constitution Party Parties On: Will This Radical Right Wing and Socially Conservative Political Party Siphon Votes from Bush?" October 5, 2004, <http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=17816>], and is on the ballots in 36 states), Leonard Peltier (on the Peace and Freedom Party ballot in California), etc. That's the measure of *Anybody*ButBush votes.
The measure of anti-occupation sentiments in the popular vote is the share of all votes for Nader and other candidates on the left and right who are calling for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq + roughly 62% of Kerry voters ("Most Democrats (by 62% to 33%) favor bringing most of our troops home in the next year" ["Majority of Public Now Believes U.S. Will Get Bogged Down in Iraq for a Long Time, According to New Harris Poll," October 28, 2003, <http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/allnewsbydate.asp?NewsID=701>]).
A measure of commitment to independent political action on the electoral front, fighting back against the agenda of both the ruling-class parties, is all votes for Nader and other candidates on the left.
>By the same token, I think all those leftists in a swing state, like
>Ohio, should vote for Kerry.
The Democratic Party lawyers and Kenneth Blackwell (Ohio Secretary of State, Republican) worked together to successfully negate voting rights of Nader/Camejo supporters by removing Nader/Camejo from the ballot in Ohio. Who says that the Republican Party is in favor of putting Nader/Camejo on the ballots in battleground states!!! Both Nader/Camejo and Cobb/LaMarche will be write-in candidates only, and votes for Nader/Camejo will not even be counted officially.
Voters who have _literally_ no choice but to vote for Bush or Kerry are voters in Oklahoma (the safest of the so-called safe states, with Bush receiving 61% and Kerry, 28% in the latest poll, according to <http://www.electoral-vote.com/>), which requires 51,781 valid signatures to gain a political party ballot status, 37,027 to put a presidential candidate on the ballot, _and_ allows no write-in voting! Not even the relatively rich Libertarian Party, which managed to put Badnarik on 49 state and DC ballots, succeeded in getting him on the ballot in Oklahoma! Needless to say, no third party or independent candidate got on there.
The Democratic Party never offered a win-win electoral pact to Nader/Camejo and other candidates on the left: vote to the left of John Kerry in one-party states, and vote for John Kerry in battleground states. Instead, it chose to remove Nader/Camejo from ballots indiscriminately, both in one-party and battleground states. The irony is that the Democratic Party's effort to exclude Nader/Camejo has been much more successful in such one-party states as Texas and Illinois.
What's interesting is that the Democratic Party didn't bother to try to exclude Cobb, Badnarik, Brown, Calero, etc., though votes for them numbered more than the Florida margin in 2000: "Calero's presence on the Florida ballot doesn't seem to bother the Democrats; neither does the Constitution Party, the Nader-less Green Party, or the Libertarian Party, all of whose candidates' names will appear right alongside Bush and Kerry throughout the state [of Florida], *and all of whose parties tallied more than those crucial 537 votes in 2000*" (emphasis added, Brett Sokol, "Count All Votes -- Except Those for Nader," October 7, 2004, <http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2004-10-07/kulchur.html>). Given that fact, the so-called AnybodyButBush brigade are actually AnybodyButNader. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>