>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>Those who don't want to vote for Bush or Kerry will be represented by Nader
>
>Represented how? In what forum? As one of a couple of million
>symbolic votes? Not through some institutionalized intersection with
>state power that I can imagine.
It looks like the AnybodyButNader gang have succeeded in not only depressing votes for Nader/Camejo but also helping Kerry snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory by allowing him to be an incompetent pro-war candidate running to the right of Bush on Iraq (and many other less prominent issues).
So, if you mean by your questions that you must vote for the candidate who will actually gain state power, you should have voted for Bush in 2000 and should vote for Bush again in 2000, judging by <http://www.electoral-vote.com/>: "Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 211 Bush 327" (at <http://www.electoral-vote.com/>), "Electoral College Graph" (at <http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/graph.html>), and "Projected Electoral College Votes: Kerry 191 Bush 294" (at <http://www.electoral-vote.com/fin/sep19p.html>). That doesn't mean that rank-and-file Bush voters will have anything to do with state power, though (when a right-wing guy tells me, "I love Bush!" I ask, "Yes, but does he love you?" which always discombobulates him -- hilarious).
In any case, rank-and-file Kerry voters would not gain state power either even if Kerry managed to make a comeback and won against the present odds.
Nader/Camejo voters (as well as other voters who vote for the candidates on the left) know that, Clarence Thomas, et al. who are organizing the Million Worker March know that, anarchists know that, and people organizing for the inauguration protest know that, and they have chosen their respective campaigns to build on that knowledge to make it visible and to network with others who think like them or at least are open to considering their political agendas. Kerry voters who have the same knowledge, in contrast, have no means of expressing it in public without hurting the chance of Kerry getting elected even more than they already have. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.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/>