Voting Third-Party will not start a revolution.

[DjTj]

The revolution is not going to come in a Presidential election. It certainly will not occur in this Presidential election. In times of national crisis, a candidate sometimes emerges with a radical platform and the American public is willing to embrace that platform. This happened once in American history with FDR and the New Deal.
Other great Presidents like Lincoln and Kennedy were elected in times of crisis but won in close elections and faced serious battles for change during their Presidencies. They both also generally avoided the hot-button topics of slavery and civil rights during their campaigns, although those became their greatest legacies.
We are not in a crisis as serious as the Great Depression and aren’t even in a crisis like that leading up to the Civil War or in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. No candidate will be able to win with a radical platform like FDR. We’re already down to two Democratic candidates with relatively centrist platforms.
So how do we promote progressive policies? How do we make a stand against unjust, preemptive war? How do we stand up for our civil liberties? How do we spark a revolution?
I’ll guarantee you one thing; it won’t happen by voting for a third party candidate. Sure, you might think you’re trying to scare the Democratic Party into adopting a more progressive agenda, but that is not the reality of American Presidential politics. We have a winner-take-all two-party system, and both parties will always stay close to the middle in a Presidential race. All that happens when Democrats lose is that the center moves further to the right. There will always be more votes for the party to pick up in the center than there are on the left.
If we want to move the country to the left, we’re going to have to shift the political center to the left. To do that we need the person that sets the political center for the country to be further left than the status quo. We need to have a Democratic President.
If you want to promote progressive issues, I encourage you to work for groups like moveon.org, the ACLU, or the NAACP. This is what people once did in the Abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights movement. You can help support progressive Congressional candidates in districts where they have a chance. Those will be the Presidential candidates of the future. By all means, vote for Kucinich in the primary elections. However, when it comes to the General Election, the best thing you can do for progressivism is to vote for the Democratic candidate.
Twenty years of Republican Presidents is not going to make it more likely for a liberal President to win. Every successive Democratic President will make it more likely for a more progressive President to win. After the centrist Clinton, we had a chance to elect Al Gore, who had a great environmental record and if his more recent speeches are any indication, he would certainly have been a step further to the left.
What some people are saying just doesn’t make any sense. Presidential voting is not a place for retribution. Voting out of revenge accomplishes nothing. Electing a President sets a political tone for the entire country. Every Democratic President we elect will bring progressive policies closer to the center and push right-wing policies further to the fringes. Some of don’t want to be patient, but abolitionists started a movement when this country was founded that took almost a century to free the slaves, another century to end discrimination, and there is still a fight for equality going on today.
We had a revolution long ago and we created a country that is fundamentally resistant to change. We didn’t like English kings arbitrarily changing tax policies or local governors that could throw you in prison on their whims. We have a government that changes very slowly, and that’s the way we like it. In our democracy, we have to change minds one by one. Impatience may be the American way right now, but it has never and never will be a successful strategy for the American voter.
There will be no revolution this November, but there can be a step forward for progressive politics. I will help that cause by voting for John Kerry or John Edwards, and I hope you all will join me.

...7 more posts to 1000...

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Good summary of modern US Hostyr going back to FDR

that said, what we are livung through right now is more akin to Adamns and 1800... and very much a Revolution, AMERICAN STYLE.

I highly recomend that people read the history of that administration, sedition act and all... and then take a look at BushCo.

Hell even the Book on the Bush Family is a good reflection of THAT PERIOD... even if the author did not quite realize it.

[corporatewhore]

2. tpeople who vote 3rd party are simply voting for the candidate who best

matches their issues and concerns

[IrateCitizen]

4. But has the least likelihood of getting them implemented

Our problem is that we engage in compromise for the better part of 365 days a year by passively accepting the status-quo. Our time of purity in action is reserved for election day alone, expecting our politicians (who are largely enablers of the status quo) to fix everything for us.

Perhaps if we reversed the equation, and instead became willing to sacrifice our personal comfort through the exercise of non-cooperation (and invitation of official sanction, some of which CAN be violent) for the better part of the year -- and voted for the candidate who was more likely to be elected but presented less of an impediment to the realization of our ideals -- we might actually get somewhere?

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. I'll vote dem THIS time, but the Dem better give us

election reform. (see link below)

[eeyore]

5. Hear, Hear!

:toast:

People, like it or not, in the eyes of the majority we are RADICAL FREAKS. We are the left wing equivalent of freepers, and many of our ideals are political poison in a presidential election year. People latched onto the media-promoted idea of Dean as a rabid psycho because they are afraid of being pulled too far in either direction. Dean is our Pat Buchanon, and his take no prisoners attitude is terrifying to the status quo. Don't get me wrong, we need him and every other outspoken person we can get - just don't expect to win with them.

Revolution will never come from the presidential race - there is far too much at stake. If you want change, start with local and state political offices.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Our Green rep in the Maine state house is backing the Dem

this time around. He feels like I do: Get. $hrub. OUT!

[littlejoe]

7. Maybe not in any other time, but voting third party this time could

be a catalyst for some ugly events in the future.

No one can honestly say what the effects will be, other than giving Bush a leg up in the fall election.

In short, it just COULD be that voting third party this time around could start a peristaltic chain reaction of events that might lead to massive demonstrations and who knows what?