As promised, here's my piece in @damemagazine, in which I discuss lessons I learned from the 2000 election. Chief among them: don't listen to Michael Moore.
damemagazine.com/2020/09/24/con…
"Yes, New York went to Gore despite my protest vote. But my individual enthusiasm for Nader helped build a movement, and that movement convinced voters in other states that 'voting your conscience' was a swell idea. And by 'other states,' I mean Florida."
For anyone thinking of voting third party, or protest-voting, or sitting this one out because Bernie got robbed or whatever, here are some inconvenient, if not awful, truths:
There are two parties because THAT'S HOW THE AMERICAN SYSTEM WORKS. Third parties work fine in Europe, in parliamentary systems. Here, they only serve as spoilers. Google “H. Ross Perot.”
Republicans are exploiting the Green Party to make it more difficult for people in swing states to vote by mail.
Michael Moore must be aware of all this. He’s a bad actor, whose livelihood depends on just this sort of chaos. For all his claims to be progressive, he’s essentially working for the Republican Party & has been for 20 years.
Bernie Sanders is the new Ralph Nader, a supposed man of principle who refuses to join a major party. He’s making noise now about Joe’s platform, probably because he hasn’t gotten enough attention lately. Ignore him.
A vote for any candidate from any third party—Green, Libertarian, Constitution, Reform, Communist, Whig, United States Pirate, Rent Is Too Damn High—is a vote for Trump. Period, full stop.
A vote for Biden isn’t a vote for “evil,” as Moore would have it, any more than a vote for Hillary was a vote for evil in ’16, or Obama in ’12 or ’08. But Trump is flat-out evil.
Biden isn’t [fill in the blank] enough for you? Guess what, he doesn’t have to be. No candidate, not even Kamala Harris, is perfect.
So I encourage you to Vote Your Conscience. Which means that, if you don’t vote for Biden, we become Belarus, and you never get the chance to vote in a legitimate election for the rest of your life.
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