Sanford Jay Rosen: Don't Get Fooled Again: Why Liberals and Progressives Should Vote En... - 3 views
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Jonah Schacter on 03 Oct 12This article is about the importance of voting and how voting for a third party candidate or no candidate at all will solve no problems. Just because a candidate does not always persent the best ideas the whole picture has to be viewed. In the case of Obama-Romney many people say that Obama has not had a "good" term and will therefore not vote for him, but my feelings towards that is Romney is not going to do any better and no third party candidate will have a chance to win. The author brings up the point that even if you are in a state that will surely vote one way that you should still cast your vote. Being in California for most of us what is the incentive to vote if we know the state is going blue? I think that in this system with the electoral college it is hard for me to see the point in voting if my vote will not really count that much. Just wondering thoughts on this topic of voting.
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John West on 07 Oct 12I agree with what you're saying about the big picture being important in the elections, but I have a problem with what the author says about third party candidates. For me, the big picture means more than just thinking about the 2012 election. From what I can tell, there's always going to be an excuse for giving up on a third party vote and handing it to a mainstream candidate: if it's Romney this year, it's going to be someone different in 2016 and someone else in 2020. If there is ever going to be even the slightest hope for a third party candidate, I feel pretty strongly about people voting for the one they believe in. If someone who believes in what the green party stands for, but votes based on the belief that it has no "chance to win" like you're saying, it becomes self-fulfilling. The author's attitude feels kind of lazy to me, asking anyone liberal-leaning to begrudgingly support a candidate just to keep another one out of office. Even if it's one hundred percent guaranteed that a third party won't win in this election, I'm wondering how anyone expect one to be viable if people don't simply start voting for it.
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Anna Schutte on 10 Oct 12As much as I agree with John's position, I feel that there must be a better way to promote a third party. Not voting and voting for third party candidates gave us Nixon and Bush, and in this close election could give us Romney. Romney's campaign is now trying to convince voters that he is more centrist on many issues including social justice and civil rights issues. I agree with the author that if you care about a woman's right to choose and gay marriage that voting for a third party candidate could give Romney the election and the possibility of him choosing a Supreme Court justice who could change the course of events and threaten civil rights.
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cody s on 10 Oct 12This article is pretty interesting. I think that the "third-party debate" is an interesting one, and I don't know exactly where I stand on it. On one hand, I really do think that the two-party system and the electoral college, together, hurt the purity of the American democratic policy. On the other hand, in an election like this, I think it would be irresponsible to vote for a third-party candidate as a liberal. Romney could win, and every vote that goes to a green-party candidate is a vote taken away from Obama. It really is a bad situation for voters, but that's just how it is.
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Eli Melrod on 11 Oct 12This is a little unrelated, but I see the best bet at third party happening in America is the formation of a new party for the Tea Party. The Tea Party is very different than the mainstream Republican party. Michelle Bachman is in a whole other universe than Mitt Romney politically. If Mitt Romney loses the election, I really think the Republican party has some serious thinking to do about how they want to shape their party. It is completely unhelpful to the democratic process to have people like Michelle Bachman and Mitt Romney in the same party. Michelle Bachman has basically absurd views, stating things like the number 2 to Hillary Clinton is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mitt Romney is much more reasonable. I don't know how if this will actually happen, but I could definitely see a Tea Party forming as their own party.