Why I vote a straight ticket.

[flamin lib]

Mr. Bush got his wish yesterday. The SCHIP bill he vetoed failed in an over-ride vote in the House by 15 votes, all Republican. That means that 10,000,000 children will be without health care; the 6,000,000 that were covered and the 4,000,000 that would have been added to the program with new funding.

I don’t see how he sleeps at night.

I know a lot of people who call themselves Independent and say, “I don’t vote for the party, I vote for the one who’s most qualified.” To that I say BULL$#IT. I don’t care about qualified, I care about party. I wouldn’t vote for a Republican for dog catcher even if s/he were the “most qualified”. Why? Because that dog catcher may run for city council and that councilman may run for state congress and that state congressman may run for national office. You build the party from the bottom up. You saturate all the lower offices with talent to move up to the next level. Those 15 Republicans who voted to leave 10,000,000 children with only emergency room health care all worked their way up through the political food chain.

I get angry when somebody tells me that there isn’t any difference between candidates or parties. That’s what they said about Bush and Gore in 2000; they’re both moderates, they’re all the same. Well, how did that work our for ya’?

I vote straight party line. Period. There is a difference in the parties and this bill most openly exposes that difference. The Republican party is willing to leave 10,000,000 children without health care for fear that a few families might actually move from private insurance and stop paying insurance premiums. It’s all about the insurance companies, the drug companies, the oil companies and the big business concerns. People don’t count in the Republican philosophy.

15 votes, all Republican. 15 votes that started on political careers at some local level. 15 votes that cost the health care of ten million children. 15 votes that wouldn’t have been cast if somebody paid attention to party priorities.

[Selatius]

1. You're kind of forced to vote straight-party anyway in a winner-take-all format.

If you voted for an independent like Bernie Sanders, you could make the Repub win simply by splitting the left's vote unless the independent is truly strong, but strong independents like Sanders should be considered rather rare, not a common occurrence.

[flamin lib]

3. Third party candidates at the national level are a waste of vote for

the very reason that parties are built from the local level up. If you really want a third pary start at the dog-catcher stage and fill lower level offices. Build a pary machine with offices and volunteers that work all year long.

Donate not just one vote, donate your time and energy every day to build the party.

[Selatius]

4. That depends. The Dem machine in Vermont symbolically nominated Sanders for his Senate run.

He, in practice if not in technical truth, got the backing of the state party's apparatus. They only supported him because of his platform positions and his record.

But back to my original point, you're essentially locked into voting Democrat anyway unless you want to risk a Repub victory because of the nature of first-past-the-post voting. Exceptions like Sanders are pretty rare.

[LoZoccolo]

2. Good post and recommended. I'd also suggest starving the Greens at a local level.

There are quasi-splinterists that are still interested in building the Green Party; they say to vote for the Democrats in high offices, but vote for the Greens in local races. But why cultivate a future splinterist candidate and embolden a party that will run against the Democratic Party?

[flamin lib]

5. There may or may not be a case to be made for a third party.

I've made my choice and it's Democrat.

That said, a third party will never be viable until it grows from the grass roots and we frankly don't have time for that.

[Selatius]

7. There likely can't be a viable third party in America because of our voting system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law

A two-party system often develops spontaneously from the single-member district plurality voting system (SMDP), in which legislative seats are awarded to the candidate with a plurality of the total votes within his or her constituency, rather than apportioning seats to each party based on the total votes gained in the entire set of constituencies. This trend develops out of the inherent qualities of the SMDP system that discourage the development of third parties and reward the two major parties.

[Jed Dilligan]

6. I am 100% for local control by Greens

Local-level Democrats have proven themselves to be corrupt and they've run our cities into the ground. The unfortunate fact of being the United States, rather than the 5-8 separate countries we ought to be, forces us to choose between two at the national level. IMO it's MORE urgent to take back cities from the corrupt and, I'm sorry, mostly Democratic political machinery that has been fucking them up for forty years.

[LoZoccolo]

10. That is not true: look at Chicago.

That is clean, honest government run by Democratic politicians and no one can deny that. And it's virtually one-party control; that actually works out very well.

[Jed Dilligan]

11. Okay, but look at any city on the west coast

[stimbox]

8. Dooga, dooga, dooga, dooga!!!! n/t

[warren pease]

9. "But why cultivate a future splinterist candidate and embolden a party...

...that will run against the Democratic Party?"

Well, here's a few good reasons, hot off the presses:


Pelosi Caves Again.

Bush Got What He Wanted Again.

Thank You Nancy Pelosi, when we need a reliable leader - well, we get YOU.


I don't see how a grass roots party, built from the local level on up and based on progressive principles, can fail to be an improvement over these miserable, co-opted, complicit, useless frauds.

But then, I actually expected a little courage, anger and defiance from the 110th Congress. I had no idea that kind of stuff went extinct in the 20th Century.

I'd love to see the current version of the Dems go the way of the Whigs. It would be absolutely great to see them challenged from the left for once.

So far, seeing no real reason to respond to the people who elected them and pay their bloated salaries, they're just doing their best to help the GOP create and maintain a true one-party system devoted solely to ensuring continued corporate profitability while constantly screwing the rest of us.

There's already one major party based exclusively on that agenda. Who needs another one?


wp