After the 2000 Election: Where Do We Go from Here?

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On the other hand, the lesser-of-two-evils argument isn’t just empty rhetoric in our political system. I was certainly rooting for Al Gore to find a half-dozen hundred more votes in Florida. And because he didn’t—due in part to Nader’s votes as well as troubling voting irregularities—we now live under the hand of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. This will have clear consequences in all of our lives—with poor people and the environment taking the sharpest blows. Yet without idealists like the Greens raising progressive issues outside the Democratic Party, there seems little chance of pulling America’s political debate out of the soulless spot in which it is now stuck. We can only hope the Democrats’ triple-whammy defeat prompts a widespread reexamination of values and vision throughout the party.

THE BIGGEST TRAGEDY of this and every other election is that we are restricted in our political choices by the knowledge that voting our hearts might mean setting back the causes we believe in. Greens and other third parties can easily become spoilers who tip elections to the other side. There must be a better way to select our leaders, and there is: proportional representation. In continental Europe and many other parts of the world, political parties are apportioned power in the national government based roughly on their percent of the vote. Under such a system, Gore and Nader’s combined majority (and Greens would certainly have received more than 2.7 percent of the vote under such a system) would have led to a Democrat/Green alliance, similar to the Social Democrat/Green coalition that runs Germany. The Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org) is pushing for a similar system here.

But until that glorious day arrives, please remember that most of what we call politics happens between elections. Social movements and citizen activism are powerful forces that frame the national political debate in ways that candidates of every party must respond to. That should be the mission of Greens, Democrats, and everyone over the next few years: advocating for the changes you want to see in American society. Talk to your neighbors. Write letters to the editor. Organize an activist group. Take a stand any way that makes sense to you. And then let’s see what happens in 2004.

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