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Throwing Your Vote Away

By David Olson

It has become a mantra among supporters of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader that there is really no difference between Al Gore and George Bush.

There's no denying that both are backed by big-money corporate interests and that those corporate interests will ask for something in return after the election. In fact, I wholeheartedly agree with Nader supporters that neither Gore nor Bush offers the types of sensible proposals on campaign finance reform, tax policy, health care and the environment that Nader does. Issue-by-issue, Nader is clearly the best candidate.

But even Nader acknowledges that he doesn't have a chance of winning. And Nader supporters' argument that a strong Nader showing could be the beginning of a great progressive movement that will save the world is delusional. Folks in Nader strongholds such as Berkeley, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; Madison, Wis.; and Burlington, Vt. may think that everyone in America eats organic bean sprouts, reads Noam Chomsky and watches obscure foreign films, but that's not the case. America at heart is a conservative country, reflexively against any type of radical change and distrustful of big-city and college-town intellectuals telling them what to do.

It is telling that Nader crowds are overwhelmingly white and, judging by their appearance, relatively well off. Telling but not surprising. For it is the poor and disenfranchised- especially people of color-who would most suffer if Nader throws the election to Bush. They don't have the luxury of a "principled" vote for Nader.

They can look at Texas and see what's in store for them if Bush wins. To Bush's credit, he doesn't use the incendiary race-baiting rhetoric that extremists in his party do. But he has all but ignored the dirt-poor colonias of Mexican immigrants in southern Texas, places that often have open sewers and no running water. And he has appointed few African-Americans and Latinos to state posts, including judgeships.

Texas is at or near the bottom in surveys of the quality of health care in the United States. Those Texans too poor to afford health insurance are at the mercy of a stingy state health system that barely provides even basic care.

The well-scrubbed supporters of Nader won't bear the brunt of Bush's policies. Most have good jobs with health insurance and-if they have children-send their kids to decent schools. They don't know what it's like to be so poor that you have to choose between buying medicine and food. They have no idea what it's like to raise a family on a dead-end $6-an-hour job.

A Gore presidency would not eliminate poverty. But it would reduce the suffering of at least some people. His tax proposal is hardly radical, but it would give less money to the rich than Bush's and leave more money for desperately needed social services.

One of Nader's most pointed jabs at Gore has been his criticism that Gore has sacrificed the environment to please big business. It's true that Gore has hardly been perfect on the environment, but he's a far cry from Bush, who presides over the most polluted city in America-Houston-and promises to accede to oil companies' wishes to destroy vast swaths of the Alaskan wilderness to allow for drilling that will barely make a dent in our overall energy needs.

Historically, Nader has not concerned himself much with the interests of women, African-Americans, Latinos or gays and lesbians. Four years ago, he ridiculed the gay and lesbian rights movement as "gonadal politics," as if job and housing discrimination against lesbians and gays is a trivial matter not worthy of his attention. Only a week ago, he downplayed the importance of the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade-a real possibility if Bush succeeded in appointing enough anti-abortion justices-by flippantly stating that the individual states would still be able to vote whether to keep abortion legal. Yet there's little doubt that the entire South and most of the Plains and mountain states -along with at least a few other states-would ban abortion, denying the right to choose to hundreds of thousands of women and forcing many to undergo dangerous back-alley abortions. That's seemingly of little concern to our new progressive hero. Gore, on the other hand, has a long record of fighting for abortion rights and gay rights, and has been a part of an administration that has appointed more African-Americans and Latinos to top government positions-including judgeships-than any other.

Voting for Nader today might feel good for someone angry at the state of American politics. I'm not a big fan of Gore, and I was tempted to vote for Nader myself. But there are too many people whose lives would be made worse by a Bush presidency. For their sake, I couldn't bear to throw my vote away.