(Bill Bowles was a Tecnica volunteer who worked with the ANC.)
http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0252.html
Book Review: Ralph’s Revolt: The Case for Joining Nader’s Rebellion by Greg Bates
“[The] Progressive Policy Institute, an arm of the Democratic Leadership Council, published a 19-page manifesto for the “New Democrats”, who include all the principal Democratic Party candidates, and especially John Kerry. This called for “the bold exercise of American power” at the heart of “a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party's tradition of muscular internationalism”. Such a strategy would “keep Americans safer than the Republicans’ go-it-alone policy, which has alienated our natural allies and overstretched our resources. We aim to rebuild the moral foundation of US global leadership…””
--Bush Or Kerry? Look Closely And The Danger Is The Same by John Pilger, the New Statesman, 03/04/07
For less than one hundred years, most of us who live in the so-called democracies have had the universal franchise – the vote. Every four or five years we cast our ballot (those who bother that is). Being able to vote is seen as the bedrock of democracy. Indeed, the vote has been peddled very effectively as the measure of what democracy really means.
In the UK the propaganda around the right to vote has been so effective that if one believed it, the English have had the vote for nigh on a thousand years, ever since Magna Carta (‘the mother of democracies’ and so on and so forth). Yet a universal franchise (that is for men and women) wasn’t achieved until after WWI in most developed countries.
And so too, in the US, according to the Constitution, many believe that since 1776 (or thereabouts) Americans have had a universal franchise. The reality of course, is very different. In fact, in the US, following a brief period after the Civil War and after the period of Reconstruction, saw Black (males) systematically have the right to vote taken away from them. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that saw the right to vote enshrined in law for all Americans (unless of course, you're Black and live in Florida).
So what’s so important about the vote when it’s almost impossible to distinguish the two dominant political parties one from the other in the US (and for that matter, the UK)? And perhaps just as importantly, with each election, fewer and fewer people actually bother to vote.
The issue around the power of the vote has taken centre stage, especially for ‘progressives’ and the Left in the forthcoming US presidential election this November and has split the anti-Bush, anti-war movement right down the middle. For us here in the UK it also has great significance firstly because of vassal Blair’s slavish adherence to the Bush imperium and secondly, because come a parliamentary election in 2005 or 6, progressives and the Left will be faced with a comparable dilemma.
Setting aside the issues of the iniquities inherent in both electoral systems (in the US the role of the Electoral College, where the real outcome is decided and in the UK, the ‘first past the post’ system that distorts how parties get represented in Parliament), in a two-party system, the argument for progressives about who to vote for comes down to one thing, the ‘lesser of two evils’ and effectively, this is the way it’s been for generations. This and whether a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, is the core of the argument in Greg Bates’ book Ralph's Revolt: The Case for Joining Nader’s Rebellion.
Those who contend that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, base their argument on the actions of the Bush presidency, contending that it is the worst on record, worst that is for its attacks on working people, democratic rights, the environment and the rest of the planet. Therefore, defeating Bush is the primary objective. Those who are opposed to voting for Nader, contend that with Kerry in power, progressives will be in a better position to exert influence over a Kerry administration.
full: http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0252.html
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