The Ratchet Predictably Snarls
Thoughts on wasting your vote in 2024, or voting third party
If you don't deny major candidates your vote, you can't possibly change it. That's the only language they understand, is to deny them the vote.
Ralph Nader
Okay, let’s get this over with.
A lot of us on the real left - you know, to borrow from Ted Rall, Actual Leftists - plan to vote in November, but it won’t be for Red or Blue team presidential hopefuls. Of course, this isn’t going to shock anyone who knows me. I’ve been a one-trick pony, pro-peace advocate for a couple of decades, ever since the US government’s bipartisan effort wantonly lied us into war in Iraq, and sent my kid there twice.
I have been trying to convince friends and family to join me way back when Cynthia McKinney ran as a Green Party candidate. In the process, I’ve been called every name in the book: selfish, racist (that was a good one in 2008), Trumper, Putin puppet, and purist - one of my favorites, particularly this year with the savagery going on in Gaza and Ukraine under US bombs.
An after-dinner conversation in 2016 with friends - OK, former friends - got unavoidably political. Our friend’s totally sweet partner seemed afraid that Trump was going to win, genuinely fearful. Now, I rarely share with anyone my vote in a primary or general, but she asked me:
Me: “You know me, I’m usually third party. And Jill Stein has a peace platform. So…”
Her: “You’re wasting your vote.”
Me: “It’s my vote.”
Her: “But Trump!” (grabbing a Kleenex from somewhere)
Me: “Hillary helped send my kid to Iraq. She wants a no-fly zone over Syria. She pushed for war in Libya. World War III!” (Nothing was working.)
Her: “But Trump is a narcissistic, fascist bully!” (just to clean it up)
I tried reminding her of the electoral process in our west coast, extremely blue state. That if every voter in our county - population north of 100,000 - voted for Jill Stein, Hillary would still carry the state by a wide margin. Clinton would still get every electoral vote.
Her: “Well, Gene, it sounds like you ought to move to Moscow.” (forgot about that one)
This type of unhinged election exchange in 2024 is not an anomaly.
So here we go again. Fasten your seat belts to ride out another endless Presidential campaign season with more soon-to-be-broken promises from predetermined primary candidates and eventual nominees foisted on US voters by party elites in our ragged electoral system. Did I say “ragged”? I meant rigged. The one we call a democracy.
Like putting out the garbage, US voters find themselves in the another stretch run to another one of those “most important elections of our lifetime”. But it seems like we just dragged in the cans from 2020. Where does the time go and what can we do about anything? Now, after 200 years of selling this hackneyed platitude, you would think the politicos and corporate press propagandists just might be on to something, seeing that the planet is actually on the verge of implosion.
Well, not exactly.
Recent polling indicates that most Americans are concerned about the usual suspects - the economy, homelessness, crime and violence, healthcare and federal spending - and rightly so, but as expected, most voters could give a crap about real threats, or anyone even being around for the next cycle, except young adults. Generation Z and Millennials do, big time. Climate change, nuclear proliferation and terrorist attacks on this country are the top ranked priorities for voters under 30.
Will we ever see the US’s permanent state of war in the mix of foreign policy concerns, regardless of voter demographic? Or will our prospects for nuclear confrontations, due to war in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, continue to be dismissed or ignored by an alarming majority of likely American voters, regardless of tribe?
There was a day I would have been considered a member in good standing of today’s Any Blue Will Do cult. A vote for a Republican was anathema among my circle of friends and family, well mostly…because, you know, Reagan. A favorite Frank Zappa quote of mine was proudly displayed for years on a refrigerator magnet for my kids to see:
Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.
After the Clinton Republican-lite years, that fridge magnet was removed from its place of honor, replaced with a John Candy meme, and I’ve been voting third party or independent ever since.
Shortly after retiring I came across an article by lefty author/blogger Michael Smith called The Ratchet Effect. It not only struck a chord with me, it became my default electoral position. In short, below:
I happened to run into my old friend Annie today -- Annie, the old Lefty I've written about before, who can't get away from the Democratic Party even though she knows better. I couldn't resist teasing Annie about the number of raddled old Clintonites with whom Mr Hope And Change is surrounding himself. (Annie loathed Bill Clinton -- loathed him so much that she actually voted for Nader in 2000, though she has since repented, in sackcloth and ashes, for her sin.)
"Hey Annie. Looks like what's old is new again. Clinton's third term!"
She looked at me sourly. But she's game. "After eight years of Bush," she observed, "Clinton doesn't seem so bad."
Now there, if you like, is as beautiful an illustration of the ratchet effect as you could hope to find. The two parties' well-practiced collusive pas de deux has got her giving thanks now for things she despised eight years ago -- things that she correctly saw as deeply reactionary and detestable.
So it goes. By conceding the legitimacy of Reagan and Bush I's revanche, Clinton prepared the ground for a further revanche under Bush II, who took the ball and ran with it it so far that he makes Clintonism in retrospect -- well, in blurry, amnesiac retrospect, anyway -- look comparatively benign.
This phenomenon is at the heart of the American two-party system. The only thing that ever interrupts or arrests it -- much less reverses it -- is those blessed outbreaks of near-insurrection: the Populist upsurge, the Thirties, the Sixties.
Man, are we ever overdue for another one.
And the sooner the better.
This year casting a vote for the lesser evil is no longer a cakewalk. Smith’s ratchet has finally snarled and ground to a dead stop. It took 20 years, but choosing a lesser evil today is no longer a coin toss, even for independents. The Democrats selected, VP Kamala Harris, a cringe-loaded dumpster fire, a Selina Meyer Veep castoff and corporate shill. And former President Donald Trump…well, Trump is Hitler, especially to his countless Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) victims.
And to make matters worse not only do Democrats and Republicans believe democracy is in danger of collapsing, but now fear is on the ballot this November, forget hope. Politicians and the corporate press work to keep the scam going, circumvent critical thinking, while national security state narrative managers provide the copy for cable news teleprompters. So, no wonder.
To sum up, I think the electorate in a constitutionally protected democracy should vote for anyone they want. Clearly, Jill Stein will not win, but voters who stray from the two-party tyranny should never be dissed for using the only remotely possible leverage we have. Maybe our grand kids will turn things around (Read: Ranked choice voting). Remember though, the 2024 election cycle - as well as 2028, 2032, and 2036 etc - will be like no other in our lifetimes.
Luckily, I won’t have to write in Selina Meyer, anytime soon.
Gene, thanks for the analysis. And for the hilariously sad dialog with a Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer.
Thank you for this. I appreciate hearing of someone keeping the faith and articulating the profound belief in the possibility of change.