[Peace-discuss] Biden = business as usual...

[Ricky Baldwin]

True enough, Illinois voters can safely vote for who we like.  As I told my mother (for the opposite reason) a few years ago when she called to ask if she could vote for Nader, "You're in Mississippi - you can vote for anybody you want to."  But I do think we can give some thought to voting as a kind of opinion poll.  That is, even if the media won't report on it reliably, political strategists whose job it is to advise candidates and parties - and frankly, those of us who make our own media or propagandize from streetcorners - may be counted on to study the actual results more closely.  

So I can see voting for Nader, whose record is long and respectable on the important issues.  Cynthia McKinney has a very good speech reprinted in this month's Z Magazine, and she has been courageous on several fronts.  Basically, I like her.  But as a friend recently pointed out to me, her running mate confuses Iran and Iraq when speaking and just generally isn't that great in talking about issues - so, though a Green vote would be good, I'd be worried about my "protest vote" getting tallied in the "crackpot vote" column too easily.  As for Barr, I can't see the value of adding tally marks to the Libertarian column, however good the candidate may be on some near and dear issues.  Those business-crazy free marketeers too often dupe good people with their stances on so-called "social issues", civil rights and so on.  When it comes to the realities of living with a capitalist economy, they're not so humanitarian. 

 Ricky Baldwin


"Only those who do nothing make no mistakes." - Peter Kropotkin



----- Original Message ----
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu>
To: rlangenh at illinois.edu
Cc: Peace-discuss at anti-war.net
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 7:56:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Biden = business as usual...

Does it matter?  Illinois' electoral votes will surely go to Obama -- it should 
be the safest of safe states for him -- so here we're free to vote for what we 
want, even if we think that McCain might be worse than Obama.

If I vote for president at all, I'll vote for Nader, McKinney -- or Barr, about 
whom Alex Cockburn had a good comment today:

"Face it, if you want to stay true to reason and  conscience, the man to vote 
for is  Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate. Check out from Friday’s 
CounterPunch site his  stance on Georgia, an issue on which  I haven’t yet seen 
anything from Ralph. 'Bad and over-blown historical analogies won't help resolve 
the conflict,' Barr writes, 'If this war was like Adolf Hitler's attack on 
Poland, as some have suggested, Georgia would be occupied, its government would 
be ousted, and its residents would be on their way to concentration camps. No 
one would be traveling to Tbilisi and we wouldn't be talking to Moscow ... The 
most important American interest is defending America; and intervening on behalf 
of Georgia against Russia has nothing to do with defending America.'"

http://www.counterpunch.org/

rlangenh at illinois.edu wrote:
> Estabrook: Does this mean that you are going to voe for  Barr?  I stand amazed.
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