[Peace-discuss] Sheehan on the significance of elections

[C. G. Estabrook]

US: myth of the two party system
Would America look much different if Republican John McCain had beaten Democrat 
Barack Obama to become president?
Cindy Sheehan Last Modified: 31 Oct 2010 20:14 GMT

"The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the 
Watergate of Nixon and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the 
two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage 
was a success because a few people survived on life rafts."
—Eugene J. McCarthy, 1978

If John McCain were president, we can never be exactly sure what would be 
happening, but I think we can make some educated speculations.

First of all, the "banksters" would be receiving their carte blanche bailouts 
and Ben Bernanke would have been re-appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Robert Gates would probably still be the secretary of defence and Sarah Palin 
would be offering late night comedians endless fodder for their monologues.

If John McCain happened to be the one infesting the Oval Office at this time, 
single-payer health care would surely be "off the table". I am confident that a 
health care "reform" bill probably would have contained massive giveaways to the 
insurance and big pharmaceutical industries, with no "robust" public option.

We citizens would, I’m sure, have been forced to purchase insurance from the 
very same insurance companies that spread out a largess of nearly $170m lobbying 
dollars to Congress in 2009. If we are one of the "lucky ones" that happen to 
already have coverage, we would have been taxed for the benefit.

McCain and 'justice'

Without a doubt, McCain’s Justice Department would be protecting war criminals - 
like John Yoo - of the preceding administration and the McCain Department of 
Justice (DOJ) would probably be vigorously defending the discriminatory practise 
of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for the military.

More than likely, under this nightmarish scenario, McCain’s Federal Bureau of 
Investigation would be committing home invasion break-ins (designated as "legal 
raids") to intimidate activists.

McCain probably would have given himself the power to be judge and jury over any 
American citizen that didn’t approve of his foreign policy.

There is not even a shadow of doubt that McCain would be feigning strictness 
with Israel, while turning a blind eye to the continued expansions of Israeli 
settlements in the West Bank and the completely immoral and destructive blockade 
of Gaza.

If the unthinkable occurred and McCain beat Obama in 2008, official unemployment 
would be hovering around 10 per cent (unofficial around 20 per cent). And one in 
every five homes would be in danger of being foreclosed upon. We might even be 
experiencing the widest income disparity between the rich and poor that we have 
seen since before the stock market crash of 1929!

McCain, being the "brave" military man, may have tripled troop deployments to 
Afghanistan and the needless deaths of US troops and Afghan civilians would 
probably have increased dramatically. I am sure that McCain would have given 
huge contracts to the US war machine for drones, mercenaries, airplanes and 
other military hardware.

Being a loyal Bushite, McCain would probably be conscientiously following the 
Status of Forces Agreement for the slow withdrawal from Iraq that was negotiated 
between the Bush government, and the puppet regime in Iraq.

At least we aren't bombing Iran!

I get informed all the time, that even though "Obama isn’t so great", at least 
he hasn’t invaded Iran yet, and McCain surely would have been bombing Iran by now.

Okay so rhetoric towards Iran would be heightened, but whether McCain would have 
waged another military campaign during the current political climate would be an 
assumption too far.

Gosh, if McCain were president right now, the defense budget might be the 
largest - $741.2bn - since World War II. He might have even asked for billions 
upon billions of supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Horrors!

Of course, a McCain education budget would only be about 1/10th of the defense 
budget at $78bn. And, a McCain education plan would probably contain lots of 
rigorous testing if the states were to want more desperately needed funds.

If McCain were president, there would be an active "anti-war" movement. However 
- as during the Bush years - the "movement" wouldn’t be so much antiwar, but 
anti-war waged by the Republicans. The anti-Republican movement wants no 
systemic change, it just wants Democrats in office.

Blurring the political divide

However in almost every case, Democrat equals the status quo.

Of course, in all of my above scenarios, Obama and his regime have done all of 
those things that people were afraid that McCain would do, but there’s an 
extremely small outcry.

Here we are, once again, careening madly down the path to electoral ruin—where 
voting for the "lesser of two evils" has become a national pastime.

When the elite class gives the appearance of only two choices on the ballot, we 
end up voting "against" a candidate far more times than we vote "for" someone.

What’s wrong with us? We are lazy, we are fearful, the establishment beats us 
down, we are ignorant, and we are defeated. Voting at least gives us the latent 
feeling that we are doing something, when we are really doing very little.

We righteously march down to our polling place, like good soldiers for the 
status quo. We vote. We get our little stickers with an American flag that 
proudly proclaims: I VOTED. But when we vote for a member of the political 
duopoly, we are only voting for "Dee or Dum".

The Democrats had their chance during the last four years, and instead of 
passing progressive legislation and ending the wars, they have pandered to the 
right, which has been emboldened by the power the Democrats gave it.

Now the Republicans are poised to take over at least the House of 
Representatives. And Democrats will begin to spew progressivism out of their 
lying mouths and abuse the energy of their newly-angry base to try to regain 
power - like the Republicans have done effectively for the past two years.

Will progressives ever learn that political pandering and fear-based voting 
never brings anything but defeat, or are we trapped in a vicious cycle of our 
own making?

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Specialist Casey A. Sheehan, who was killed in 
Iraq on April 4, 2004. Since then, she has been an activist for peace and human 
rights. She has published five books, has her own Internet radio show, Cindy 
Sheehan’s Soapbox, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Cindy lives 
in Oakland, CA, and loves to spend time with her three grand-babies. You can 
learn more about Cindy at Peace of the Action.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily 
reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.