3rd Parties And Shades Of Grey

So the other day I received a political flyer in the mail, not from Obama, McGaughey, or Gillibrand, but Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, the Green Party’s Prez / Veep candidates. I’m registered Green and one of only a half dozen (at most!) in my entire district, so I’m just surprised they found my name in the voter logs.

This got me to thinking. In 2000, I was underage, but supported the Greens (that time, Ralph Nader). Four years ago I begrudgingly voted for Kerry because I felt a large popular vote against Bush was needed to repudiate his first reign of terror. This year, I haven’t given any third party option a second thought after supporting Obama through the extended primaries. What’s changed?

Eight years ago, Nader had a good spiel against voting for “the lesser of two evils.” But history has proven stark differences between the two major political parties. Is there anyone who’ll argue that we’d have seen the same slash and burning of environmental legislation under a President Gore as we have under Bush? And Al Gore wouldn’t have stacked the executive branch with card-carrying PNAC members. The occupation of Iraq wouldn’t have been the priority it was. To trivialize all differences between Obama and McCain, Democrat and Republican, is facile, immature.

Certainly, I don’t believe in a great bulk of the Democratic platform, today or eight years ago. Obama is hawkish on Iran, Afghanistan, Israel. Economically he promises the whole pie, or two or three, without disclosing a single item he’ll use his metaphorical scalpel on. Some of this is political necessity, some of it, his actual politics.

Even though I might not agree with Obama on all the issues, I’ll vote for him, on the Working Families party line. The Greens have for the past few elections been encouraging people living in safe states to vote for them. Get 5% of the vote, and you’re eligible for federal funding the next cycle. But federal funding would not change the fundamentals of our electoral system, which needs significant reform before third parties become viable. And a vote for an independent candidate (as Nader runs today) actually encourages the status quo – character-based politics, the sort of ass-backwardness that got Schwarzenegger elected governor.

Meanwhile, Obama holds some promise as president, with the alternative far more frightening. Framing the debate in a way that results in a choice between the “lesser of two evils” is to turn the election into a moral debate. And I’m uninterested in using elections as my own little referendums on morality.

McCain isn’t the evil choice; he’s the stupid choice. Things aren’t black and white, right and wrong. Life is shades of grey, and Obama comes out a shader (or three) better than McCain.