Pretend Politics
Press Action
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand02112004/
By Mark Hand
I’m not a member of the Democratic Party nor do I have any desire to join the party, given its long history of scandalous and despicable behavior. But I pretended to be one this morning in the party’s presidential primary in Virginia when I used the new touch-screen voting machines here in Arlington County to cast my support for Dennis Kucinich.
Actually, there was no need for false pretenses on my part because the politicians and regulators in Richmond, who have full police authority over how the Democratic and Republican political parties in the commonwealth choose their candidates, told the party it must permit any registered voter in the state, not just Democratic Party members, to participate in the Democratic presidential selection process.
Strangely, in a country that touts its election process as the freest and fairest in the world, we have federal, state and local governments in all states across the land telling the political parties how they must choose their candidates. Democratic and Republican officials, however, don’t seem to mind the interference, owing to the fact that it was their members who drew up the rules in the first place. The two parties indeed welcome the government’s regulation of their nominating selection processes because the oversight essentially serves as an official seal of approval of their monopoly and entrenched status.
This regulation of the Democratic and Republican nominating process is only one example in a long list of ways that the current U.S. election process is unfair and undemocratic. We have laws that make it extremely difficult for non-monopolists to get their candidates’ names on the ballots in general elections. We have a media that ignores all activities of the non-monopolistic political parties. And, of course, we have the always controversial exclusion of non-monopolists from the nationally broadcast presidential debates.
Because of the Republicrats’ control of the election market, I typically don’t vote in federal elections or primaries unless there’s someone on the ballot who clearly champions both a rollback in the repressive features of the federal government and an increase in public access to decision-making. If not for Dennis Kucinich’s participation in the Virginia primary, I would not have bothered showing up today at the local St. Something Catholic Church, which serves as my neighborhood polling station.
Kucinich is the most appealing candidate to have entered a race for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 20 years that I’ve been eligible to vote. That’s not saying much, however, given that his strongest competition for the title of most dynamic Democrat is missing-in-action Jesse Jackson and chameleon Jerry Brown.
As for the nominating process, political parties should be able to set their own rules for how they choose their candidates, pass resolutions, and conduct general party business. No taxpayer money should be used in any fashion to oversee or regulate their activities. The government should get involved only at the final stage of the process -the general election. At the same time, government authorities and the two major parties must relinquish their totalitarian control of who gets on the ballot in the general election.
When I voted this morning, I noticed a John Kerry supporter standing outside the polling station. It was the same guy who during last November’s local elections was collecting signatures to get Kerry on the primary ballot and was creating a nuisance by haranguing passers-by about how it was their duty to participate in the election because U.S. soldiers had died for their right to vote. He asked me to sign his petition to get Kerry on the primary ballot, but I told him “no thanks” because I found his rhetoric foolish and insulting.
During our brief conversation, the Kerry supporter, a 50-something Robert Duvall look-alike, said some of his friends had died in Vietnam for my right to vote and that his stint in the army in West Germany during the Vietnam War era also protected my freedom to vote (by thwarting an attack of the Russkies into Western Europe and across the Atlantic that would culminate in a Soviet occupation of Arlington County, I presume). I told him that his comrades’ killings in Vietnam had nothing to do with our right to vote here at home and everything to do with the desire of the ruling elite in the United States to hold political and economic control over Southeast Asia.
As I was walking away, in an apparent attempt to defend his abrasive behavior toward passers-by, he yelled in my direction, “Free speech, man!”
I ignored the guy this morning. But seeing him reminded me of last November’s encounter and reinforced my opinion of John Kerry and his supporters as people who would do absolutely nothing to roll back the U.S. military presence around the world if the Massachusetts senator were elected president. The rhetoric of the Robert Duvall look-alike symbolized how a Kerry administration would continue to glorify the warrior class. His words signified how a President Kerry would perpetuate the myth of the U.S. military as a noble savior of oppressed people the world over and protector of our freedom here at home, as opposed to its real record as a mass-murdering tool of the ruling elite.
I’m not a fan of growing the federal bureaucracy, but Dennis Kucinich’s plan for a Department of Peace has a poetic appeal in these unimaginative times.
Mark Hand is editor of Press Action.