Voting Kerry Good for Left

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. In 2004 I will vote for John Kerry. In both elections, my vote is cast for the candidate that I believe will make the far left matter more in American politics. I do this believing that Nader is a man whose convictions match those of the far left and that Kerry's do not. In fact, I believe that Kerry is one in a long line of Democrats who represent a swing to the right within the Democratic Party. But I believe that when the left votes as a block (and when we'll change our party of choice) we become swing voters whose values and interests matter in the political equation of presidential elections. By voting for Kerry this year, past Nader supporters become swing voters who will require wooing in future elections.

When I voted for Nader in 2000, I was frustrated by how Bill Clinton had moved the Democratic Party to the right. I was disappointed by Clinton's failing to carry out a progressive agenda. I was disappointed because when the Democrats controlled Congress and held the Executive branch they retreated to the right in full force. Universal health care, civil rights for gays and lesbians in the military, access to childhood immunizations, NAFTA, the Defense of Marriage Act and welfare reform were all issues that Clinton either failed to get enacted or was on the wrong side to begin with. Clearly, the left needed to show its strength and needed to matter in American politics. That's why we abandoned the Democratic Party after eight years of Clinton. We were losing on every side, and the standard line from the Democrats was that the left didn't matter. The way for Democrats to get elected, many claimed, was to move to the conservative center and to stand for nothing.

I voted for Nader in part because I could not support the Democrats. I thought that the party was, and still is, owned by the powerful and the rich. I thought, and still do, that the party was serving the interests other than those of the middle, working and in-poverty classes. I thought, and still do, that the party was giving up ground to conservatives because there was not enough political will to fight the forces and corruption that had overtaken the Democratic Party. At the national level, it was painful to see how there seemed to be no room for debate over the structural issues that were leading to massive inequities in the American economy. Poverty, human rights, ending racism, expanding the middle class, progressive taxes, and access to health care were off the radar screen.

I voted for Nader because I felt that the Democratic Party was out of touch with its base, and with the American people. I felt that it was out of touch in two ways. First, the Democratic appeals to the middle and lower classes were (and are) mostly transactional, not rooted in values. It is cynical and stupid to think that the only thing that Americans want is more money in their (and only their) pockets. The Democrats have abandoned the progressive fight as one based in the American values of justice, human rights and liberty for all. By doing this, the only people left talking about values on the national political scene are conservatives. (And I am not referring to the empty rhetoric of Clinton, who couched little ideas with lofty words.) The second way in which the Democrats were out of touch was by their assumption that Americans don't care about progressive issues and causes. This becomes self-fulfilling. Don't talk about the issues and the issues themselves disappear in the political equation. I thought that either the Democrats were blundering in a strategic sense, or that the party was controlled by people opposed to progressive causes. And with this in mind, I realized that I did not support what the Democratic Party had become.

We live in a two party political system. This is too bad, since it makes it much harder for political change to occur, especially change that challenges the power of the political and economic elite. But the far right knows how to take power in this system - and so can the far left. While I'd prefer a whole new political system, the only way for this to occur would be for the left to have power. So the point of creating a new political system is lost until we have figured out how to have power in the current system. And I don't think that the way to get power is by complaining about the system itself - people want moral appeals and values-based movements for social change, not whining about political systems. With this in mind, I think that we need to know that the two party system is one reality that can't be ignored for now. We'll need to work with it, and to do what the far right has done. We need to take it over by building a base, pushing an agenda and working within the system handed to us.

Given that I accept the reality that we live in a two party system, one reason why I did not vote for Nader was in the hopes of creating a third party. Instead my vote was tactical, to affect the Democratic Party in a way to make the far left meaningful within the current system. Bluntly, I voted for Nader to make the Democrats lose so that the far left mattered in presidential elections. And this brings us to 2004. What is a progressive to do this year? Clearly the far left is not in power - so our work is not finished, and a President Kerry won't do all the things we should expect from a progressive president. John Kerry is a man of the center; he is no Nader (not even a Howard Dean). As a progressive, the question for me becomes what makes this year different from the last election when I voted for Nader. Indeed, the ineptness of the Democrats has been even more apparent as they backed off from opposing the greatest power grab of the right in at least a generation. The Democrats were too unprincipled and too weak to stop or vocally oppose Bush's illegal war of aggression in Iraq and to prevent Ashcroft's radical agenda that included the suspension of speedy and public trials, the right to an attorney, our rights to privacy and to organize, and the right to church-state separation.

Despite the Democratic failure to fight the radical right's agenda under George W. Bush, I am voting for Kerry in 2004. And it's not because I whole-heartedly support what Kerry or his party stands for. And I am not only voting for Kerry because Bush is so bad. Instead, my main reason for voting Kerry is because I believe that voting for him is the right thing to do to make the left more powerful in the future. What I and other progressives did by opting out of the Democratic Party in past elections was make our votes meaningful. We became swing voters. Swing voters matter. We provide the few percentage points that are the difference between winning and losing. We are worth wooing because our vote is not certain. By voting for Nader, we took votes that should have gone (in the two party logic that the liberal base votes for Democrats) to Clinton and then to Al Gore. By organizing the left, the Green party became a power broker that Democrats best listen to. But we are only meaningful when we will go one way or another, depending on the circumstances of each political contest. If our votes are cast blindly (one way or another) then we must be removed from the political equation for winning elections. But if we switch votes and parties, we matter because we can tip things based on the specifics of each race.

This is a good year for past Nader supporters to vote for a Democrat. For starters, thanks to Dean the storyline of this year's political contests actually includes us. We've been wooed, which means something - especially since in past years rather than being wooed we were rejected. Thanks to Dean, the Democrats, including Kerry, are taking shots at the radical right's agenda. Bush also makes this a good year to vote for a Democrat. His reelection would mean that his radical agenda is acceptable to the American people. It would validate all of the extreme acts of his administration and of the current Congress. His reelection would change how history retells his selection to office and the consequences of leading Americans into an illegal war of aggression on false pretenses. Just as importantly, if Kerry defeats Bush, the storyline changes, especially if Nader does poorly in the polls. That's because we can claim that the Democrats needed our support to win this time. There will be repudiation of the radical right's agenda, and the left will have become swing voters who can matter in presidential elections.

Of course, Kerry's election won't make the Democrats a party of principle. More has to happen first. But that's okay, so long as the far left remains a voting block that will change its allegiances based on the circumstances of an election. We'll be strategic about how we vote, and create a far left voting block with the power to win and lose elections. If we can do this, then Kerry will know that if his legacy is as bad as Clinton's was, we'll opt out in 2008 and make sure he loses because he failed to support the progressive's agenda. This is how the left becomes relevant and how we'll take power and make this country ours. And that is why Kerry is going to be the first Democratic presidential candidate for whom I'll cast my vote.