I’m a progressive Californian, a Black man, and I didn’t vote for Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris this yr or Donald Trump. I voted for Claudia De La Cruz, the Peace and Freedom Get together candidate for president.
The choice was simple. With two exceptions during the last 4 many years of presidential elections, I’ve at all times voted for a progressive third-party presidential candidate. (The 2 exceptions? Hillary Clinton in 2016 as a result of I favored the thought of breaking the glass ceiling. And Walter Mondale in 1984 due to my distaste for Ronald Reagan.)
I reject the guilt-trip knock about how a third-party vote is a throwaway vote, or worse, one which opens the door for large, dangerous bogeyman candidates. And I don’t make my selections pondering it doesn’t matter as a result of in my blue state a Democrat will win anyway. I mark my poll the best way I do as a result of it displays my conscience and deepest political opinions.
I’ll admit that this yr I didn’t inform most of my family and friends my plan. I might have been ripped from pillar to publish, verbally mugged: “It’s a wasted vote.” “It can harm the trigger.” “It’s downright foolish to vote for somebody who nearly nobody has heard of in a celebration that hasn’t been related because the Vietnam Battle.” My relations and associates have been passionate supporters of Harris. Their enthusiasm was comprehensible. They’d have regarded my vote as wrecking the history-making possibilities for a Black lady with East Indian roots to sit down within the Oval Workplace. I understood, and I had no phantasm that I may change their minds.
In any case, the problem for me was not Harris, her coverage positions or her marketing campaign. (I gained’t have interaction within the onslaught of second, third and fourth guessing about what sunk her.) The difficulty was and is the two-party system itself.
Republican and Democratic politics are an iron chain that tethers the American voters. Voting for De La Cruz was my manner of taking a hammer to that chain. I prize independence, the correct to train freedom of selection, and I imagine that more choices are true to the spirit of democracy.
This isn’t a starry-eyed delusion. Many international locations have a pluralistic consultant system with a number of political events. Their residents have an actual option to vote their beliefs and pursuits. The events they’ll vote for aren’t on the perimeter. They win places of work. They maintain seats in parliaments and assemblies. They usually kind coalitions with different events to realize a extra highly effective seat on the desk. The multiplicity of events provides extra folks a definite voice in how their authorities works.
However baked into U.S. politics is the notion that there can solely be two events, and the winner takes all. The Structure doesn’t demand it, and each 4 years, I hear folks wishing for different selections, different events that would have a shot at making an impression.
With both a Republican or a Democrat assured to take energy, particular pursuits make their bets. This yr, each campaigns had king’s-ransom battle chests flowing with donations from common folks however primarily from fat-cat firms, business and commerce teams, big-gun labor unions and a parade of millionaires and billionaires.
The 2-party system additionally assured that solely Republican and Democratic agendas obtained media publicity, main endorsements and nonstop public consideration. Different approaches to our challenges, our safety or our position on the planet simply didn’t have an opportunity.
Let me be clear once more. My vote for De La Cruz was not a deliberate snub of Harris, and I’ve no regrets. I merely imagine that for our democracy to be a democracy, the folks should have selections, and people selections shouldn’t solely come marked with a Republican or Democrat label.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s newest e-book is “ ‘President’ Trump’s America.” His commentaries may be discovered at thehutchinsonreport.net.
