Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert

The Village Voice ran a cartoon that strikes me as a searingly accurate comment on the state of Democrats and Republicans in the US right now.

It shows the GOP for the vicious manipulators and the Democrats for the spineless wimps they have shown themselves to be over and over again. It’s no longer Tweedledum and Tweedledee as it often seemed to be in the 1980s, but it’s not any kind of meaningful choice. If in November 2008, I’m asked to choose between, say, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, I can tell you right now that I’ll be voting third-party, probably Green. And if you tell me I’m throwing away my vote, I’d counter that voting for either Clinton or Romney is throwing away my vote because neither of them come close to representing me. At least in the primaries, I’ll be able to vote my conscience.

Back in the 1970s, when I first became politically tuned in, the Democrats were a party that took pride in actually standing for something, and the mainstream Republicans of that era would be dismissed by today’s extremists as art of the looney-bird Left.

Other than Dennis Kucinich, i don’t see a lot of Dems willing to take a stand that could be in any way attacked by the right–and as a consequence, they generate no passion, no enthusiasm, and very few election victories. Where are the Barbara Jordans, the Tom Harkins, the Bella Abzugs, the Shirley Chisolms, the Ron Dellumss, the George McGoverns of today? and how is it that people so extremist they make Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan look like flaming liberals become mainstream? Whatever happened to conservatives who think for themselves, respect individual liberties, and demand government accountability?

And how much logner will the American people put up with such rotten choices before demanding a political system where third-party votes are not thrown away, and where the two big parties run peole that one might actually enjoy voting for?

I may make some enemies among my liberal friends for this one.

This is most of an e-mail I got from the Democratic party yesterday, with the subject, “They’re Already Trying to Steal the White House:

Dear Shel,

If you can’t win, cheat.

Apparently that’s the Republicans’ answer to our work in California. If they have their way, this reliably “blue” state won’t be so blue in 2008.

Faced with a strong Democratic presence, Republicans are campaigning for a new election system instead of their own candidates.

If they get what they’re after, it could cost us the White House.

In California, Republican operatives — including some of the 2004 Swift Boaters — are working on a proposition for the June ballot that would essentially hand over 20 of the state’s electoral votes before the elections even begin next November.

Electoral reform is a good thing — but this proposition doesn’t even come close to an honest effort. It’s designed for just one thing: to make California the only big state in the country to break up its electoral votes, handing the White House back over to the Republicans. We need election reform, but let’s do it for real — and let’s not pick and choose which states we do it in.

We can’t let this proposition get on the ballot. Reject the Republican power grab in California: (link removed)

California, like 47 other states, awards all of its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes. In the last four elections, all of California’s electoral votes have gone to the Democratic nominee.

Republicans want to change the rules to award one electoral vote for each Congressional district a presidential candidate wins. In 2004, that would have given George Bush 19 of John Kerry’s 55 votes.

These so-called “reformers” aren’t proposing to do this in Texas, or Florida, or Ohio, or any other large state that the Republicans won in 2004.

Only California.

This isn’t electoral reform — it’s a blatant power grab. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger is against the proposal, saying:

“I feel like, if you’re all of a sudden in the middle of the game start changing the rules, it’s kind of odd… It almost feels like a loser’s mentality, saying, ‘I cannot win with those rules. So let me change the rules.'”

Don’t let the Republicans cheat to win the election. Make your voice heard now: (link removed)

For Republicans, it’s not Iowa or New Hampshire that matters most in 2008 — it’s California.

Tell them to play by the rules.

Sincerely,

Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

Waht’s wrong with this picture? Just this: I have been saying for years that the winner-take-all system is blatantly unfair, that it completely disenfranchises up to 49.9% of the electorate in a close vote. Both Nebraska and Maine apportion their electoral votes, and it hasn’t seemed to hurt them. In Europe, the various Parliaments are composed of proportional blocks, with parties gaining strength according to the proportion of the overall vote. The strongest party gets to name the Prime Minister.

So, rather than criticizing California for doing the right thing–I’d like to see that spread to Florida, Texas, Ohio, and a lot of other states (like all of them).

The reality is there’s no such thing as a red state or a blue state. If you look at any state map broken down by party vote, you’ll typically see blue areas around major cities and liberal college communities, and red in the rural areas.

That would be a step toward *true* democracy