Election Eve

You know, I’ve voted in every election (except once, when I was involved in an accident on the way to the polls)- local, state, national, and primary since I was eligible to do so, sometimes with great enthusiasm and others less so.  Many of my ballot choices I’ve come to regret, most of my candidates have been defeated.

The reason I keep banging my vote against this wall is summarized by Stockton-

Politics is the art of controlling your environment. That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that ‘it doesn’t matter who’s President’ has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World – or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property – or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons – or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.

The fact that the institutional Democratic Party, the neolibs and corporatists, are actively more interested in purging any semblance of left wing populist thought and non-conformity than they are in any so-called ‘electoral victory’ (amply demonstrated by Gaius Publius today, and also here and here) is very discouraging.  The lesser of two evils is still evil.

I know that a vast majority of people are disgusted by these corrupt, lying, cowards and criminals, all you have to do is look at their approval rating to see that they’re less popular than a Root Canal.  I know the system is designed to make it virtually impossible for a candidate to succeed outside of the two party system.

It has never been my position to urge you to vote for a particular politician, or indeed to vote at all.

What I would urge is that you try and find a way to let your dissatisfaction be known.  Without action things will never change except for the worse.

My personal choice is to vote third party wherever I can so that my outrage is at least tabulated.  You can do whatever you want.

We’ll have an Open Thread up on Election Night (tomorrow) to record the debacle and undoubtedly some analysis as the results sink in.  Don’t be afraid to contribute your personal thoughts, we publish lots of stuff with which we don’t necessarily agree.