“Blame Me. I voted for Nader.”
That was my line, but I don’t think the take-off on the common bumper-sticker line “Don’t Blame Me. I voted for ___” registered with anyone. Besides which, I’m not even circumspect on that vote.

“No, I don’t blame you.”

“Yeah, well… I only voted that way after staring at the electoral map for a while. If I had been in Florida, I would’ve voted Gore.”

A different person came up to me, and said. “Yeah. I waited for Gore to say anything at all to get me to vote for him, but he never did. I’m basically a Socialist.”
“Hm. I can’t really say that, on balance, I like Nader’s positions more than Gore’s. I dunno… if he had any chance, I probably wouldn’t have voted Nader.”
“In fact… I voted for Lyndon LaRouche in the primary. Even though he’s a nutcase.”
“Lyndon LaRouche Is Right!” , an obscure Simpsons reference that no one would catch.

This is the politics of personal aggrandizement. Nobody in their right mind would consider Lyndon LaRouche better than Al Gore, and probably not even George W. Bush. In a 2-person race where the stakes are real, I’m pretty confident that this “basically socialist” would throw Al Gore into office over Lyndon LaRouche.

Likewise, when it comes right down to it, I would probably have, even in 2000, selected Al Gore into office over Ralph Nader, though that’s a bit more chancey than the Lyndon LaRouche choice… (what the hell? Let’s try something a little different for a while and break down a few things…) In the end, Nader comes across as an authoritarian yahoo… like most 3rd party figures tend to come across, actually. (Ross Perot, anyone?)

But… by voting for LaRouche, we can know that we voted for LaRouche. By voting for Nader, we can know that we voted for Nader. And we can say so. To impress, if not other people, ourselves.

Note my joke, “Blame Me… I voted for Nader.”
Note his statement “In fact, I voted for LaRouche, even though he’s a nutcase.”
Two statements that make ourselves inwardly smile.

And to damn the system. And to damn the system. And to damn the system.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2004 at 2:23 pm and is filed under On the Ground, The LaRouche Challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.