Sick of it all

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I had hoped that the NHL would schedule the start of the Red Wings-Stars series for tonight because it would give the Stars little time to recover from that grueling four-overtime game on Sunday. Now I’m wishing they’d scheduled any game for tonight so I wouldn’t be stuck watching more primary coverage tonight. I know that I don’t have to watch, but this is my normal news-listening time, and for the sake of being able to converse knowledgably with my students about this stuff, I still feel obliged to keep tabs on things. Still, this primary campaign got tiresome long ago, and as much as I’m not going to tell the Democrats how to run their campaigns (even if they tell we Greens to perform anatomical impossibilities in terms of us running for offices), on a personal level I wish we could just get this campaign over with.

I have to admit I’m starting to have doubts about where my vote will go, though. I had gotten behind Nader as soon as he entered the race, even when he decided not to pursue the Green Party nomination, in large part because I didn’t feel comfortable voting for Cynthia McKinney. I’ve still got very strong reservations about McKinney, but the mailings I’ve been getting from Ralph Nader’s campaign have been giving me cause for pause as well. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but there is something about the way the Nader campaign is conducting itself that is making me question my loyalty to it. I think that over my break I’m going to be taking a closer look at McKinney and how she’s conducting her campaign, and reevaulate just who I want to support.

What may be bothering me the most about this is the impending sense that this is not going to end well. Not only am I concerned that the protracted Democratic primary campaign is going to give McCain an easy path to the White House, but between the Democrats opposing Green Party ballot access at every turn and the progressive vote already being split between Nader and McKinney, I feel like we’re going to be in for another night like we had in 2004, where it’s close but the Republicans win, the Green Party loses even more of the gains it got in 2000, and we’ll be no closer to reinventing democracy than we were four years ago. I hate to be a pessimist about these things, but I can’t help but be a realist, and it’s hard enough to be an optimist and a realist at the same time about anything, let alone American politics.

2 thoughts on “Sick of it all”

  1. Given your interest in ballot access and the Green Presidential candidates, you might want to take a look at this ballot access video

    We are hoping to win this PBS contest which will allow this piece on Kat Swift and ballot access to be screened nationwide. You can view the piece without voting for it, but your vote could help us win, so perhaps you will consider.

    We are in production and post-production on vignettes of other Green Presidential candidates. Mesplay’s vignette will focus on sustainability and energy reform; Johnson’s piece will focus on decentralization, Constitutional rights and also energy reform. McKinney’s vignette will focus on social justice and mainstream media.

    Hope you enjoy.

  2. Babette: I watched it and voted 5/5 on it. Please let me know when you get the other vignettes done, because I’d like to see them and possibly promote them on my Website.

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