He Can't Win
Posted by The Nader Team
on Sunday, November 2, 2008 at 04:25:00 PM
"He Can’t Win"
The biggest threat to our democracy and our way of life today are those three words. Bigger than terrorism? Bigger than losing our homes, our jobs, our healthcare, our education? Yes, for the very simple reason that once we believe these three words we will refuse to even consider, let alone support, the candidates for office that may well have, not simply the best, but perhaps the only, solutions to all of these threats.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I have heard someone who, after having heard so called "minor” candidates said, "Yes I agree with this person, I would like to vote for him, but I won’t because HE CAN’T WIN”. But I don’t have those nickels and neither do they or they would be able to buy all the "air time” they needed so that no one could say the other thing I hear so often, "Who’s he, I never heard of him?” And they don’t have those nickels for the simple reason that the people like you and me that these candidates represent are running out of them and have to spend them on other things like food, clothing, housing, education and healthcare.
I have been around long enough to have seen how far down both "major” parties have brought us, and, although I am a "registered” member of one of them, try as I might I cannot believe in their candidates anymore. This country was founded on principles not parties, on ideas not ideology. When the parties have abandoned their principles and their ideology trumps our ideas, in short, when they have abandoned us, it’s time to abandon them.
There was a time the ‘law of nature” was perverted in order to physically subjugate one group of human beings to another based on the color of one’s skin. Now it is the "law of markets’ that is being perverted to financially subjugate an even bigger group of all colors to another much smaller one based on the size of one’s purse. But the end result of both perversions is the very real loss not only of freedom but of the ability to make our and our children’s lives better.
And the way this travesty is being foisted upon us is very simple – just convince folks that "there is no alternative” and that anyone who suggests there is "can’t win”. Astonishing, isn’t it, that such a simple idea can be so destructive. Amazing that we can be so easily convinced to not "spoil” the chances of either of the "major” parties that have both done so much in the last few decades to spoil OUR chances for a better life. Have our ideals become so shriveled that we use the ballot box, won for us by the blood, sweat and tears of so many, to vote, not for what we need and aspire to, but only for the table scraps the media tells us is the most we can hope for, or just to "beat the other guy”.
150 years ago we had to fight an actual war to free victims of that first perversion. This time we don’t have to use guns, we CAN use the ballot box to reclaim that heritage and defy the establishment once again to free ourselves from that second perversion, but only if we truly understand that we can. It is time, past time, for us to do so. If we do not believe in the power of the ballot to achieve a revolution, then what is democracy for?
And to remind yourself to "never doubt that a….group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world…”, every time you hear or are tempted to think those three words of mass destruction, silently say a prayer of thanks for those men and women of the Revolution who refused to say, "I like Washington’s ideas, he’s right, but I won’t support him because HE CAN’T WIN.”
(I apologize if this is not so very eloquent; I am not a professional writer. But I wrote it because I believe it and I would post it on every tree I could find (instead of at your door), but there aren’t so many of those anymore, either….)
—Sue Hammond
