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The following is a letter to the Albany Student Press, a weekly student paper serving the University at Albany. It is in response to a front page story on the results of the 2002 general election. It is included here for your goodification. I am posting this before the paper has a chance to run it, so who knows if they will. I am shady like that.

Editor,

I was sad to see your November 11th lead story “Decision 2002: Republicans turn the tide” repeat the same silly corporate myth about the results of the 2002 election signaling a popular mandate for the President.

The giant media conglomerates where you get this stuff trick the public not with the facts they report, but with the tremendous context they ignore. In the established democracy with the lowest voter participation in the world, November 5th saw the second lowest turnout in a congressional election in sixty years. In the face of an electorate mostly tuned out in disgust, the party that outspent a silent, phony opposition by hundreds of millions of dollars picked up a few seats. Anyone who thinks this is a sign of broad public support for the President or his policies is wrong.

Another measure of public attitude suppressed by the principled journalists at General Electric, Microsoft, Disney and AOL are the hundreds of thousands of Americans who traveled from all over the country to Washington, DC and San Francisco on October 26th to demonstrate against the dangerous mistakes the President and his Democrat and Republican supporters are about to make in Iraq. These people not only took time out of their lives to get to these huge protests, they faced harassment and intimidation from an out of control Ashcroft justice department, recently freed by the bipartisan USA PATRIOT act of many of the restraints imposed by Congress in response to previous abuses by law enforcement.

In a political system flooded with campaign cash, antiquated winner-take all voting, and districts so grossly gerrymandered that 435 congressional races are reduced to 10 real contests, 30 strongly favored candidates and 395 predetermined winners, is it any wonder that the overwhelming majority of Americans sat this one out? With two corporate parties, who plainly fight for the big donors and not the little guy, growing closer and closer to each other on every issue, is it any wonder that no one could pretend to claim a popular mandate? When candidates that inspire real passion, like Ralph Nader, whose 2000 campaign appearances drew crowds of dedicated supporters up to sixty times the size of anything George Bush or Al Gore could manage, are dismissed by the fearmongers on the TV screens as “spoilers” guilty of “willfull prankishness” for participating in politics on their own terms, is it any wonder that no one wants to get involved?

Once again the election was a resounding win for “screw you guys, I’m going home.” Of the minority of Americans that did vote, how many voted for a candidate they didn’t believe in, against a candidate they had heard trashed? How many knew anything about the way their candidate would vote when in office, and how many just saw an attack ad or two? Why do we let these clowns in TV news play with our public airwaves if they’re going to neglect their job of covering political races while raking in campaign advertising dollars that tie politicians tighter to the rich every two years?

Philip Zozzaro’s article makes another big mistake when it states that President Bush can now push his policies and nominees through Congress unchallenged. In fact, the Democrats hold at least 47 seats in a Senate that can be paralyzed with as few as 40 supporters of a filibuster. If the Democrats decided they wanted to be a real opposition party, they could stop any law or presidential nominee from moving through Congress. But, then, of course, they would have to stand up for something like peace or civil liberties. These Senate Democrats have a record of folding.

Fortunately, the only party in America that unwaveringly supports peace and opposes the erosion of our civil liberties, the Green Party, made significant gains nationwide in 2002. While all other parties shrank, the Greens doubled in enrollment, and continued to run and elect more candidates in more states than ever. Voters in Maine made that state the second to send a Green to the state legislature. Maybe more importantly, the Greens bring new ideas into stale arguments, and new voters into a political system crippled by nonparticipation.

Will voting for unlikely winners hurt the least worst candidates? Does it matter who holds office? Or does the self-respect of the citizenry matter? Richard Nixon had a better record than any Democrat who followed on support for public housing, he proposed a national minimum income and he pulled our troops out of Vietnam. Is this because of the Republican commitment to peace and social welfare? Or is it because we vastly outnumber our “leaders”, and if we get involved and expect something better we can make them do right?

ASP readers shouldn’t buy in to all the hot air about public support for the President. Don’t forget, it took truckloads of cash, an anticompetitive two party system, the domination of the media by a few giant corporations, widespread civil rights abuses in Florida, the exhaustion of the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and a speeding limo dodging through fifty thousand inauguration protestors to get this guy to the white house in the first place.

Peace,
Matt Willemain

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