Moving the Political Center
By Royce Carlson

The political center is not static. The Bush administration’s approach is to come on strongly right and then slowly let the opposition push him toward the center. For example, when he first took office he said he was going to try to repeal almost everything Clinton tried to do for the environment during his last months in office. Over the next few months, Bush received a lot of opposition from the environmentalist community and eventually ended up leaving some of Clinton’s work in place. So, things did not end up as bad as they could have been, but they still ended up bad for the environment.

The Democrats need to change their strategy and they need help. Those on the political left may be able to help the Democrats by joining the Green Party. I know it sounds strange, but there is a reason behind this idea.

The political system in the U.S. is designed to prevent a third party from ever getting power. Congress has the power to change our voting system but has absolutely no incentive to do it since it would threaten the two-party system by making it easier for third parties to get elected. The winner-takes-all voting system insures that only the two existing parties continue. In the 2000 election, a vote for Ralph Nader was considered by many as a vote for Bush in the states that had close elections. How many additional people would have voted for Nader if that vote didn’t end up counting against Gore? Because of this system, the election results of third party candidates are terrible - usually under 4%. This does not send any kind of message to the parties in power.

Although no one’s supposed to know how any individual votes, it is public knowledge how people are registered. If a lot of people joined the Green Party over the next two years, that could begin to send a message to the Democrats to move back left. Just because you are a Green Party member does not mean that you can’t vote for another party in the general election. Somehow the message must get to the Democrats that they are leaving a lot of people behind by chasing the center that the Republicans keep moving.

Over 50 percent of eligible Americans did not vote in the last election. Who are they and why are they not voting? This should be a first step for the leadership of the Green Party (or the Democratic Party, for that matter.) They should learn about who the non-voters are and find out what issues are important to them. Candidates in the next election should focus their attention on rousing the interest of the non-voting public.

Voter participation has declined pretty steadily since 1960. There was a brief peak when Ross Perot ran for president as an independent. Why? He was interesting, charismatic, and was not spewing forth the same centrist oatmeal that comes out of the mouths of most Democratic and Republican candidates. He was different and that appealed to a lot of people. Although I did not agree with Perot’s politics, I did appreciate his approach. For 2004, we need charismatic candidates who speaks their minds. We need mavericks to attract the attention of those who don’t vote. We need someone who is a real choice. Pressure from the left may force the Democrats to come up with more interesting candidates than they have been coming up with lately.