A Response to the NPN Editorial Staff’s endorsement of Malachy McCourt and the Green Party.

America in Peril… or why I can’t vote for the Green Party or Malachy (even though I mostly agree with what he proposes).

By Carole Bell Ford

An earnest plea: don’t dismiss this as the ranting of an old, disillusioned, liberal. I completely understand Malachy’s frustration when he says, “No more….I will not vote for the lesser of two evils and I will not settle for just hollerin.” I understand why he felt that he had to step in. But please read on and bear with me as I explain why I believe that now is not the time.

 America is in the midst of a crisis that is so profound, some of us who remember the 70s find ourselves longing for the good old days of Tricky Dick Nixon. Now is the time for political hardball, for realpolitik. I dearly wish it were otherwise but it is not the time for idealism or what I believe is wishful thinking. Not even for a simple protest vote.

 First: the upcoming federal election. Then I’ll move on to make some direct points about the state election.

The Feds

 As you all know very well, over the course of the Bush administration, particularly since 9/11, we have seen an almost unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of the Republican Party and its conservative base. Traditional checks and balances, based upon the concept of Separation of Powers, has become a farce. Since the Bush appointments to the Supreme Court, conservatives now control all three branches of the American government. There is still, sometimes, a swing vote on the Court (Justice Kennedy) but the Court already is showing that it’s weighted to the right. According to court-watchers, Chief Justice Roberts concurred with Scalia 88% of the time. And the bloc of conservative justices could become even stronger within Bush’s term with the death or resignation of some of the older justices. John Paul Stevens, for example, is 86. Consequently, the Republicans control the administration, and Congress—particularly the House; and the Supreme Court shares the administration’s conservative philosophy (along with dozens of lesser federal courts that have changed as a result of Bush appointments).

Last semester I taught a course on the Holocaust. The more you know about how fascists came to power in the pre-World War II years, the more frightening the concept of single-party rule is, and the scarier the Bush government is. The parallels are stunning: increasing concentration of power in the hands of the executive; an ineffective—rubber stamp—legislature; a co-opted court system; a state of emergency; a common and amorphous enemy; extreme secrecy and suppression of dissent in the name of national security; assaults on the press; and so on. In Germany, as here, the power grab was so incremental that few envisioned its ultimate conclusion. Those Germans who were concerned kept thinking that, with each edict, the worst had finally past. They believed the government would brake itself. By the time the German people, including the hapless Jews, realized the truth, it was too late; they had already been rendered impotent. 

 In America, here and now, another traditional restraint on the over-concentration of power, the two-party system, is also in jeopardy. With gerrymandering and other insidious strategies, the party in power is ensuring that it stays in power. When the Supreme Court heard the case against Texas gerrymandering recently, it allowed the redistricting to stand, except for one district that was so obviously manipulated that it violated the principle of equal protection of voting rights. The majority decision was reached despite a general agreement that the redistricting was politically motivated.

But trying to get a third party candidates elected at this time, no matter how strongly you agree with their platform, is not the answer: he can’t win. Conservatives have become as powerful as they are in Washington because they learned how to become an organized, disciplined and vocal part of the Republican Party. They could never have achieved such leverage if they had splintered off into a third party. (Imagine if the liberal wing of the Democratic Party had had such foresight!) Now, the only hope for stopping the Republican conservative agenda is to strengthen the chances of Democratic candidates. (Incidentally, I am not a registered Democrat. I’ve always retained the option of being an independent voter.)

Malachy’s coinage of “Republicrats” is clever; surely, a two-party system doesn’t offer the kinds of ideological alternatives you find, for example, in a parliamentary system (although that has other kinds of problems). Our political parties often seem more alike that different because, the way our system works, the party that is not in control thinks it has to make unfortunate compromises—not stray too far from what the dominant party supports. Add to this, in today’s climate, the successful propaganda about “being soft on terror,” about dissent helping the enemy, about “liberal bleeding-hearts,” or “dismantling family values,” etc.

Yes, the Democrats should be much less timid in opposition, but as dismal as you may think the Democrats’ record has been they are only ones who offer any hope of fighting back. What’s more, if you believe there is no difference between the two parties, I’m afraid you haven’t been keeping yourself sufficiently informed. And there actually are some good people out there, such as Hinchey in the House and Feingold in the Senate, who are fighting for change—or at least to stop the constitutional hemorrhaging—from within the system. The Green Party, offering a liberal alternative, only draws votes away from such candidates, not from their opponents; it’s disingenuous, at the very least naïve, to claim otherwise.

The State Elections

One of the remaining restraints on the runaway power of the Republican-controlled federal government is found in the states. The reserved power of the states, as you probably remember from your basic American history classes, is known as Division of Power. In recent years some state governments have been the only voice to challenge the Bush administration over several important issues. Actually, it’s an odd state of affairs, a reversal of the historically conservative role of “states rights.”

State law, providing it doesn’t conflict with federal law, can offer alternative policies in a number of areas. I’ll use the issue of minimum wage as an illustration.

To their shame (and at the same time that they don’t deny themselves the regular salary increases which has raised their pay in the past nine years by more than $31,000) members of Congress refused to vote for an increase in the $5.15 an hour minimum wage. Sen. Kennedy’s proposal for a whopping increase to $7.25 was voted down a couple of weeks ago. At $5.15 an hour, a full-time worker—a single mother recently pushed off the welfare rolls, for example—would earn a pitiful $10,700 a year. That is an annual income well below the poverty level, which is about $17,000—equally pitiful. After adjusting for inflation, the value of the minimum wage, according to Bob Herbert writing in the Op Ed pages of the New York Times (on Monday, July 3, 2006) is at its lowest level since 1955.

None of the states require minimum wages that anyone could live on. (See below, imported from Department of Labor website, www.dol.gov/esa/.) But this is an area in which some of the states—mostly blue—do better than the Feds, and few do worse (believe it or not, for those not bound by federal law, the minimum wage in Kansas is $2.65). In New York, as of January 2007, minimum wage will be $7.15. The highest is California at $8.50.  

Minimum Wage and Overtime Premium Pay Standards Applicable to
Nonsupervisory NONFARM Private Sector Employment Under State and Federal Laws, March 1, 2006 

Minimum Wage and Overtime Premium Pay Standards Applicable to
Nonsupervisory NONFARM Private Sector Employment Under State and Federal Laws
March 1, 2006

Like the federal government, New York State needs a change from Republican domination. Consider the recent State Supreme Court ruling on legalizing gay marriage. The court tossed the question to the State Legislature as if it were a hot potato; that’s where it will be decided. That’s only one reason why the State Legislature needs people like Susan Zimet who will, like Hinchey does, work for fairness and equality from within the power structure.

And we need to elect a Democrat for Governor. Yes, it is a compromise but also the type of act of “conscience and principle” that Malachy applauds. I, for one, will compromise one value for another higher value. I will give up my ideal—someone like Malachy McCourt—for someone like Eliot Spitzer. I don’t believe in everything Spitzer stands for, but he can get elected and, therefore, can make a difference in areas in which I do agree with his platform. The value I choose to honor is true to my liberalism: to help achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It may not be the best choice in the best of all possible worlds, but it’s the best choice in the perilous and real world we live in today.

If you vote for the Green Party, your vote will count only in the sense that Malachy “will listen to you.” But his claim, “If we don’t win the race, we will still triumph!” is posturing. There is no triumph in pointless rebellion. There is certainly no triumph in helping the Republicans retain their power.

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