I’m a Green who wants the nation to progress. The three most likely candidates for President are McCain, Obama and McKinney. I will admit that chances are the person that will be elected is Obama.
Obama, though he is inexperienced, is a fresh face with fresh ideas that are needed to revitalize America. His interests are in helping America. McCain is a pure manufactured product of the Republican Party, but he is interested in helping America. Cynthia McKinney, a former democrat and former senator of Georgia, is interested in helping America too. Which one has the highest interest in American progress though? That is what you will be looking towards when you vote. Does the person have a higher interest in helping America and do they have better, fresher ideas than their opponent?
That being said, a Green Party candidate doesn’t have much of a chance of getting elected to the presidency this time around. Then again they’ve been competing with a media block-out due to the fact that the better financed, better-known candidates are able to grab the prime advertising slots and time with big name interviewers and better quality news coverage.
Even in journalism, sadly, money speaks louder than words. An example is the fact that when the Green Party National Convention (GPNC) was held in Chicago, a political party convention during an election year, the story was covered in a sub par way by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. The story was given less prominence to give it less credence than if it were the Democratic National Convention or Republican National Convention. You’d think that a national political convention being held in the city you’re based in would hold a higher importance but it was downplayed. The only places that gave the GPNC equal quality coverage as the DNC or RNC were C-SPAN, NPR and WTTW. That changed a bit though since the Sun-Times recently endorsed Nadine Bopp, the Green candidate for the Water Reclamation District, as well as two Greens running for state representative of the 2nd and 39th districts. Greens, even without the kind of campaign funds that Democrat and Republican candidates alike tend to have, are making some headway in the press. They also have a higher chance of getting municipal and state offices this time around than they had in past elections.
This would focus on the laurels of the more experienced half of the Green ticket for the White House. However, there is a lot of material that goes into that, so much so that a couple hundred words really wouldn’t cover it. So this is going to start focusing on the goal of the required 5 percent and the campaign platform.
The McKinney/Clemente ticket, even though it is highly unlikely that it would actually win the day, still has the opportunity to win a big victory for the Green Party. If they played the political game, they will get the minimum five percent required to get national recognition, an assured spot on the ballot in every election and government matching campaign funds. That will open up the country for a truer sense of democracy, since it would be voting for more than just the lesser of two evils. They have the ability this time around to get up to eight or nine percent of the national vote, if they played the political game really well. Their platform is full of lofty but attainable goals: improve the economy, education, health care and society at large, election and campaign reform, repeal the Patriot Act, Secret Evidence Act and Military Commissions Act among other bills that affect civil liberties and other such topics of importance like ending the war in Iraq. If you want more information on what their platform is, you can visit www.votetruth08.com/index.php/resources/campaignplatform Remember, if you are able to vote you should. The people elected, on all levels, will be making decisions at one time or another that would directly affect your lives. Don’t not vote because you don’t agree with one of the two major party candidates. If you want more of a choice, we need to start getting third parties on the ballot consistently on a national level. Obama might be the president we need right now, but remember: A vote for Green is a vote for democracy.