Thursday, July 29, 2004

Moore's Plea to John Kerry: Stand Up for the Progressive Agenda that the Majority of America Already Agrees With: "When I was in Cannes with the movie, I showed it to the American students whose were working there. There was about 200 of them. At the end of the movie, I asked them, let me just ask you a question, how many of you are thinking of voting for Ralph Nader? Nearly had a lot of them raised their hand. I invited Kerry's daughter, Alexandra to come and sit in the back. They didn't know she was there. And she witnessed this. And we went out to lunch afterwards and she was shocked. How could they, after watchings this movie, for two hours, with the message of the movie seems to be that Bush must go, that nearly half of them would say they are still considering voting for Ralph Nader. I think I saw one poll recently that said 12% of 18-25-year-olds are planning on voting for Ralph Nader."

Preferential voting (or what the Americans call 'instant runoff voting') is an elementary but essential reform. Practically the only leverage Nader and the Greens have over the Democrats and the corporate two-party system is the ability to deny the Democrats victory by splitting the vote. Not to put too fine a point on it, this leverage ultimately needs to be used. 'Introduce IRV, or else.' Nader makes many worthwhile contributions to the overall debate, but seems to be in denial about the effect of his candidacy, and to fail to place sufficient emphasis on the necessary order of reforms.

No comments: