The Dream Candidate
Voting third-party (or not voting at all) is anything but revolutionary, you clueless child
Look, I can probably out-radical-cred 98% of my peer group, maybe 99% of America. Medicaid for all? So 2012. I’m ready for single payer healthcare, universal basic income, and housing as a guaranteed right. You want gun control? I’m ready to abolish the second amendment. Overturn Citizen’s United. Publicly fund all forms of education, preschool through doctorates. Let’s ban fossil fuels effective immediately. Free childcare and stipends for parents raising young children. Reparations. Global citizenship. Amnesty for all undocumented Americans. Migration as a human right.
Anarchy? Let’s study that shit. Communism? Let’s fish out the beautiful ideas from the failed execution. Eco-feminist indigenous witches? I’m in, how can I stand in solidarity and offload some of my false white capitalist privilege?
Is Joe Biden my man? Hell no. Does his biracial Black, Indian American female running candidate do it for me? Nope. Could I offer my unreserved support for Bernie Sanders? Nope.
Do I think Seattle’s Democratic lesbian mayor is a corporate tool? You bet I do.
AOC? 🤷♂️
The fact is that there is no candidate that I can’t critique.
But that’s not the point of elections.
Your third party strategy
Does the two party system have a stranglehold on American politics? Yes, absolutely. Would we be better off with a third party, or twelve? Yes. Am I willing to invest in the future of a third party? You bet I am.
Have I ever voted third-party? You bet your organic fair-trade undergarments I have. I’ve voted for third party candidates in local Seattle politics who have built up the necessary coalitions to be viable candidates. And they’ve won.
But isn’t this a chicken and egg problem? Don't you need to vote for nonviable candidates in order to create viable candidates? Nope.
But isn’t this a chicken and egg problem? Don’t you need to vote for nonviable candidates in order to create viable candidates? Nope.
Please hear this clearly: Donate and campaign for and protest in the name of your third party radical platform and candidate. Bumper stickers and tattoos and sweat and blood and tears. Give your all for what you believe in.
But if you don’t have the momentum built up to have a viable candidate by the time of an election, then take the time to lick your wounds, plot how to do things even more awesomely over the course of the next election cycle, and vote for best viable candidate.
If you can’t tell the difference between a Trump presidency and a Biden presidency, I have some news for you: you are living with an immense amount of privilege. Because the nuances between the two flawed, straight, white, groping, capitalist, septuagenarians are huge for the most vulnerable in the margins.
If you can’t tell the difference between a Trump presidency and a Biden presidency, I have some news for you: you are living with an immense amount of privilege.
Your smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous, hipper-than-thou, more radical-than-thou, more pure-than-thou self may feel awfully pleased with itself for not dirtying your hands with Joe Biden’s corporate owned ass. But the degrees that his presidency will move the dial to the left of a Trump presidency will mean life and death, prison or freedom, dignity or despair, for millions of people wit the least amount of power in our communities.
The radical power of not voting
Picture this. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Trump, Mitch McConnell, Biden, W, and Zuckerberg are sitting in a dark room, smoking cigars, laughing at collapse of Democracy and civil liberties.
But suddenly! An aid rushes into the room with an emergency memo!
“Good white sirs! Urgent news! It looks like the radical leftists have convinced millions and millions of Americans to… not vote!”
“Good white sirs! Urgent news! It looks like the radical leftists have convinced millions and millions of Americans to… not vote!”
Can you see the way your subversive revolution has struck terror in the heart of these monsters? Do you see the clever way this takes all of the systems of power and turns them on their heads?
No?
Me neither.
These power structures have nothing to fear from your lack of participation.
Your disinterest in voting, while it may preserve the lily white virginal innocence or your hands that have never cast a vote for someone who’s name doesn’t start with “Comrade,” is taking a massive shit on the legacies of people like John Lewis, Herbert Lee, and others who fought, and even died, to expand the right to vote. People who were at least as literate as you on the Marxist texts you use to decorate your local, organic wheat-fueled home brewing room.
And it foolishly ignores the incredible amount of time, effort, and money the right invests decade after decade in creating barriers for ordinary people to vote.
Back to third-party candidates
If you’re going to vote third party, make sure you at least use your vote for the most impeccable, most revolutionary, most woke candidate.
Her name is Cat Ludowski. She’s even less problematic than the candidate you had in mind. She’s even more marginalized, more lit, and more revolutionary on every single god damned issue than the sell out you have in mind voting for.
And I know that for a fact. Because I just made her up.
And if you vote for her, you can sleep peacefully at night knowing that you are on the side of all that is good and right in the world. And if you put her bumper sticker on your BPA-free thrifted water bottle, you better believe ain’t no one going to call you out for her problematic stance on shit at your next socially distanced farmer’s market, community house meeting, or non-profit management Zoom call.
Because she’s fucking made up. She’s make believe. She’s pretend. Just like everyone in America waking up tomorrow and spontaneously casting their votes for your revolutionary third-party candidate.
Because she’s fucking made up. She’s make believe. She’s pretend.
Just like everyone in America waking up tomorrow and spontaneously casting their votes for your revolutionary third-party candidate that they’ve never even heard of.
Even better yet, just imagine voting for Cat. Visualize it. Pretend like she wins. Pretend like the entire fucking system comes crashing to its knees. We literally eat Bezos, drinking his blood in a new age communion, eating his flesh in a post-pagan marxist ceremony marking the end of capitalism and fossil fuels.
But while you’re jacking off to fantasies of your imaginary candidate’s imaginary win, the real work of organizing and creating policy and getting educated and forming coalitions is falling to other people. Usually women. Usually people of color.
But while you’re jacking off to fantasies of your imaginary candidate’s imaginary win, the real work of organizing and creating policy and getting educated and forming coalitions is falling to other people. Usually women. Usually people of color.
Real change doesn’t take place in pretentious, elitist daydream, or in passive compliance with horrific realities of the eco-carnivorous hetero-patriarchal-capitalist white-nationalist consumption of human peace and dignity. You have to get messy. You have to vote for assholes like Joe Biden while you continue to show up for black lives, while you continue to train and educate and love young radical leaders. While you continue to make reparations, continue to educate yourself about lives even queerer than yours.
This isn’t about selling out. This is about growing out of a fantasy-driven, ego-centered, selfish understanding of how the world works.
You’re going to have to get your hands dirty.
