Thursday, October 30, 2008

Can we please get a third-party candidate?

Election, election, election. It's all anyone's talking about and it seems like it's all we're hearing about these days. Even the regular TV shows are sneaking in election plotlines.

What I find interesting is that of the three shows that I'm aware of who've recently featured election plotlines, (and there are probably more than just the ones I'm aware of,) two of them had a third candidate win by write-in. Ther original two candidates in these plots were just too radical and too involved in the politics of the election to consider what the population voting for them really needed and wanted. 

This third-party feature is no coincidence, I'm sure. I've heard so many people say that they don't like either candidate, and while a third candidate in this election wouldn't work because there's no room for a third party in National American politics*, there are probably a lot of people who wish that they had someone other than Obama or McCain to vote for. 

In the American History course that I'm currently taking, in which I'm the only Conservative in the room**, I've had both the professor and classmates challenge my vote for McCain and all I can say to them is, "I don't like McCain either; I'm just voting for him because he's not Obama." 

It bothers me terribly that I'm going to be voting this coming Tuesday for a candidate I neither like nor trust, but I dislike and distrust Obama so much more that I just don't feel like I have a choice. 

Maybe I'll write-in my own third-party candidate; it's not like a vote for McCain really count in California anyways. 


*Third-party candidates in previous elections have only ever made a difference by taking votes from one of the major candidates, such as when Ross Perot took votes that George Bush Sr. would have gotten, possibly ruining the election for him, or when Ralph Nader takes away votes that the Democratic candidate would be getting otherwise. 

**There might be other Conservatives in the classroom, but if they are, they're keeping quiet. When the course just began I was sure, based on his facial reactions to some of the professor's liberal rants, that one guy was Conservative, but he stopped coming to class after the first two weeks or so. Maybe because he couldn't take it anymore. 

Me? I've become pals with the professor, who think that he's going to crush all of my Conservative beliefs with his liberal logic. Apparently, though, (according to one of my classmates,) the two weeks of class that I missed due to the Jewish holiday season were really boring. All liberalism and no logic can get a bit stale, I suppose. 

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