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Anyone want to bomb Florida?

Ihaven't been very good at math or logic since high school, but I can figure this much out: if I'm writing this column before the election, but it will be printed after the election, then I can't really write about the election, can I? Ah, 'tis not true. That would be fuzzy logic. It's not that I can't write about it, but that I probably shouldn't write about it—a big difference. But I think it would be silly to not write about it. And the way I see it, there's really only one way to write about it. I'm going to rant.

SARAH ENGLAND/YH

I stared at my absentee ballot for a long time before finally deciding whom I was going to vote for. Growing up in a strictly Democratic household—I'm Jewish, and I dare you to name one strictly Republican Jewish household—I'd been taught at an early age that Democrats were right, non-Democrats were wrong, and shiksas possessed evil supervillain powers. You should hear my father's political track record. It reads like an obituary: McGovern in '72, Anderson in '80, Mondale in '84, Dukakis in '88. Clinton was basically vindication for over 24 years of grief (apparently, Carter doesn't count). Growing up in the '90s, with a Democrat in the White House, it was ingrained in my mind that everything was right with the world. Al Gore in 2000? You bet. So Gore vs. Bush vs. Nader should not have been a difficult decision. But it was: "Vote your conscience" (Vote Nader). "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" (Vote Gore).

My dad recently said to me, "If I were an idealistic youth, I'd probably have voted for Nader." But somewhere amid the fuzzy math and subliminable messaRATSges, somewhere far from the fat cats and the Social Security lockboxes, somewhere beyond the compassionate conservatism, pragmatic idealism, and 134-year-old little Miss Jane Doe from Nowhere, Ida., who has to climb five miles uphill in the snow to get her prescription drugs...I stopped being idealistic. Apparently being idealistic is a reason to vote Nader. I disagree. I really thought about voting for Ralphie, but in the end I voted for Gore. I don't feel too good about, but I don't feel that bad about it either.

I hesitated for quite some time to give in to the "lesser of two evils" shtick—which I felt was basically an excuse for people who knew almost nothing about politics—but I've been so embittered by the system that I finally realized that this may actually be the way to look at it. My Gore vote was a vote against Bush. To me, Nader is that guy in high school who ran for class president on the "screw-you" ticket, not unlike a Rumpus editor running for YCC. Those who say that you should vote for Nader in a Gore-Lieberman "safe state" are doing nothing more than punching their ballots with their middle finger, choosing the unpolished screw-you candidate over the vastly more qualified nerd who nobody likes but whom clearly deserves to win. In an election as crucial as this one, I felt it was important to not bail on the Democrats when they clearly needed me most.

If, once Florida finally finishes counting their ballots, Bush is our next president, I'm not going to blame it on Nader. That Gore couldn't beat Bush just shows how much of a shmuck he really is. But if Gore is the next president, I'm not going to blame the electoral college system for brushing over the fact that you can draw a line from Georgia to Oregon without hitting a Gore state. That Bush couldn't win any of the important states, i.e. the ones with more people than grain elevators (sorry, Midwesterners) is a testament to how much of a shmuck he really is. But most importantly, the fact that I actually voted for one of them is a testament to how much of a shmuck Nader really is. Or maybe not voting for Nader means that I'm the shmuck. Whatever. Who cares. Vote Bradley in 2004.

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