Evil Empire

Election was just business as usual

I have an experiment for you: Take a quarter and flip it 100 million times. Record how many times it lands on heads, how many times it lands on tails, and how many times you drop it and it rolls under your desk where you can't find it.

CRISTINA SOSA/YH

Tabulate this count, and you'd probably get a pretty accurate representation of the popular vote count between George W. Bush, DC '68, Al Gore, and Ralph Nader in this year's election.

Like most Americans, I spent the night of Tues., Nov. 7 gazing at the tube and watching as alternating waves of blue and red surged across the electoral map. My companions cheered and jeered as the projection for each state came in. One of my friends, unable to get excited about the Democratic candidate, cheered "One more state for not-Bush!" Another sound bite: "I think in a choice between a weasel and a retard, I'd rather have the weasel."

Amidst their cynical quips and shudders of horror, my mind wandered back to what might have been. What if the candidates had been Bill Bradley and John McCain? What if we had been given the choice between two honorable, honest men with convictions and progressive ideas? How different this race would have been.

For one, Nader might not even have run. McCain carried the torch of campaign finance reform, while Bradley could claim to be more of a true progressive politician than Al the Android. Nader would have had a hard time making his case that Bradley and McCain were the same man running under different headings.

This could have been a campaign about ideas and true reform, not empty rhetoric and matching power ties. Instead of fuzzy math we would have gotten a discussion about corporate influence in government. Instead of lock boxes we would have heard about social reform for the working poor. We didn't even need both of them. Bradley would have run circles around the monkeyman from Texas, while McCain would have won the hearts of Republicans, Independents, and even some Democrats, soundly trouncing whatever version of Gore his campaign managed to program. But, alas, the pampered son of a senator and the pampered son of an ex-president and oil multi-millionaire won out because the Democratic and Republican machines wouldn't have it any other way.

So they dished out the same tired, centrist garbage, armed with a grab bag of empty rhetoric. It shouldn't be surprising that Bush and Gore got almost the same number of popular votes. The standard was set so low that neither of them could rise above the level of mediocrity and take a commanding lead over the other.

In the end, whoever loses the White House deserves it. I wish there were some way that they both could lose, that we could just start over. But we can't. I was forced to watch McCain endorse Bush against every ounce of principle in his body. I had to listen to that coke-snorting frat boy praise McCain for making him a better candidate, as if McCain existed not as an opponent but as a coach for a rich ignorant boob trying to get a handle on this president thing. I had to watch Bill Bradley, head hung low, reluctantly endorse the incumbent candidate whom he knew he was better than.

The reality of this election is not that it may be decided by a few hundred folks in Florida; it's that two mediocre apparatchiks carried the torch of the mainstream political establishment and made a mad dash for the center. The American people, given no other practical choice, gave each creep about half of the pie.

The good news is that we've hit rock bottom. No matter who wins this race, the other party will re-examine itself. If the party wants to win next time, it will not be so quick to dismiss the Bradleys or the McCains. Because when Gush and Bore are squabbling over a few hundred votes in Florida to secure the White House, you bet that Democrats and Republicans are admitting to themselves that they screwed up big time.

In the 2000 presidential election, no one seized a clear victory because the American public was given no choice. I don't care who wins. Big Bad Bush will not overturn Roe v. Wade any sooner than Gore will become the Great Savior of The Working American. But if this election can serve as a lesson to the mainstream, let it show them that they better shape up or ship out. Let it show them that they can never abandon the progressive wings of their parties if they want a chance at a decisive victory. The Bradleys and McCains of American politics will be around long after drab, centrist cowards like Bush and Gore have fallen by the wayside.

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