When the Green Party convention meets in Baltimore next month, delegates will choose Dr. Jill Stein as their presidential candidate. The Massachusetts physician may not be a serious candidate (she has no chance of winning), but she does offer voters an alternative to "the lesser of two evils."
Never mind that Stein promises to be the only candidate with a rational plan for dealing with the country's future, starkly threatened by a rising tide of plutocracy, militarism, and an evolving police state. The ABC story this morning covering her candidacy notes that third-party candidates "don't get much respect from the political establishment," which is enough by itself to motivate me to vote for her. Third-party nominees, if they get any attention at all, threaten the Demolican/Republicrat duopoly of our one-party system, and party honchos like Karl Rove and Obama have no intention of surrendering their stranglehold on the political process.
Dr. Stein's campaign will also suffer a lack of money, since she doesn't accept donations from any person or organization that employs lobbyists, and at this point her party is on only about half the state ballots. Her biggest asset is the widespread and intense disgust much of the American public feels toward the country's politics and establishment politicians.
I'm not even certain I'll vote this fall, but if I do I'll pull the lever for Doc Stein. Ultimately, however, we're not going to win the battles we've been forced into by voting, but by taking to the streets in such numbers and with a degree of ferocity that will ruin the sleep and digestion of those who rule. They've given us economic collapse, war, unemployment, and foreclosure, and it seems to me the least we can do to repay their efforts is to give them a Maalox™ moment that lasts a long time.
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