This is my response to an opinion piece in the San Jose Mercury New, Thursday , 01/29/2004.
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This week, the San Jose Mercury News gave considerable space to John Pearce's diatribe entitiled "Don't do it Ralph. Don't run." Thursday Night's debate between Green Party leader Peter Miguel Camejo and Norman Solomonn covered the issue of "Should the Greens run a Presidentail Candidate" in a more balanced manner, yet it was not covered in main stream media.
The answer to that question depends on whether or not you believe in acting on principle or making your vote a tactical decision. If one looks back at times of crisis in the United States, there has always been a third party standing for principles that made a fundamental difference. In the elections of the late 1840's and 1850's, a tactical voter might have chosen a Whig candidate over the Democrats because they had a more reasoned approach to slavery. It was a third party that provided a principled alternative and eventually Lincoln and the Republicans gained power. There is much to say for principled third parties.
If the Democratic Party is to be our saviour from George Bush, as Mr. Pearce claims, then I would ask you which Democratic party is it? Is it the Democratic Party of Barbara Boxer, who voted to support the War with Iraq, voted to give President Bush unique powers to wage that war and failed to oppose even one provision of the Patriot Act? If Senator Boxer, one of the more "progressive" members of the Democratic party does not take a stand, should we think that she did not know what she was voting for? She is surely more intelligent than that.
Personally, I agree that Nader probably should not run. I would much rather see the candidate be Peter Camejo, who has demonstrated his political acumen and reasoned approaches to solving the problems of the United States during the gubernatorial debates last October. Perhaps, out of a sense of balance, having referenced Mr. Pearce's anti-Nader WWW site, you might also reference the alternative articulated in the Avocado Declaration, online at at http://www.cagreens.org/longbeach/avocado.htm.