Bill Brad-Buries Nader

     The results are in.  Democracy is dead.  America is the land of the free-trader, home of bravado, no longer the land of opportunity.  Leave your huddled masses at home.  Teeming masses need not apply.  They’ll be safer back there anyway.  Many of us thought it was just the Republican party whose motto was “win at all costs”.  However, now, through the actions of Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, it has become clear that Democrats, too, will steal any election within their grasp, regardless of the cost to American institutions. 
      Bradbury has refused to certify petitions for Ralph Nader to appear on the 2004 ballot because a few of the petitions sheets, although containing signatures confirmed by county election officials, were not numbered correctly. 
     Said Bradbury, “I really was left with no choice but to uphold the law”.  How sad, how pathetically sad.  Given the opportunity to do the right thing and uphold the spirit of democracy, Bradbury copped out, saying that his hands were tied.  How reminiscent of George Bush answering questions on Abu Ghraib,  When asked directly whether he had given the go ahead for the torture of Iraqi prisoners, Bush replied, "the instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you.”  Well, guess what?  It doesn’t.  What’s legal today may not be legal tomorrow.
    Laws are subject to revision.  It used to be legal to hold slaves.  At the same time it was illegal for women to vote.  Separate but equal used to be the law of the land.  And now we’re dealing with the darker provisions of the ironically named “Patriot Act”. 
    If Bradbury had certified the Nader petitions, he would have forced someone else to play the bad guy.  Democrats would have sued to have the certification nullified.  Then perhaps the Oregon Supreme Court might have gotten the opportunity to re-examine election rules which allow Republicans and Democrats to forego the petition process while other--I refuse to call them “third” --parties are forced to follow needlessly  exacting, detailed rules for collecting thousands of signatures supporting their candidate.  Over five percent of the 2000 Presidential Oregon vote went to Ralph Nader.  That was 77,357 votes.  How is it legal for  Bill Bradbury to disenfranchise over 75,000 Oregon voters by keeping their candidate off the ballot?  If this is law, it is law that demands inspection and change.
    But rather than call into question an election law designed to protect the Demopublican stranglehold on American politics, Bradbury fell in line not only with his party but with the prevailing winds of American politics, which dictate that the only thing that matters is that our side wins.  If someone gets tortured along the way, so be it.  If someone else becomes disenfranchised, well that’s just the way it goes.
    As truly terrified as I am that George Bush and his gang will win another four years in the coming election, I am equally despondent that electoral politics have been co-opted into a sham called the “two-party system”.  For a brief moment last winter the light of hope flickered to life when Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich announced their candidacy.  Dean was even the front runner for a while, until the party machine reasserted itself and rammed John Kerry down democratic throats.  And now like good little lemmings, democrats swear their allegiance to the two Johns.  Worse, they infiltrated the Nader convention in Portland, and now through the Secretary of State, they’ve pushed him off the ballot.
    This is not the America I signed up for.  So you huddled masses, yearning to breathe, you’d better stay home. With any luck, you come from a country that has a parliamentary system which shares power proportionately.  Sorry to all you “homeless, tempest-tossed”, the lamp beside the golden door has gone out—and those are Bill Bradbury’s finger prints on the wick.

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