"Strategic voting" is strategic suicide.

• Author: Hawkins, Howie
• Position: Politics and Election

When Granny D used her speaking time at the Code Pink antiwar demonstration in Washington DC in early March to tell the Greens "not to divide us" by running a Green presidential candidate, she was herself being divisive. Her demand was divisive within the peace movement, which needs to unite on antiwar demands and not exclude anyone based on their electoral approach. Her political tactic mirrors that of Bush when he says if you are not with the US war on terror, you are with the terrorists. There are always more than two choices in any political question.

Granny D is not alone in making this demand on the Greens. Ronnie Dugger, Michael Moore, Carl Davidson, Daniel Ellsberg, and Noam Chomsky are among the other notable progressives who are telling progressives to support the Democratic nominee in order to beat Bush. Fortunately, few Greens are willing to rely on the Soft Right Democrats to defend us from the Hard Right Republicans. Unfortunately, too many Greens are accepting the sneaky version of this demand: strategic voting.

Various proposals have circulated under various names (safe states, strategic voting, tactical voting, three dimensional, etc.), but they all boil down to the Green ticket either cutting a deal with the Democrats and exiting the campaign late, or not competing for votes with the Democratic candidate in the "battle-ground" swing states where the polls show the race between the Democrat and Republican tickets to be close and the electoral votes of those states up for grabs. Strategic voting proposals let the Greens run where they won't affect the outcome, but not where they might.

The minute the Greens stop campaigning where they might affect the outcome is the minute no one takes the Greens seriously. The minute the Greens start backhandedly supporting Democrats with a cute "strategic voting" scheme is the minute the public stops taking Greens seriously. This will be because the Greens have stopped stop taking themselves seriously. It is the minute that the corporate Democrats feel free to completely ignore their own Kucinich/ Shaprton wing and take votes to their Left for granted. It is the minute the whole dynamic of the election shifts to the Right, with the Green Party looking like it isn't really serious about wanting governmental power to make changes.

The best way to fight the Right is with a good offense around an independent campaign for a real alternative. The Democratic leadership is so complicit in Bush's...