Greens Win!!

Nader stuns nation with landslide victory
by Sean Carman, special to the Free Press

On Tuesday, November 7, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader stunned the nation, and set the stage for the revolutionary reform of America's injustices and inequalities, with a landslide victory that made him the 43rd President of the United States. Nader trounced major party candidates Al Gore and George Bush, winning solid majorities in every state and garnering all 538 available electoral votes. Based upon a tidal wave of support that first manifested itself in early exit polls, every major television network and newspaper declared Nader the winner the moment the polls closed.

Nader's election marked the end of corporate dominance of America's stagnant two-party system. News of his victory was greeted with elation in America's rural communities, where small farmers and ranchers are being mercilessly squeezed by giant suppliers and buyers driving rural America toward an industrialized corporate-contract agriculture mutated by genetic engineering. There were also massive celebrations in America's cities, which are beset by crumbling infrastructure, inadequate mass transit and a lack of affordable housing such that working people have to travel long distances at great expense to minimum wage jobs that provide neither a living wage nor minimally adequate health care nor retirement benefits.

Indeed the entire nation, stunned and beside itself with joy, welcomed a political system that will make the minimum wage a living wage, end the war on drugs and United States military intervention in Colombia, institute fair taxes on corporate and personal wealth, close down overseas sweatshops of American corporations, end corporate political control through public financing of political campaigns, end corporate welfare and crack down on corporate crime, and generally end the subservience of the public interest to the corporate commercialization of our country, our government, our universities, our schools, our youngsters and our very expectations.

Political pundits were at a loss to explain Nader's victory. In interviews and exit polls. However, Washington State voters offered some insight into the last-minute national groundswell that swept Nader into office. "I was planning to vote for Gore," said Roger Pumberton, a Northwest internet entrepreneur, "but as soon as I stepped into the voting booth, I realized my intended vote would only sustain a political duopoly that stifles progressive reform by perpetuating the commercialization of every aspect of society, from environmental and consumer protection to prison management and public education. Right then the choice became clear."

Betsy Gilliams, a Wenatchee right-to-life organizer, offered a more specific explanation. "Yes," she said, "the major-party candidates promised bigger tax cuts and greater military spending. But in the voting booth I asked myself which candidate would amend FCC regulations to set aside a narrow AM and FM bandwidth for locally-owned radio stations, thereby increasing citizens involvement in participatory democracy through increased community broadcasting. Well, the question just answered itself."

As a wave of celebration swept through America and Washington State, spawning parades and festivals to mark the dawning of a new age of political reform, the heads of America's corporations pondered their sudden loss of influence. "We're definitely disappointed," said Hendrik Verfaillie, Chief Executive Officer of the Monsanto Company, an international conglomerate that manufactures toxic pesticides and genetically-engineered corn and soybean products and is enjoying record profits. "I mean, it kind of makes you wonder what we were buying with all of those campaign contributions. We thought for sure at least one of our guys would win."

In Washington, DC, where Nader will assume office January 20, government officials turned their attention to more practical matters, such as what to do with the White House in view of Nader's stated refusal to give up his one-bedroom Dupont Circle apartment. "I guess we'll open it up to tourists," sighed Joseph Locklear, head of White House Security. "I don't know what else we would do." Looking over to ecstatic celebrants dancing and singing in Lafayette Park, the veteran federal law enforcement officer lamented the changing times. "I guess all those sleep-overs are probably a thing of the past," he said.