In effect, a vote for a third party candidate is half a vote for the worse of two evils, because you are withholding your vote from the lesser evil.
The Case of Obama: it is true he's centrist at least as much as leftish, but he's built a broad populist movement that has a momentum of its own; it is not conservative, it's generally progressive, although sometimes it's inchoate. The important point, however, is that Obama will be in part dependent upon his movement, so it can martial its power in favor of more liberal policy than he might advocate in the general election, and he would be more receptive to it than any President since Kennedy. On whom would McCain depend?
Kennedy did not start out as a liberal, either; he ran to the right of Nixon on the Cold War. JFK, and afterwards LBJ, pushed through landmark civil rights legislation not because they championed it in the campaign, but because they were responding to that part of their victorious coalition, the civil rights movement. The Obama movement, as an organization, has already taken on a life of its own and is in place to hold Obama's feet to the fire if he starts to slide rightward once he's in office.
There is also the effect of party activists. Despite the often-disappointing elected Democrats, most Democratic Party activists are progressive, labor or locally oriented, and they try to push their elected officials in those directions: towards progressive and pro-labor policies, and towards local services. Republican activists range from conservative business people to libertarian conservatives or reactionaries, to ideological conservatives--there are no ideologues among Democrats--to religious and social conservatives or reactionaries.
Most Democratic activists would embrace much of the Green agenda; most Republican activists tend to be markedly more right-wing than their elected officials.
So, ultimately, why you should or should not vote for a third party candidate for President depends upon two things: where you vote and what you think your vote should accomplish.
What it will accomplish: under some circumstances it might contribute to the outcome you would least like to happen, the worst outcome, like Florida 2000 for Nader voters; in other circumstances it may have virtually no effect. In some instances it may promote ideas that will be realized by others in some future time when people are more receptive. The least likely of outcomes would be if it leaned the winner towards your kind of politics…
…since the candidate has won without you. In other words, it's unlikely that opposition third party votes, even if they're only leaning a little further in the same direction, are going to influence the winner. He/she won without you.
Politicians reward those who help them, not their opponents. You might even succeed in pushing the winner a bit in the other direction, looking for allies there.
The Case of Obama: it is true he's centrist at least as much as leftish, but he's built a broad populist movement that has a momentum of its own; it is not conservative, it's generally progressive, although sometimes it's inchoate. The important point, however, is that Obama will be in part dependent upon his movement, so it can martial its power in favor of more liberal policy than he might advocate in the general election, and he would be more receptive to it than any President since Kennedy. On whom would McCain depend?
Kennedy did not start out as a liberal, either; he ran to the right of Nixon on the Cold War. JFK, and afterwards LBJ, pushed through landmark civil rights legislation not because they championed it in the campaign, but because they were responding to that part of their victorious coalition, the civil rights movement. The Obama movement, as an organization, has already taken on a life of its own and is in place to hold Obama's feet to the fire if he starts to slide rightward once he's in office.
There is also the effect of party activists. Despite the often-disappointing elected Democrats, most Democratic Party activists are progressive, labor or locally oriented, and they try to push their elected officials in those directions: towards progressive and pro-labor policies, and towards local services. Republican activists range from conservative business people to libertarian conservatives or reactionaries, to ideological conservatives--there are no ideologues among Democrats--to religious and social conservatives or reactionaries.
So, ultimately, why you should or should not vote for a third party candidate for President depends upon two things: where you vote and what you think your vote should accomplish.
What it will accomplish: under some circumstances it might contribute to the outcome you would least like to happen, the worst outcome, like Florida 2000 for Nader voters; in other circumstances it may have virtually no effect. In some instances it may promote ideas that will be realized by others in some future time when people are more receptive. The least likely of outcomes would be if it leaned the winner towards your kind of politics…
…since the candidate has won without you. In other words, it's unlikely that opposition third party votes, even if they're only leaning a little further in the same direction, are going to influence the winner. He/she won without you.
Politicians reward those who help them, not their opponents. You might even succeed in pushing the winner a bit in the other direction, looking for allies there.
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